busy bees

and mosquitoes and granddaddy long legs and earwigs and rolypolys and ants and aphids and centipedes and other creepy crawlers...

Thelma at Cupcakes 'n' Daisies had an excellent idea...

 gather sunflower seeds and share them with Quilting Friends Around the World...

i really SHOULD do that!!!

but ...
yeah - you KNEW that was coming

there are three reasons why that prolly won't happen...

1) i am lazy

 i did not plant this garden ... i just get to eat the veggies from it ... Auntia does all the work

 secondly) bees and every other bug/spider/insect freak me out...

that's a close up of the biggest flower to the right ... and that bee chased me around the yard

and c) skwerls and herds of birds lurve sunflower and any other kind of seeds, berries, veggies, herbs and all the other plants that are not weeds but refuse to eat the creepy crawlers and flying pests in Auntia's garden ... ugh!!!

my kinda flower (zebra stripes for LuLu and sunflower petals for Auntia) no bees or bugs and no weeds to pull

Auntia planted these zinnias for me cuz i so admired Thimbleanna's zinnias last year...

 aaaawwww!!! how sweet!!!

she's learned a LOT of lessons whilst gardening this year... 

gardening is a lot of work...

and expense...

potatoes don't like a lot of water... 

neither does garlic and it lets you know by dying off - all $45 worth... 

green beans are pretty plants, but she prefers canned over fresh... 

peas are pretty, too, but you gotta pick them before they get huge cuz huge peas don't taste good... 

zucchini plants are itchy and scratchy and earwigs shudder lurve the undersides of their leaves... 

onions don't like being crowded... 

the meaning of "bolt" as it relates to spinach and lettuce... 

even "boltless" spinach bolts when the air around it is in the 100's...
give a zucchini plant an inch and it will Take Over the World...
there IS such a thing as too much zucchini...

and there is something quite remarkable about going out to the garden and harvesting strawberries for breakfast ... or tomatoes, squash and basil for supper...

shazam!

look who has made a surprise appearance at the front porch...

 surprise, surprise, surprise!

and in front of the garage...

golly!!!

i didn't plant sunflowers seeds there or there... 

so i asked Auntia...

and she says she didn't plant sunflower seeds there or there, either... 

neither of us chomps on sunflower seeds... 

and even if we did being the ladies that we are we would never just spit them out...

next year i'm gonna plant sunflowers seeds there and there 

on purpose!!!

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

Vincent van Gogh

There are not too many fables about man's misuse of sunflower seeds.

Richard Brautigan

Shazam!

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

Golly!

Gomer Pyle

you are NOT gonna name MY kid...

it was 1976
America's bicentennial year...

i was pregnant... 

and reasonably certain that my baby was a boy...
but ultrasound was not something that was commonly used to determine a baby's gender
and i was trying to think of a name that would work for a boy or a girl
 and had something to do with America's 200th birthday
 and would pass muster with the eXMan
and his parents
and my mom
and my brothers and sister
and his sister
and my grandparents
and our aunts and uncles
and cousins
and friends
and coworkers...

i was blissfully unaware at the time that sometimes it is impossible to get a group of people or even two people to agree that water is wet...

i came up with...

Liberty Bell...
do you hear angels singing hallelujah?
neither did anyone else...

seriously, it would have worked...
 a boy could be called Liberty or Bert or Ty
a girl could be Libby or Bell or Lady Liberty...

nope ... no one else liked that name for a boy or a girl...

even my mom who was gonna name me Guida Wallette till my dad put a stop to it wasn't on my side...

between my brothers' wives and me, there were 3 brand new little baby boys born in our family that year...
and needless to say none of them is named Liberty Bell...

but i still think it is a cool name and i am gonna give it to the latest linen calendar tea towel quilt...

the naming block - ready to be stitched onto the back
which must remain unseen for now because it is supposed to be a christmas surprise for its Intended who is NOT named Liberty Bell, lemmetellya...


The 1976 Bicentennial is not going to be invented in Washington, printed in triplicate by the Government Printing Office [and] mailed to you by the United States Postal Service.
Richard M. Nixon

and now i wonder what he meant by that?!? 

hmmm...

 here's a better one... 

Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

Liberty Bell