Some Busy Work,Some Freezing Cold Gardening, and a Patience Photo Story

  It has been SO COLD the last couple of days. Yesterday it was about 42 Fahrenheit! (Today was not much better,at 43.) I got a lot accomplished yesterday though. Some of the plastic drawer units I keep my fabric in were getting squashed from the weight of being stacked. Ken helped me lift them and I did some rearranging so they could sit without being stacked on top of each other. Then I was able to resort my fabric drawers. That took AGES. I had them separated by pattern,(stars,polka dots,stripes,animals, flowers,fruits, period specific patterns,etc.) They had gotten a bit mixed up because I couldn't get some of the drawers open because they were squashed, so I was just sticking fabric in whichever drawers I could get open.
  In spite of the cold,I also harvested some of my leeks yesterday. I planted them years ago. They come back every year, but never get big enough to eat,and then start blooming. You may have seen the blooming leeks, (No pun intended,although they are really annoying...) on the blog. For instance,in some of the pictures of the mini Pippi I made for a Flickr friend.

You can see her whole post HERE.

  This year they are getting almost big enough to eat! I harvested a couple of young leeks that were a pretty decent size,and, accidentally, a tiny one. Ken and I both had a serving's worth last night though. Leeks are a veg that grows better in the cooler weather,so I think our really cool Spring has been just what they've been wanting.
  I also cut a few of the Hostas. Some of them were about 6 inches tall,and some weren't even that tall, but were starting to unfurl any way. It was enough for a nice little batch of them.
  On Easter I took some other pictures besides the ones of Tammy World. Doing Doll-A-Day has meant I rarely get to show you a doll more than once. Because I'm not doing it this year gives me a chance to 'play' with some dolls I haven't gotten to for a while. One of the dolls I have been looking forward to getting to do some pictures with again  is Patience. You can see her original post HERE. She posed for some pictures with a little ceramic bunny I have. I had no story in mind when I took the pictures,but as I was posting the photos on Flickr, a story just wrote itself. So here is my little story. Patience's dress is from an old 12 inch Effanbee doll, if I'm recalling correctly.
                                               Patience's Easter Adventure
 Patience went for a walk in the woods to pick some flowers...

It was very quiet in the woods.

A quiet rustle in the undergrowth caught her attention.

She couldn't tell where it was coming from.

"Ah."thought Patience,"I think it's coming from over there.Hello!" she called softly.

She saw a furry little creature hiding under the leaves. She decided to sit down and pretend not to notice, in hopes that the shy animal would come forward.

Eventually, she saw him,out of the corner of her eye.

"Hello." said Patience,"Who are you?" The little rabbit's nose twitched. "You may call me Pinky." he said,"How do you do?" "I'm very well thank you." said Patience,"You may call me Patience."

Pinky and Patience picked flowers all afternoon. Pinky ate them all, but Patience didn't mind.She was glad to have made a new friend.

As the sun began to fade Patience bid Pinky goodbye,promising to come visit him again soon. "And I will come to visit you in your garden." said Pinky.

"Hmm...yes,well,maybe I should visit you." said Patience, remembering the flowers. "Very well." said Pinky,"I'll see you soon!"

And I'll see you again soon.

Happy Easter!

  Happy Easter! (for those of you who celebrate it.) We had a nice socially distanced day. We had lunch on the patio with Emma and AJ. We were outside and able to keep something of a distance, and still getting to see them. It was a bit drizzly while they were here, but not enough to deter us. After they left, the weather, typically, went sunny!
  Last night I stayed up VERY late making curried potatoes, for Emma. (Emma gave up eating eggs as eggs many years ago. It just bothered her. She gave eggs up completely for a couple of years, which is very tough. The world isn't built around vegans, or even near vegans like Emma was. She eats eggs in things now, but still can't bear to eat actual eggs.) I also made curried eggs from the cage free eggs for Ivy, and made curried eggs with the whatever eggs for Fuzz and Ken, who will eat most anything. In case you're wondering, I can't eat curried anything any more, but those eggs are delicious!
  I also spent most of the day working on finishing up Tammy World's new Easter dress. I found the fabric a few weeks ago, before quarantine started, when I was out doing my early Easter shopping. I thought it was cute, and would make a good Easter dress for Tammy.  I don't really sew, and I can't use a pattern. My method is pretty much 'sew it on the subject'. (This was quite a point of irritation for the kids when I made their Halloween costumes!) I sort of hold fabric up to the subject and cut it to fit and sew it, sometimes on the subject's body.
    I got the dress made all but finishing sewing and attaching the sleeves. I was having such a hard time, because sleeves are the part I still haven't managed to tackle in most cases. I had thought about having Tammy wear the little gray sweater from a Lori fashions pack anyway, and it was really late, and I did have to finish all those eggs... So, even though Ivy had chided me about not finishing the sleeves the day before, I was pretty much resigned to leaving the sleeves unfinished and covering it up with the sweater. That's when Ivy came downstairs and looked at my work. She asked me if I was going to finish, and offered to sew the sleeves on for me. I took her up on the offer.
  So here's Tammy in her new Easter dress.

