Signs of Spring

To me, spring is yellow — daffodils, jonquils, and forsythia. And spring is violet, crocuses poking through the ground. But the weather can’t seem to make up it’s mind, so even though these yellow and purple things say that spring is almost here, the one thing that definitely makes it spring is when our house wren comes back. We have a nesting box that Sweet Baboo made and the wrens return every year. I think that this is the fifth year. The male (we call him Jeffrey, for some odd reason) came back about 10 days ago. Early for him, he usually doesn’t show up until the first week of May. He arrives and immediately starts driving off any other birds that are thinking that they want to get into the nesting box. (It’s actually quite funny to watch — the hole in the house is just about 2″ in diameter — much too small for a sparrow to get into, but that doesn’t stop them from banging their empty little heads through the hole, trying their hardest to get in. I think to myself that Jeffrey is sitting in the hedge laughing at the antics.) Jenny Wren (Jeffrey’s wife) will be along shortly, after he’s gotten everything in order. He’s already built the nest in the box and has pretty much let every bird in the immediate area that he’s back and don’t mess with him.

This is a nice pic of the forsythia in our yard, very close up. Click for full size. If you enlarge the picture, it looks like there’s a bug or something on the right petal.

Camper Quilts Part 2

I finished this quilt top alot faster than I thought I would. I hope that it’s not too wild — the lady at the camp said to make them bright and happy. (I think this qualifies as bright and happy. I hope it doesn’t qualify as nightmarish!!) As always, this was my prototype quilt. I always make (and correct and make note of) my mistakes on the first one — the second one will go much quicker for me that way. This picture is clickable, if you would like to see it larger. The size turned out to be something like 50″ x 65″. I think that the next one I make will be just two colors in the main part and then another fabric to complement them for the sashing and borders.