Roses and orchids

Again a week later. Quilt Festival is over for another year. Last Saturday I went to the Mennonite Relief Sale and had a great day. Even a few sprinkles could not dampen the enthousiasm. The top quilt, an embroidered quilt, went for $11.000.The daughter of the maker bought it. This year there were less quilts, mainly because knotted baby quilts and knitted afghans were sold in the craft tent. And I had my yearly fill of herring on a bun. Nobody wanted to join me, except Jenny's friend Margaret. She had her first taste on a visit to Holland. Good girl!!!
Sunday we had a good rain so now with the heat , everything seems to grow in leaps and bounds. This morning I saw the first roses. I'm not a rose person, too much work, but quite a few years ago I bought a shrub rose in the Explorer series. Very winter hardy and every year new little ones appear around the older bushes, so now I have a whole row along the driving shed. This morning I also spotted the first peonie.
It is back to the triangle and hexagon quilt. I ran into problems with the roof on the farm house, so I have to let that perculate in my head till I come up with a good idea. In the meantime I did get an idea of how to continue with this one. There will be 8 different orchids around the pieced centre. 7 have been drawn up on freezer paper. From there I copy the pattern on the dark blue fabric using a light table and a Clover white pencil. This is the one where you cannot see the line till a few seconds later. I'm planning to do all the leaves in sashiko and applique the different orchids. Now I realize, that my supply of over dyed sashiko thread is almost non existing, so I will have to try and find more.
Seeding and planting are done. Not the yearly chore of "stone picking"
Every time the soil is tilled we have stones from the ice age coming up. The small ones we leave, but anything bigger than a soccer ball has to be removed from the fields. If ever one of that size finds its way into the combine, we would have a big and expensive mess. So with the kids gone it is left to Laurence and me.I have the easy job, driving the tractor, but by the time I figure out how the loader works, most of the stones are picked. Coming from the farm in the Netherlands I did not believe Laurence when he talked about picking stones. I do now and so do the dozen or so European agricultural exchange students we have had over the years.