Home, and it’s September

I am done with traveling and out-of-town visitors for the summer. Relieved. It’s time to settle in and reconnect.

I took a very small stitching project with me. A pocket cloth sunflower like Jude makes. This is as much as I did before the thread got impossibly tangled. I can see a lot of room for improvement in my satin stitch technique. I never liked satin stitch from the time I first did it as a young girl. It was so hard to get the threads to line up neatly and I was so ready to give up. But now I want to improve. I really like the feel of these stitches and look forward to finishing and making more.

And here’s the garden that I came home to. It’s going to take awhile to catch up with it. So far I’ve harvested a lot of summer squash, green beans, and cucumbers. Sam harvested some tomatoes. The sauce-making and canning begins. The garden still looks pretty green, although the weather is still dry and starting to cool down a lot at night. We are participating in a garden tour event in our neighborhood tomorrow. I’ll have to try to remember what I’ve planted.

Some of my favorite perennials are just starting to bloom. The bright purple New England aster – finally! I tried to grow these a few times without success and finally bought a potted plant, divided it, and now I have two huge ones. They flower really late.

And another plant I purchased – a brown-eyed sunflower. It looks totally different from last year. Much taller and fuller. Playing around with portrait mode for the photo.

Really happy to be home!