May 26/12

The writing of this post was delayed a few minutes as I had to chase out a neighbour's cat in between uploading my photos and beginning to type. The obvious solution to these regular intrusions would be to close my patio door but then my three darlings would have me running daily marathons to let them in and out and in and out and for good measure, out and in.

The other day I took my first trip of the year out to a piece of property I own in the country. I like to take a look around at the changes the winter has brought on the trees and property. One of the changes this year was the death of one of my apple trees. From the amount of etching on the trunk as seen here, I suspect that the tree had been badly damaged for a long time. I spent an hour or so, walking around and taking down the dead branches, all the while assessing what I would like to get done in the next few months.

In the yard at my house, the plants are bursting into green and blooms with all of the rain and warm weather we have been having. The lilacs are just starting to open up, much to my delight!

Somewhere in between working and wrangling the mess that is my neglected yard, I have been stitching as much as possible as the August deadline looms up more quickly that I would like. The cross stitching is almost done. One more evening should finish the bottom right hand corner and then I can begin the backstitching and filling in all the little spots I somehow missed. I also need to do the stitching with the gold filament. I love the finished product of stitching with the filament but really dislike doing the stitching itself.