Weekend freebies and purchases

P and I spent the weekend visiting his older brother, A.  I've mentioned before that A runs a landscaping business.  He also maintains a nursery, of sorts, of plants that he may use in future installs.  Being the great guy he is, A toured me around the place and allowed me to take whatever I wanted.  I insisted that I just wanted one hydrangea; A wisely insisted that we take our own pickup so we would be sure that my selections would fit.

The final total came out somewhere between my and A's projections:

Plants never look very impressive when photographed against a background of grass. What you (sort of) see here is my hydrangea, plus a swamp magnolia, a chaste tree, some irises, a pair of knockout roses (a has promised me the moon and the stars on these--no need to spray, plus will bloom during unseasonably warm spells in the winter), a few southern shield ferns (which A assures me will grow in full sun, unlike most ferns), a few boxwood, and a butterfly bush.  Don't think I missed anything there...

I other garden news, I made all the right calls in regards to the weekend's freeze!  The pepper plants andthe basil are done in, so it was good I did a full harvest there.  The lettuce, beets, chard and radishes are all still going strong.  The jury remains out on the kale and leek seeds.  Give up on the garden?  Pah! 

A's wife T and I went to a local quilting store, and I came home with all this:

I'm hoping to make a holiday table runner from the fabrics on the left, those on the right are for other projects--or just to build my stash.

T is good with a sewing machine, but didn't know the first thing about quilting.  She picked out a pattern and fabric for a small table runner, and asked me to teach her.  I figured I could teach her to piece this weekend, and she could work on that until our next visit, when we could do quilting and binding.  Well, she had the whole thing pieced and quilting, and the binding machine stichted on the top by the time we left, and was sending us pictures of the completed runner by the time we were halfway through the drive home!  What a natural!  I need to be half so diligent about finishing the handstitching on my pile of projects that's building up!

Of course, one of the highlights of the trip was getting to see our nephew, who's just turned two.  He seems to enjoy sewing just as much as T does.  Saturday morning he insisted that she sit down and sew with him--she runs the machine, and lets him pull the pins out as she goes along.  He takes this job very seriously, and meticulously places each one in the pin cushion.  What an assistant!