Retreat! Retreat! Quilt Retreat!

Twice a year my family has a quilt retreat.  Mostly women of some age, but we do have a couple of young ladies who come too - teenagers even!  It is a place where we all get together to quilt, visit, kibbitz, and complain sometimes - oh yeah - and eat!  The catch is that we dont have to cook!  Or clean!  We just get to sew, or craft, or do whatever our hearts desire.

We also have block drawings - we each make a block or three to enter (if we want - this part is not mandatory) and then we can enter the blocks to maybe win all the blocks!  Bonus!  That's me above with one of the sets of blocks - I did not win these!

This is Auntie Barb - she is 80 years old!  Can you believe it - still quilts, works, and does crafts!  She makes these great pot scrubbers that she hands out at retreat - kind of as a door prize to all the girls at retreat!  So she makes a lot of them!  I forgot to get a picture of  that.

Above is another set of drawing blocks - I love these and since I also did not win these I will be making my own version of this quilt.  Stay tuned in a few months for that!

The blocks above are drawing samples for next November's retreat.  We start way ahead so everyone can plan and prepare and get the blocks done.

Better shot of one of the blocks samples for drawing for November.  This is a fun set - we bring a baggie with a batik in it of a certain size - not knowing what blocks we will even be making- and then they all go into a basket and we each draw out as many baggies as we brought.  Then we get patterns and make our blocks out of the fabrics we drew from the basket.  Like a mystery!

Aunt Char working on her hand quilting project.  Behind her is cousin Deb all the way from Ohio!

How great is this fabric?  Cousin Karen got me some of this from Sylvia's Quilt Depot so I would have it for retreat!  Yummy!

Great Aunt Fran - All the way from Missouri for retreat - this is her second one and boy does she get stuff done!!!

Auntie Linda - working on a project.

This one is called "Mexican Star" and it was a block drawing from a few years ago.  Aunt Nan won these and got the quilt put together.  She and I have some of the same taste in quilts and colors - I always love her combinations!

Here is Aunt Nan (in the blue) and Aunt Shirley - also All the way from Ohio (Deb is her daughter)

Cousin Patricia (you might know her as "creative cousin" from earlier blogs).  She also designs quilts and we have a lot in common.  We graduated from high school about the same time too.

Another show and tell quilt from a past block drawing.  I think these might be Deb's blocks.

Above is a closer shot of that quilt.

This is "Scrappy Montana"  one of the block drawings for November.  

And this beauty is "Big T" block - Cousin Karen and I nominated it to be done in blues and teals.  It is for the November retreat drawings also.  I love how it looks 3D from the fabric placement.

I didn't win any this time around but Im hopeful for November!  Six months is a long time when you are waiting to win blocks!

But for now - it is time to get growing!  Stay tuned for some garden, greenhouse and kids blogs in the next few weeks as well as a What is Houston Up to Now?

See you then!

A Little Greek in your Diet?

A little Greek Myrtle goes a long way!  What is Greek Myrtle you ask?  It's a great houseplant herb that the leaves can be used in place of Bay leaf.  I have tried numerous times to grow Bay in the house here and I have never been able to get one to harvest able size!  One got scale and had to be yarded out to the porch to die in the cold (they are zone 11 or something), and a few of them just died - it may be that it was never warm enough in the house for it even - we keep our house at about 68 degrees in the winter even so .... not really zone 11.

So I eventually found Greek Myrtle!  Its a beautiful plant and it replaces Bay without anyone noticing!  I never even pull it out of the hot dish like you should do with Bay (how much of a pain is that?).

Greek Myrtle is hard to germinate from seed - all the information says "slow to germinate", which says to me "Hard"!  I have never tried to grow it from seed, because of all the information that says its so hard to germinate.  So I bought a plant from Richters Herbs.  Check out the information at Richters Herbs for more information about it.  They show a picture of the plant blooming, which mine has never done, but I'm not letting mine get to 8' tall either - no room for that!  I only let it get about 3' tall.   The leaves also are a little waxy, so they dont really get that dusty look that some houseplants get - especially after an earthquake or a windstorm!  It is a beautiful plant!

This is the mother plant - this one is about 7 years old, and I have cut it back a number of times and I have also taken the cuttings and put them a jar of water and started other plants with it (thats what the upper photo is - a start from this plant).  The plant roots from cuttings really easily so I definitely recommend that route!

My plants are in the window on the North side of the house.  They really don't seem to mind being in the dark for a few months of the year - seems to have no effect at all on them.  This window is only about 2'x3' in size and doesn't get direct sunlight until June and July in the early mornings and late afternoons.  It also doesn't mind the cooler temperature in the house, and it likes to dry out (not desert dry) between watering and have good drainage.   The flowers are used in potpourri, essential oil for fragrance, and as I said before the leaves for cooking!  An easy care plant that is so useful! 

Blessed Be!

A window to the Herb world!

