Doggie fabrics

Well the first thing I did was google. Then I went to SCQ Commercial and a kind friend suggested Spotlight. On route I went past the Janome shop which I tend to forget is now at the Plaza and found the white fat quarter. Also discovered again that they have Max New fabrics there which are some of my favourite fabrics.....so fresh and clean and let me at them looking.

So then off down to Spotlight where I found the one at the back with all the squares so that set the size of the blocks for me and I found four others, so have enough to make a credible hound addiction to my disgraceful cat collection. Will it recover from shock if I actually use it. A whole two crates and maybe I have made two small cat quilts. A collector I am. A quilter I sometimes am.

I want to make these into a quilt for a little girl whose Mum has been incredibly kind in helping me with my accounting data. She has been helping her Mum and likes cats but it seems Dogs might be the favourites.

Funnily enough that would have been my story until I was 37 when I got Moggie One as a tiny tiny kitten that the children at the school I was based at had managed to kill the mother. They were from a terrorist area of the world and it seemed that cruelty was part of who they were. So sad to see at such an early age. They would not have seen the terror for themselves as they would have been born here but obviously the culture accepted this cruelty as natural.

Alas I shall have to hunt harder for a picture of Moggie one.

We had cocker spaniels when I was a child then border collie/blue heeler/kelpie cross or some variation thereof. And oh were they protective of me. Even Dad, whom they adored, could not touch me if I called to the dog for help.

Nigger, black of course, was my guard dog as a baby. He would sleep under my bassinet on the front porch and keep me safe. Then we had a blue/black male that was too savage to stay with my cousins in the suburbs and then we bred black and white ones. But alas on a farm with no sense of vehicle safety they were not the best dog to have and by the time I had left home and worked in the city my Dad would drive onto the railway platform and be waiting for me on a Friday night, and it would be quite an effort to keep the current dog from killing me with love and affection. Cats we had but somehow they would get lost in the bush or caught in rabbit traps. My Dad would spend hours teaching the Dog and Cat to kiss each other before they got a piece of his morning or afternoon tea.

Bluebells or scilla's but I will stick with bluebells

What a joy they are and how refreshing that they come up and multiply each year. It is very noticeable how much shorter and smaller they are in this year of drought. These would have been twice the size in a normal year. But at least they grow. I am not watering the hydrangeas in the hope that the more they survive without water the less they will need. Of course their flowering will able be affected but better small green growth than the sad weeping state of last summer. These have been in the front of my home for nearly 20 years and while I have planted sasanqua camellias in between them I certainly do not want to have to remove them.
However I notice that the most color in the back garden is coming from a lush geranium.

And to add to the blue the lovely clumps of dutch iris that now come up each year and the good old daisy that we will no doubt come to appreciate again as we have less water.

I planted a few bulbs this year and they have come up and just managed to flower but I am glad I did not waste money on them as I often have. Not that it has been wasted, but any more spent this year would have been. I must feed and much the areas where they have flowered and take out the bulbs from the pots that were left over from last year.......most of which managed to flower but will need to be in a bed for next year.

The Magic weeping Mulberry Tree

And here we are in all the glory of spring and fresh green growth. Amazing when you look back at the skeleton. The would be the tree that would break my heart to lose to drought. It survived as a sapling when I thought winds would blow it over. It has developed good strong deep roots. Imagine the weight of this when it gets a North wind behind it. Or a North Easterly can really get a good go at it. But it has held and thrived and I am so hoping it will grab the postie on his/her bike one day and put them out on the road. It still blows my mind that a postie can drive at a rate of knots across a front lawn where children could run out on the drive way, completely hidden by this tree and be bowled over. My mind cannot comprehend one law for one group of people and one for another.

On the left front edge of the tree is a group of three silver birches. I had to replace one after the summer but got it in before I went off to hospital and lay in bed and watched the rain slamming into my window and rejoiced that my tree was probably being well set into its new bed. It rewarded me by being the first in the group to bloom and it actually a fraction taller than the one it replaced. Being on the outside edge it missed out on water when we used to have a sprinkler in the middle of the lawn. Did most things but to get that tree it seemed to go on the concrete, so I kept pulling it back. Obviously a smaller sprinkler on that bed it the way to go if we are ever able to use sprinklers again. And may we continue to be blessed with more safe steady rain......here, in the catchments, in the farming areas where it is so needed.

It was a cold wet night and it was late

Mummy!!
Mummy, when are you coming to bed.

I am sitting here waiting so patiently,

but Mummy it is after midnight and your toes are blue and it is very cold in here.

Please Mummy, can we go to bed.