A few more days of work ... what happened to May?

I have made progress with the batik quilt and worked on the Women's Conference banner, but there is little to show in a picture because it is just quilting stitch after quilting stitch. One more border needs to be quilted in the banner and the sashiko stitching that I am trying to get up nerve to begin.

The batik quilt still has at least three large blocks to quilt. I can't figure how four smaller blocks took only about an hour or so each to quilt but those big ones, instead of taking four hours are taking days each. My goal is to finish all the big blocks before summer camp and work on the flower border during evenings at camp. I want that quilt to travel with me to its new home in July.

Travel and meeting time has finished more + and x blocks, now numbering 199. This is all I have cut and marked and I will have a lot of travel and meeting time to fill this week. I figure 225 will give me enough for a large quilt. Sooner or later, I will have to stop making these and begin sewing them together ... and that will also involve arranging them somehow and finding a system to keep them in order. A wedding quilt for my son will be next on the list so I hope these will not have to sit and wait too long. Once they are organized, they can become take-along work.

My flowering weeds are so pretty this year. The few inches of dirt along my front wall has already begun to bloom with knotweed, which will lay out a carpet of flowers over the summer and into the fall. These flowers were planted over the last three years from seeds I gathered in other people's borders. I do not know what they are. The blue-purple ones were coming up among the grass at out last house and I collected seed before we left. The pink ones were dropping their seeds on the sidewalk, just to be washed by the rain into the sewer so I gathered as many as I could and brought them home.

This is a variation of the same flower. They grow from a tiny bulb.

The hen and chicks are blooming by both the front and back gates. I love stuff that just comes up and blooms no matter what care they get.

This is that cactus that bloomed for the first time this year and though the flowers only last two days , you can see new buds that just keep coming between the fat spines.

This is the second year for the teacup cactus and the first for the one on the right...kind of a wispy stem but no actual flowers yet. These pink stars last for many days and are so pretty.

And last of all, the Easter cactus that sits on my dead air conditioner outside my greenhouse/bedroom has tossed flowers in all directions. These are all flowers that don't mind the freezing cold of winter or the horrible heat of summer and thrive on neglect. Though I miss my African violets, they couldn't take the punishment and these continue to flourish with gay abandon. I have a few that have been sitting silently in their pots for years and wonder what surprise awaits somewhere down the road.

There is work tomorrow for which I am glad even if it will make a long tiring day.
So... back to work! Shall I cut more block parts for the train ride or get back to quilting those big blocks? Maybe a tiny bit of both....