Last summer was a great summer for my herb patches - the ones that I keep on the side of the shed (read about that here) did beautifully and I was able to bring most of them indoors to have fresh herbs throughout the winter.  Its one of my favorite things to have on hand and growing them is much cheaper than buying them especially if you are saving them from your summertime season!

I was able to bring in 4 Rosemary, three Sage, a Thyme, and for the first time ever, 1 Lemon Balm!  The Rosemary I use ice cubes to water them most of the time, as pouring water over them doesn't work well - it needs a slower watering than poured water gives it.  In the summer I just water them the same as all the other plants - it evaporates quickly with the wind and sun.

The lemon balm struggled during the dark months but now that it is getting lighter it is really growing again!  I did give them a drink of worm juice about every 6 weeks this winter and that has made a big difference I think in how well everything held up.  Lemon Balm (Melissa Officinalis) has a plethora of uses; tea, on cold sores, sore throat gargle, aromatherapy - put some in the sachet with your lavender for a delightful nights sleep!

I recently had to harvest some of the Sage because it was getting out of control in the window and trying to take over the window herb world!  It's not a bad thing - I just hung it up to dry and I still have fresh and dried.  Win - Win! 

Here is the "window wonderland" of herbs!  the other plants are a little cactus garden and two baby lemon trees!  Yes you can grow lemons here indoors too!

And this is what that looks like!  Almost ready and a mans fist sized lemon!  I only got one lemon this year - last year I let the tiny tree set six lemons and I think I might have drained the poor thing, so this year I only let it set one lemon.  It was so hard to knock those blossoms off and pluck the baby lemons away, but I am trying to save a tree here!  

As you are planning your planting and growing this year - make sure you save room for a few herb pots to bring in!  You wont be sorry!

Blessed Be!

We did all that we could....

I have been reading pieces of "A Bed for my Heart" off and on for some time now.  I can't read all of it at once as it is so emotionally excruciating for me and brings so many memories and so many realities of my own situation that I have to do it in small pieces, every so often.

She is really good at posting on Facebook, but not so often that I have to stay off of Facebook for weeks at a time.  Sometimes I have to skip over her posts too - it just isn't always that kind of day for me.

Recently she posted a piece about the doctors and medical staff who work to save our children.  How they grieve with us, and how they never forget our children.  You can read it here.  The article talks about a cancer ward and how she felt when she treated and lost the first little cancer patient she had.  It reminded me of the Doctor and nurse who treated Rye in the Emergency Room and were not able to save him.

I will never forget the look on the Doctors face when he came in and saw me, saw that I knew why he was in the "quiet room", and when he clasped my hands and said, looking straight into my eyes "We did all that we could do."  I looked him back in the face and said "I know you did.

He seemed surprised by my reaction, and Im sure its because he usually sees mothers fall apart maybe right then, or scream and shout and hit him, or worse.  Maybe they blame him and the rest of the staff, I'm not sure, but that is not who I am.  I might have still been in shock.  Maybe.  I think it's more likely that my "mothers heart" knew.  I knew on the drive over to the emergency room, when Reed had said that he had done CPR for 15 minutes or more waiting for the ambulance, then the ambulance staff worked on him for another 15 minutes, and then the ER staff for at least another 30 minutes after we all were at the hospital.  So I knew when I saw that doctor come into the room that all hope was lost.  But my "mother heart" had known anyway.

There is another reason I knew.  My friend Kristen, who was also our school nurse at the time, worked in the ER on the weekends and she was there with the doctor, working her ass off to try to save my child.  She came into the room before the doctor did and we both looked at each other and said "Oh my God!"  She had hoped it wasn't really me, and wasn't really Rye - she had met him at the school just the week before he died, fooling around and filling out paperwork so he could sub on his weeks off from the slope.  She knew him and she knows me.

She told me at some point afterwards, (sorry it's a little bit of a blur - okay - a lot of a blur), that when she recognized Rye and knew he was mine that when the doctor wanted to "call it", that she had said " I know him and I know his mother" and the doctor said "Then we will keep trying".  And they did.  Until it had to be finished.  Until there were no more things to try and no more energy in the room to let them know that there was even a spark of him left there.  They had done all they could.

I cannot even imagine the every day that is their lives.  Working so hard to save a life, of someone they know or a stranger.  A child.  Someones child.  I have to deal with only one every day, all day for as long as I live.  I know the death of my son weighs still on their minds.  What could they have done differently?  Anything?  Why did a healthy, robust, active, in-shape, non-drug addicted 23 year old die on their table for no apparent reason at all.  It boggles my mind, as I know it does theirs.

I still can't easily go to the hospital.  I tried to have a mammogram there last year and I had to go throw up and go home.  I get them done at another place now.  Those smells, and sounds and sights put me right into a panic attack and I can't hardly go past the doors.  Our doctors and nurses have to go back every day.  Try to save another life.  Doing all that they can..... may they be blessed.