Stitching my head off

I'm madly working on a traditional "comfort" quilt for a friend in Illinois to give to her neighbor. I'm quilting it, and tomorrow I will bind and do the finishing touches and get it in the mail ASAP as he's due to get a chemo treatment this week.

Therefore, I'm sharing some pictures. This lovely blue tropical water lily and the white one were at the Aquatic gardens shop (Green Vista) which is just about the only place any more for me to get high quality fish food and oxygenators.

Much to my happiness (and my husband's chagrin), I found this wonderful jewel of a frog in my garden. It's a Northern Leopard frog, sometimes called a "grass frog" (Rana pipiens). This is the first one I have seen here in 5 years, which may be a testament to my garden, the present lack of rain, or the fact that I don't use chemicals in my garden.

Leopard frogs are truly amphibious, they are often found in the grass but they must have areas of permanent, slow moving water. The little creek at the back of my yard and my fish pond both qualify, although my pond doesn't have frogs in it...and every fall I fight the bull frogs (they eat anything they can get their mouths around...and since they're big, that means my fish as well).

My husband doesn't like frogs....I think from an unfortunate experience in Cuba when he was little. Cuban houses didn't have screens. On the ground floor, there would be iron grates to prevent people from coming in on the outside, and wooden shutters over the windows. Once, when visiting someone's house, they opened the shutters and tons (according to his sister and him HUNDREDS) of frogs fell out. He thinks of them as "slimy" so I am the frog and snake removal around here.