How did you spend your Easter?

This year we stayed home for Easter, and enjoyed a lovely peaceful time, sharing with local churches over the weekend.

I wanted to get this quilt a long way towards done, and at least it got to the flimsy stage.

I have called it "afternoon tea with mum".

It has some tea cup blocks, along with a border of cake fabric, and some butterflies and other pretty things.

I will need to figure out a pieced backing from the leftovers, and that will have to wait until next weekend.

This is my first quilt flimsy for the year -I am so glad I finally broke the drought! 

Autumn means new life here in Perth

It is spring in the northern hemisphere, but here in Perth autumn has come with a sense of relief and new life. We had 35 mm of rain here in the last week, and after our normal summer drought the rain always brings new life. Many of our native trees are evergreens, but the rain washes the dust off the leaves and soon we see new pink tips emerging.

One of our favourite trees at this time of the year is the Illyarrie or Red Cap Gum. It has the cutest bright red caps which fall off and then you get clusters of showy yellow flowers. My DD, when she was a primary school girl, used to collect the caps and I would find them in the pockets of her school uniform, so the red cap always brings that little girl back in my mind.

There is a 'dry park" behind our place -that is, a park that the Council does not irrigate. After the rain there is a nice little tinge of green as the grasses come back to life

  I have been redecorating with a few 'hints' of the up and coming Easter season.  Here is a cute Hen tureen and a few decorated eggs to start us off.

Thanks for those who offered suggestions to the use of pomegranates.  I have tried several of the recipes and  will intend to get through all of them. Here is the one I am going to try today: http://witcheskitchen.com.au/smoky-eggplant-and-pomegranate-dip/

Finally a picture of our lovely little Dora, who reminds us that autumn is also a time for finding the nearest quilt to snuggle into. Well, it probably is not quite cool enough for the rest of us to do this  but we have hopes of it soon being cool enough to do so!

On the quilting front there is not a lot to show. I have been working on a couple of grant submissions in my volunteering work, and that ate up a bit of time. I promise an update next week~

Free electricity and gangster gardening!

I have a fairly random collection of things to post about today, but they all make me feel pretty passionate.

Firsty, I want to show you a pretty impressive power bill we received this month. It is summer in Perth -and even though we have had more cloudy days than normal, we still managed to create 627 units of electricity to sell back to the grid, whilst only using 486 units which we had to pay for.  Our solar panels are doing a fine job. :-)

As the seasons (hopefully) will change soon to cooler weather, we have been pulling out our summer vegetable beds and getting things ready for the autumn harvest. This is a bed recently planted with lettuce and parsley, which we added to the beetroots which are nearly ready to harvest, and the rhubarb and asparagus which are permanent features of the bed.

 Our pomegranates are on the street side of our front garden.  Recently someone called by our place and asked for some -we were very glad to share them! We have been experimenting with them in fruit platters, couscous salads and such. They look like huge Christmas tree baubles! They are at least twice the size of my fist.

Thirdly, I want to invite you to spend 5 minutes of your life, getting inspired.  I love his turn of phrase: growing your own food is like growing your own money!
Please watch this TED video then become a gangster gardener too!

Finally I am continuing to tweak the design on my 'afternoon tea with mum' quilt. Coming along nicely.