Melons, Corn, and Flowers

The rest of my seed order has arrived:

It includes Minnesota Midget melons, which the husband loves. They grow successfully here. I ordered Montana Lavender Clay corn seed. There are a couple of guys here in Montana who are bringing back some native American strains of corn and I want to see how they do in our garden. I also ordered the Painted Hill variety of corn again from Victory Seeds. We have grown that before and it has always done well for us. It’s very pretty as the kernels are multicolored.

The rest of the order included Green Twister echinacea (coneflower), Lemon bee balm, Nigra hollyhock, and Mellow Yellows coneflower. Echinacea paradoxa is a yellow variety of coneflower that I’ve grown before but it died out after a year or two. Some of these Echinacea strains seem to be too tender for Montana winters. I’ll see how these do.

Baker Creek always sends a free packet of seeds with each order. Last year, it was Purple Russian paste tomatoes which were surprisingly good. We got a giggle out of the fact that this year, they sent us a packet of dill seeds. I planted dill once in my garden and now it has achieved noxious weed status. It comes up everywhere, year after year. I’ll give these seeds to someone who doesn’t have any.

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The commission quilt top is done. I attached the last border yesterday afternoon and then put it aside. I need to lay it out and give it a good look over and one final pressing today before I pack it up. It’s huge. I am not sure I can get a picture of the entire top, but I will try. I am glad to have that off the list as I want to move on to some other projects. Here and there, as I have needed a break, I’ve been working on the second Framed quilt and also adding more scrap strips to the Candy Coated 3.0 (or maybe 4.0?) quilt. Sewing (and transcribing, as odd as that sounds) are the only thing keeping me sane at the moment.

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My mother-in-law had her first round of chemo last week, but unfortunately, the cancer seems to be progressing quickly. She made the decision to discontinue treatment and opt for palliative care only. That is very much in keeping with her pragmatic personality, and although this situation is not what any of us wants—who would ever want a loved one to get cancer?—we support her decision. This is just a difficult situation all around.