Gardening, Stitching, Not a Picture Perfect Cake, Wet Robin

The tools of my trade these days...I fill my pink weed bucket about four times a morning when I'm out in the garden weeding. By then I'm tired or too hot or hungry. This garden, the cultivated almost 1.5 acres, is a real work in progress especially in my very amateur hands. It is also real work but luckily I enjoy it very much.  

Those gloves have been a real find for me. I can feel my fingers in them so am more adept at pulling smaller weeds than the leather gloves which always came off at some point not to be put back on. My fingernails have been thanking me! Bought at Walmart.

I've also been making more use of the small stool with the handy carrying handle so my back is happy too. 

A photo of the flower beds on this side of the wooden house. Sad note about that large goats beard bush with the white flowers. A brief bout of heavy rain and high winds broke the taller branches and bent them over. However, they are still blooming so I'm leaving it for now.

The beds continue down the front walkway and along two sides bordering the driveway. I heavily pruned that rose bush and it's taken right off.  The hydrangeas are just starting to sprout their flowers. 

I have always kept a few flowers but nothing like this before. It is providing endless learning for me which would be wonderful if only I could remember it all from season to season. I need reminders it seems.

Now about that not so picture perfect cake. Remember?

 The cake itself was fine-my problem was with the frosting.  I had a hankering for cream cheese frosting, something decadent considering my overall diet. And I thought it would go well with the orange flavourings.  I made a basic cream cheese frosting and then decided to add a tub of Cool Whip to it.  I can see now that just a cup would have been fine, but the whole tub turned the frosting into a muddy sliding mess.  I scraped as much as I could back onto the top and rushed it to the downstairs freezer to firm it up a bit.  Which fortunately it did.

 So we've been having a piece of cake and an added large spoonful of frosting; no one's complaining! So yummy and the extra crunchy layer- walnuts, brown sugar and graham crackers, is good too. Hopefully I'll remember this bit about the frosting for another time but I probably won't.

Recipe for Orange Crunch Cake from the Bubble Room is here.

My OMG at Elm Street Quilts was to continue making the  Quiltmania Solidarity blocks, as many as I could manage. Many are appliqued or EPP so enjoyable hand stitching. I've now made seven of them so I'm happy with that progress. 

Heads up for embroiderers. Moda is hosting a free Christmas stitch along called Holiday Stitch-A-Long. I've downloaded the first two patterns. 

                           

We are having a little break from the high humidity which makes it enjoyable to sit outside today.

  We are amazed at how much use the bird bath is getting. All kinds of birds have been in it including a female cardinal (a match for that male that visits the feeder, I wonder) and a variety of small sparrows.  But it's been the biggest hit with the robins who line up to use it.  I'll leave you with a photo of one of our baby robins taking a bath.

Not sure he meant to make himself quite that wet!

Also linking this post with Kathy's Quilts, Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, Love Laugh Quilt, What a Hoot Quilts, Sum of Their Stories and  Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.