Pansies, Herring Moon, Horseshoe Crabs

Hello! May is rushing by, isn't it. Next week, summer begins, ready or not!

Here at the beach, May is pansy month, their little sweet faces filling garden corners as the tulips and daffs fade into memory.

I've always adored pansies and their dear little cousins, violas, or Johnny Jump Ups as we called them when I was a little girl. Every spring I'd beg my dad to plant pansies...."No, too hot, they'll bolt." He was adamant. Until we lived in Cape Cod, where, as here, the cool salt air Spring is perfect for growing pansies.

I usually get a pot or two, they do make me smile. I'm happy when I find assortments like this, I have such a hard time choosing. I like to put them in my funny old pink crock.

I bought my pansies at least a month ago, but they've just been huddled shivering on my deck til this week. It's chilly and windy but there's been enough sun for me and Mo to sit outside and sew on Summertime and Dotty, an hour here and there.

Enough blooms now for some tiny bouquets.

I tuck the flowers into little seaglass bottles I've beachcombed over the years.

I especially love this bottle.

It's actually a 1930s-ish art deco salt shaker. Like from a roadside diner. It's wonderfully sand blasted on all the ribs.  I imagine  it, long ago, being tucked into a picnic basket to salt the fresh corn and tomatoes, or even the watermelon. Then it rolled off the beach blanket, into the sand, and was left there on the beach for maybe 80 years, until I found it and brought it home. To me a treasure. [but is it happy to be back on my kitchen shelf? Or did it love the freedom of living wild and unfettered all alone on the beach? Oh dear. Maybe it wants to go back?]

Summertime's borders are going steadily but slowly.

A learning curve here, it's good to learn new things [Itell myself hopefully]--like how the flowers and birds have to be sewed before the long garland stem, because they must tuck under; the baskets' stars have to go on last---and must be lined with opaque Pellon so they don't shade through and look messy, because the stems go in behind the baskets, which must be left open. Then the yoyos!? They will wait until everything is done, even the binding and washing, after the quilting is done. Only then can I sew on my adorable yoyos from from Sue, and the birdies' eyes and the stamens in the morning glories.
Not pressed because the stem line is drawn in Frixion pen....

Patience is key.

Are you a patient person? Do you think it's a needed trait to be a sewer or a quilter, a cook, a gardner, a mom? Do you value patience in others? Or is it just...boring?

love


lizzy

gone to the beach.....

PS full disclosure: I am very patient with a project, or with animals and children. I'm okay with traffic delays even. But I won't wait even a  minute at a store, to pay for something. Grocery store excepted. LOL.

Tonight the Moon is full. The May moon is called the Flower Moon, though I have always known it as the Herring Moon, when the herring swim from the ocean, upstream into the freshwater creeks, to spawn.

Tonight and tomorrow at low tide, the ancient horseshoe crabs will crawl ashore and lay their eggs. They slowly rotate and dig a hole that they somehow line with a sand and ''glue'' substance, and the females deposit their hundreds of eggs. Some will be food for the plovers and terns, but many will become crabs, big as a trashcan lid! Life's circle.

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