"C" words today..........

Look what my friend Mary Jane sent me thru the mail !!! Little baby cactus plants (cacti?).......whatever plural is called. Hey, MJ, do they bloom? How old before they do? Thanks.........the outdoor cats are steering clear of them!
Does this child look stressed out to you???!!!!!! Cuz Susan........you can see he's adjusting just fine indoors since his little surgery, and we believe he's growing and not a "kitten"........... he eats pounds of dry cat food!
Yep, this is what I'm off to do this afternoon, while it's still hot and humid here. What I didn't get done early this a.m. won't get done outside. We might be lucky and get one of those scattered storms and some rain this week. OKay, that's all the "C" words for today.........Cactus, Cat, and more Cat. Check out my dear husband's blog for more silly cat photos..........
http://earlkingphotos.blogspot.com/

Art projects!

Look what I got in the mail yesterday from Patsy M. in Colorado! A piece of her gorgeous Victorian lady fabric I had admired on her blog........and also some slices of her embellishing laces onto felt..........and the beautiful hot pink fabric sun image! Can't wait to use that on something.......I love bright colors as much as "vintage" browns. Thanks VERY much, Patsy, and your swap is going in the mail today! Be on the lookout.........
And received from the Art Queen herself (Monica Magness), some of the extra beautiful breast cancer squares to be made into an art wall quilt! The wonderful Pink Artist doll she made will start being auctioned next month; so anyone interested, please let me know. I think she says she had received more than 300 squares, which covered the 39" doll's skirt, and also oodles of squares for this wall quilt. I am only one of many who offered to do something more for the breast cancer project, since I'm a survivor of same.

I'm supposed to take these beautiful squares and make them into ANY kind of 10" block I can think of, and return the block to Monica. This fall when all the blocks have been returned to her, she will work her magic again and assemble the blocks into a quilt to also be auctioned. The proceeds of both these ventures are going to the Susan Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Thanks, MM, for letting me play with you all again!
Well, my beading buddies came again Sunday afternoon, and I almost got this dang sunflower finished. Now we decided it needs a background and some green leaves! And I don't like FLAT beading much, so I'll be digging in my bead stashes looking for something else to perk it up. Stay tuned!

Maypops are here!!!

WE've been watching the field of passion flowers for blooms and looking for their green fruits (maypops), and they're finally "doing their thing"! The fragile, delicate blooms just stop me in my tracks in wonderment. How can anyone not believe God will take care of us when He can make such intricate things as live and grow on this earth?!! These plants move about in the fields here and are VERY hard to transplant, or to raise from seed.
So we just let them, like our wildlife living here, go on about their business while we admire them.
And check out this storm cloud DH and I took pix of the other day! We saw the clouds coming in and jumped on the golf cart with cameras to go as close as we could to see the clouds changing. Maybe this little one gave somebody a shower, but not here! We are still in need of rains, and the hottest month of August to come yet.

This is my monthly beaded block/pin for August..........it started out to be a sunflower, and then I didn't like it, so am adding some green leaves. I might be able to save it, and love the iridescent brown beads in the center, but my stock of beads doesn't have many shades or sizes of yellows/oranges, because I don't like those colors much. Hmmmm.....time to go order some yellows (in case I need them again one day)!

...more nature stuff..........

My little cousins who visit their grandparents next door recently found this box turtle on one of their excursions down to the creek. They came by my house to show me the turtle in this white bucket and the nice ferns and soil and mosses from his natural habitat. They were going to take him home and keep him in a terrarium and feed him flies and lettuce and blackberries..........they've done this before, and were very knowledgeable about what turtles need to live happily ever after in what they THINK is their creek-side habitat! I LOVE it when the cousins come to see me and share their doings........Harley: "Come back soon and tell me how "Snappy" turtle is doing!"
You'll need to click on this photo to see the little toad frog trying to hide from me between the rocks. The pix are supposed to enlarge, but I never can swear to it! This froggy is new to the addition of the waterfall to one of the koi/goldfish ponds DH has installed.
And speaking of our wonderful cousin/neighbors next door (who have green thumbs up to their elbows!) here's Don's watermelon vine blooming and growing like crazy........ that means more little melons in the making!
This is actually a small watermelon in the same patch, but there's nothing nearby to compare the size to. I love the shapes of the leaves; and after a rain, I swear you can almost SEE those vines' little "feeler" ends grow! And they wrap quickly around the nearest thing to support them.......another amazing day with Mother Nature, right here almost in our back yard! Thanks for the opportunity every year, Don, to watch your garden grow! (And also for generously sharing its bounty with us!)

Big Mama

This big, beautiful dragonfly has a wingspan of 4 1/2 inches across! And it measures 3 1/2 inches long from head to tail..........not much color in the body or wings, but I found it dead on the street and brought it home just to admire it and save it from being trampled. The intricate designs in miniature in the wings are just awesome. I plan to trace it for a beaded design...............
And on our early a.m. walk one morning last week, DH took this photo with my little camera of some beautiful wet, dark green mosses on the trunk of a cedar tree; then he found this leafy stuff. A kind of lichen, I suppose. Mother Nature never stops working! Around the clock! Oh, and the full moon last night was gorgeous..........we tried but failed to get a good shot of it and the mosquitoes ate us up!

Buds and beads.................

I couldn't resist a close-up of this bright red zinnia.........you'll be sick of my blooms by summer's end, but I can't resist. Deal with it.
And this shot of these HOT pink petunias I took at the Lowe's store this week turned out looking like DH had played with it in his PhotoShop thingie to make it look weird, but he didn't!
And here's my July beaded block............supposed to look like a wavy flag pin, but I think I'll sew the pin back on so the flag stripes point down instead of across. Almost done with the blue........I hope to post the finished piece soon.

Foods for body and soul...........

Here's a bag of DH's very first REAL home-grown local tomatoes given to him by a friend.........he is eating tomatoes twice a day or more and just can't get his fill after a long winter and spring without them! And we are SO fortunate to have good neighbors with a beautiful garden who have given us beautiful produce........OMG, the silver queen corn is so delicious!
I am thankful for friends and neighbors who share with us!
Mary Jane, look this little bird up in your bird book for me, please.......it hit the storm door and sat here for awhile the other day. Thankfully he wasn't killed, but he let DH pick him up and he took flight into the tall pines at the porch before the outdoor cats found him! I'm sure he had a bad headache, because I heard him when he "thunked" into the glass door!

On our morning walk this weekend (already hot/humid at 7 a.m....ugh!) we saw these huge morning glories! I wished we had something with us to lay beside them to show the width...........we both commented we'd never seen any so large...........if that's what they are! The foliage looks the same as normal-sized morning glories; and can you see the "star" shape made with the five creases in each flower? It's more visible on the left one.........another one of God's little daily miracles that most folks sadly don't even look down to notice. I love the little daily miracles in nature here in the country. I wish busy people could/would slow down enough to smell the roses and "see" the ants building their condominiums; or watch my wren starting to poke pine straw into the pottery Williamsburg bird house........more on her later!