It's printed with ducks and chicks and geese better scurry...Oh. Sorry! It's printed with ducks and chicks and Easter eggs!

 The sunshine lasted just long enough for me to take loads of photos. Then it went drab again.

With her favourite gift, a giant 'chocolate' bunny,and Fuzzy the Doll's Easter basket because I didn't want to dig hers out!

The dress without the sweater.

And with.

Tammy enjoyed a visit with the Easter Bunny.

In fact, they became quite good friends.

The part of the Easter Bunny was played by the bunny that came with a 2001 Madame Alexander doll called 'Easter Hop'.

She really liked that 'chocolate' bunny,which is not really chocolate. I'm not sure what it's made of.

I had some very tiny lace I bought at a miniature show that I used for her collar.

I wanted some nice anklets for her. I may have to make her some. That wasn't happening by Easter though!

I would have liked to have cuffs on her sleeves too, but let's not go crazy here!

This is pretty much the same picture, but the print of the dress comes out better in the one below.

  Tammy got tired of taking pictures. Her feet started hurting.

  I hope everybody had a nice day!

Everything happens for a reason

    Yesterday something totally unexpected happened that proves what I believe: Everything happens for a reason.
  My friend Lori, who has recently been having heart problems,loves animals. They're literally her life. She has loads of animals of her own, and she works as a vet technician. In her job and life she frequently finds herself in situations where she ends up rescuing animals. Sometime she finds new homes for them, but a lot of the time she keeps them. Once when I was with her we had to move a snapping turtle out of the road so he didn't get smashed.In that case she didn't need to be involved after just moving him to safety, but it isn't always like that.
  We had been talking about going somewhere this Saturday to just hang out and have fun.We debated staying here in the town I live in, or going to some other nearby town. (She lives out in the country.) I voted for 'some other town', since I'm always here. So she randomly picked a small town nearby and we went out for lunch. After lunch we did  a little shopping and then headed down the road to see what else we could kill time with. As we came to a park, (The kind with boating and camping, etc., not a playground.), Lori turned in. She had been trying to find out if they had horse riding trails and she wanted me to see the pretty view overlooking the water. As we came to the parking lot we saw a car parked along the edge. When we pulled along behind the car we saw that the guy in the car was just sitting there looking at something. What he was looking at kind of left us with our mouths hanging open. There, just grazing and hopping around, were 8 rabbits! I was sort of stunned, as I said, "Those aren't wild rabbits." They were domestic bunnies. Seven of the eight were lop earred bunnies, and the eighth was a small white bunny with red eyes. Apparently the guy had just seen somebody pull in and just drop off the rabbits. He didn't want to leave them there, since they probably wouldn't have survived the night,but he had nothing in his small car to take them in and besides was on his way to a reunion. He'd been trying to contact his daughter and grandson, who had rabbits, but they weren't answering their phone. Also, they lived so far away it probably wouldn't have done much good.Soon the bunnies would probably hop off into the woods they were right on the edge of and be gone. Lori and I were flabbergasted that anybody would do something like just dump off 8 rabbits,but Lori said she had seen it happen before. Then we remembered the fair had recently ended. These rabbits had tattoos in their ears for identifying them for exhibiting. They were someone's fair project and now they were no longer needed. Pretty heartless behavior. These rabbits were far too tame to survive in the wild. They had no fear of anything. Also, it's very irresponsible to introduce non native species into the wild. Either they won't survive, or they will survive too well, threatening native species. (We're having that situation with lady bugs around here. You may think ladybugs aren't important, but apart from being important just because they are part of the natural order of things, they also serve a very useful purpose, eating pest insects and keeping the population of such insects at a manageable level. The local chicken...FACTORIES, (The only way to describe it.) have created a major fly problem. When local ladybugs couldn't handle the problem, Japanese ladybugs were imported to help. You might think that was a good idea, but you'd be wrong. The non native ladybugs turned out to be far more aggressive than the local little red guys.They are much bigger and eat EVERYBODY, including the native ladybugs. We have hardly seen red lady bugs for the last few years. The larger brown lady bugs have nearly taken over (although we do see some hybrids.) They also BITE, and like the red lady bugs, they smell.With bigger bugs you get a bigger bite and a bigger smell...)
