Here is a recent picture of Xander and Brooke.

Picking Raspberries

These last ten days I've spent a lot of time in the raspberry patch, alone with my thoughts and not so alone with the bugs and spiders. Somedays the picking has taken two hours and on Monday's after having not picked on Sunday, I find the longest days out there. So here is what I've learned/observed.
One particularly windy evening of rain and thunderstorms, we had what the news labeled 80 mph shear winds. I've heard the term before when they refer to a shear wind in an airplane crash. So the next morning on my picking, I find that some of the canes were laid right over onto the nearby canes while others didn't seem affected at all. So I began relating this to the gospel. Here I have some canes that are ramrod straight and next to them a new cane has grown. Literally up the side of the ramrod straight cane with very little variance. Some canes are twisted and growing every which way within the patch. And others yet, lean against their neighbors. (Can you figure where this is going? It's so obvious, isn't it?)
Isn't that a true parable for a testimony? We are either like the cane that follows the straight and narrow way, very narrow in my patch because it is so crowded, or we lean on others' testimonies or we struggle to find our way, similar to not holding to the iron rod. Before the wind that night, my canes that were laid over in the wind had been standing straight. We can liken this to temptation or the world pulling us ever so slightly away from the gospel. In their case, though it wasn't a slow process, it was BAM!!

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

Women are angels.
And when someone breaks our wings,
we simply continue to fly...
on a broomstick.
We're flexible like that.

I've decided this 140 block quilt project has gone about long enough...I think I might be at 90 now. Some blocks HAVE to be done by hand because the curves are too small to do on the machine. At least for me.

Birds

The warmer weather the last few days has brought the Goldfinches and Red-throated Finches back to the house. I wish my camera would do justice to the action going on around the feeders. Last Monday we put out one feeder and a few birds came. Thursday I added a second feeder to the apple tree. The same tree we hung them in last year and the year before. This morning it's like a bird fight out there for the eight perches. For some reason they don't share very well. It's like there is some bird etiquette in waiting until one of the birds leaves. Normally two feed when there could be four going at the same feeder. Then one of them will get impatient and try to get someone to leave the perch...and everyone in the tree gets in on the fluttering and twittering...it's a bird fight!! So I filled a third feeder, luckily I had another, and hung it in the apricot tree. As I was hanging it the apple tree got quiet. After it was hung I walked about twenty feet away, curious to see how long it would take for them to discover more food. It took five seconds - literally. I no sooner had walked the distance away, turned back to face the tree and one bird flew into the apricot tree, cocked his head a few times and twittered some little familiar sound I've heard before. And two other goldfinches flew into the tree with him, yes a him, they are brighter yellow. And boom! They swooped onto the feeder perch. The other tree still had four goldfinches in it and about three regular finches. The four took off altogether the same direction out of the yard just a singing. I think they went to spread the word!! Now if I have to come up with a fourth feeder yes I have one more simple feeder, the first feeder we hung out about three years ago.

Candy Shop

So this is the first block of 50. They are called Patience blocks....I don't know why, I think they are easy!! I have to do 12 in green, and purple, 6 in yellow for starters...

Candy Shop start

Eighteen 9-patches, 100 more to go...