Mother Goose

We live on a small lake, and have a great view out of our back windows. We've really enjoyed watching the ducks this year - swimming and diving, courting, and then the babies just hatched and out for their first swim. They zoom so fast the first few days that they look like they can walk on the water. We call them "zoomers". Now we have "teen" ducks. They look almost like the adult ducks, but still get supervision from their parents.

Well, we have one group of hatchling ducks that two Canada geese have been hanging out with all summer. They swim in the same group all the time, and have since the babies were "zoomers". We haven't been sure why the geese are doing this. But now we think we know. They seem to be the nannies that Mom and Dad Duck have hired for the summer! Whenever they get out of the lake and come into our yard (yummy slugs!), the geese seem to be on guard duty. They stand there with their heads up, watching. When something doesn't seem right to them, they somehow signal all the ducks (we haven't been able to figure out how they're signaling) and then everyone waddles at a fast clip back down to the water.

I've been watching them and trying to get a picture. But the geese always seem to see me at the window and then off they all go. Yesterday I finally managed to get a few shots. They're not great because I was shooting through the window and it was at some distance, but you can see the group.

Last night we had a great sunset! We rarely get a good sunset here, because there's usually so many clouds that we don't see it at all. This is looking out the back over the lake.

We have an out-of-town visitor right now, but I've managed to get some sewing time in the last few days. I needed to sew something that didn't require a lot of thought and found this. My friend KV and I had worked on making these little quilts together one day at her house. She generously shared her extensive 30's repro collection with me, as my collection is pretty small. We had a lot of fun making these blocks. I think she's had her top together for a while now, but I don't know that it's finished. So, I finally got this top together! Yay! I've had it partially assembled for quite a while. It's only 6 inch blocks, so it's not very big. Only 36" x 48". Not big enough for much. I don't know why we made it so small. (It looked bigger in the book?)

Well, as I was shooting this, the usual happened. Dunkel and Shade always have to come help. (If I can't find them, all I have to do is put a quilt on the floor and they come running!)

First, Dunkel tried to get under the quilt. Dunkel excells at "snowplow". Shade was working on the other end.

Shade made it under first. Dunkel was fascinated by Shade's tail lashing under the quilt top. That just irritated Shade more!

Who's under there?

Grumpy cat.

Shade got mad and left, so then Dunkel attacked the quilt top. Bad Dunkel!

Here's a hint of what's coming next with the too-small quilt top. More to come!