  Anyway,after the initial shock we immediately began to think, "What do we do? We can't just leave them here to die." Lori decided they looked healthy;clear eyes and good coats were a couple of signs.She always carries a small pet carrier with her in case of,well, with her I guess you'd say 'the inevitable'. We knew we couldn't get all 8 into it though. What to do? We started picking up bunnies, and they didn't run at all. There were a couple of half hearted hops, but mostly they just sat and let themselves be picked up. We got about 5 of the smaller ones in the carrier and she put a couple more in the back seat floor of her truck,(Which we had decided to take instead of the car because of flood warnings. Oh by the way, my basement flooded again too. Not as badly this time, luckily.)See, something else that we just happened to do that was perfect. Once the bunnies were in the truck she opened the carrier, but most of them preferred to stay inside. I got the last couple out of the ditch and we debated if they would jump out of the back of the truck. Lori was a little worried about them peeing in the floor. I said, they could jump out, and it's only two more. At this point we laughed about the idea that if you have 6 rabbits peeing in your truck, what would two more hurt?
  So we carted them back to Lori's house.I had a bunny a few years ago.(That was Lori's fault. I just went for a visit and came home with a border collie and a rabbit!) His name was Gabriel and I loved him dearly. Gabe had a stroke at one point and for a few weeks had to be hand fed and given water, and bathed by me because he couldn't get up. After a while he got well enough to clean most of himself again and got around ok, but he was blind in one eye and wouldn't come out of his cage any more.He lived for several years after that though and was a lovey boy. I still miss Gabe and get a bit sad every time I throw away the cauliflower leaves he used to love. I have thought many times about getting another bunny, but the short life span  put me off. Unfortunately I'm a sucker for a friendly animal, and I made the mistake of bonding with the next to last bunny I picked up. He's dark brown with tan highlight hairs. He rode part of the way back to Lori's on my lap and is a real snuggler. At her house we put the rabbits in a stall.Lori kept saying stuff like, "You can take yours home in the carrier." "There's a towel in the carrier."(Because the brown bunny had been wet from the park and then kept sitting with his front legs in the water dish in the stall.), and "Yours is blah blah..." I'm such a push over. I couldn't resist and besides, how was Lori ever going to find homes for EIGHT bunnies?
  I brought 'mine' home and Ivy immediately named him Jerome, after composer Jerome Kearn. 

  She had actually said a while back that that was going to be the name of our next pet, since our last one, my parakeet, is named after Irving Berlin. (Don't ask me why. I just kept thinking 'Irving Birdwing'. And by the way, I got Irving because I went with Lori to pick up HER parakeet, and bonded with Irving, who was a three week old baby who loved to be held.) Jerome has settled in nicely and is already enjoying laying in the fireplace like Gabey used to do. 

We were meant to have Jerome, and Lori was meant to save those bunnies. Otherwise we might have stayed here,or gone to another town. We might have lingered longer eating and/or shopping and the bunnies might have already hopped off into the woods.Lori might have driven the car and been less inclined to take a chance on bunnies peeing in it. (Nah, she still would have risked it.) We might not even have pulled into the park in the first place. She kept laughingly saying, "Why?! Why?!" I said, "Because it's what you're meant for. It's your calling in life." Like I said, everything happens for a reason.