Back to Our Normal Busy Lives

We got back from our trip to Italy last Wednes-day evening. I washed clothes and packed again on Thurs-day.

On Friday we went to the Loch Lomond Quilt Show. Don came back to Comrie with friends who also went to the show while I overnighted in Glasgow and attended an all-day quilt design workshop on Saturday. We took yesterday "off" to catch up on our rest and now we feel back to whatever passes for normal in our busy lives.

Italy was fantastic. Don says he thinks it was the best holiday we've ever taken. I am thinking I'd put it second behind the three-week trip we made to Colorado and Oregon just after we vacated our Bethesda house and before we moved to Scotland in 2003. I'll admit, however, that my rating may be over-influenced by how exhausted and emotionally drained we were when we got away back in the summer of 2003. Regardless, our trip to Italy was all we had hoped for and more. We took scads of photos. Don has downloaded his but I still need to do mine (there were hundreds!) Perhaps tomorrow I can make a start on telling you more about where we went and what we saw and did.

The Loch Lomond Quilt Show was excellent. Neither of my quilts won any prizes but they were in good company. I also took lots of photos there. The workshop I took all day on Saturday was most worthwhile. I expect to be able to apply everything I learned to future compositions, but I was so glad to pull into our drive that evening at 7 and even happier to have all day yesterday to just relax.

The most ambitious thing I did all day was to download and tweak the quilt show photos and to make a delicious (even if I do say so myself) pasta sauce for last night's dinner.

Today I have returned to Phase I of the South Beach Diet. I don't think I did too badly diet-wise for we ate pretty healthily in Italy most of the time: lots of fresh seafood, veg, and fruit, but there was more pasta, bread, and gelato than I could get away with. I probably have gained about 5 lbs and so need to get that off so I can move on to Phase II and eventually back to the maintenance diet.

Now it's time to turn my attention to making the commission quilt for a friend. Her 6-year-old grandson will come for a visit in a couple of weeks and she'd like there to be a quilt on his bed that is special just for him. Because of time constaints, we compromised on the size as there is no way I could make any sort of bed quilt. This will be a small nap quilt but with photo transfers of his favorite transportation vehicles and his dog on it, I think this will be a quilt he will treasure. I hope so.

Don has gotten back into the swing of things with his golf although he's had to play alone. He's been doing quite well with it too. We've had some rain since we've been back--a good thing too as the gardens needed it. But today is sunny and gorgeous. Don's looking forward to being out on the course with some friends this afternoon.

The garden needs lots of attention. Everyone has said that our mild early spring, over-abundance of sun, and sporadic rain has made for lots of early and lush growth, including a bumper crop of weeds spreading everywhere. Today, though, I'm focusing on what's good out there. The photos above are of two rhododendrons we took a chance on moving last year. The pinky one had been growing in the shadow of two larger rhodies and a huge lilac bush. Consequently, it didn't get enough light or air. It barely bloomed and was only about half as large as it is now. When we were planting the newly created bed by our fireplace wall, I decided we'd try moving that rhodie to a place of honor just to see how it would get on. As you can see, it's getting on brilliantly. The fuschia rhodie was in a bed that is no more. Actually, it's now part of the brick pathway leading to our front door. It was always quite small and rather sickly but it would always bloom each year. It had been taken out of the ground with its rootball and left under the shade of a shrub while the building was going on. We debated whether to just throw it away, but I thought "Well, why not give it a chance?" So it sits on the opposite side of the chimney wall from the peachy rhodie. It appears to be happy as a lark in its new location. This sort of weeding out and salvage operation needs to go on ad infinitum in many parts of our garden, but there is only so much time in a day. Still, it's nice to focus on success stories, isn't it?