Day Thirty-Seven and Thirty-Eight

Yesterday I taught a quilting class at a local quilt store - really enjoyed it. We took an old quilt, or new quilt that is not quite loved enough, and cut it up to make a project tote or large tote sack. One of my students brought in a Christmas wall-hanging that she was not crazy about and never actually put up on a wall, and made a very large drawstring tote bag. We used every single bit of the wall-hanging - nothing was wasted. She was thrilled and I was thrilled that she was so pleased. I think it's nice to be able to do something useful with projects that don't get any use because they aren't quite what they were hoped to be. I also did some shopping myself as I want to make something for my niece's new daughter. This is the perfect quilt shop for that as most of the fabrics in Beth's shop are young, fanciful and very colorful. I brought home one fat quarter that spoke to me and then coordinated several other fabrics I already had in my stash so I'm ready to put something together. I'm not going to elude any further to what I have in store for the project as my niece is a follower of this blog. Besides, she is so talented herself that I have to really put my thinking cap on to make it something special.

Today is going to be salsa making day. I have already roasted about 15 pounds of tomatillos I bought at the farmer's market so I'll just have to prepare the fresh ingredients and add those after whirling the tomatillos in the blender. I was hoping the green bell peppers in my garden would be ready by now, but they're about the size of baseballs and don't quite look like they're ready to be picked. I can eat my salsa with a spoon it's so good. Another thing I've been canning are refrigerator pickles. I can't believe how easy they are and soooo wonderful. They're similar to the Clausen pickles in the deli section of the grocery store. Real fresh and crunchy. I did pick some tomatillos out of my garden yesterday but I think I'm going to slice them, dip them in egg and roll them in bread crumbs to deep fry. I have a piece of Alaskan salmon to prepare for dinner and thought the fried tomatillos would be a good accompaniment. I'm debating as to whether or not to add some fresh oregano, fresh basil, or herbs de Provence to the bread crumbs, but just some smokey paprika might be enough. I like tomatillos because they have such a peppery, citrus flavor. We'll see.

It's a beautiful morning, cool, with the complicated shadows the sun creates when it climbs at a lower angle in the sky. That's one reason I love

the Fall so much - the lower angle of the sun casts such interesting shadows especially since all the vegetation is still in all it's glory. I took a picture of my copper tree last evening when the sun had settled low enough for it to shine through the tree leaves and hit the copper leaves. It just glowed. It's rather difficult to capture it on film as it's in a busy part of the backyard and since my house sits up from the backyards of my neighbors, sometimes they get sun while I'm still in shade. The tree is made from copper cable that my youngest son brought home from the dump one day. He has such an eye for things and loves to recycle stuff just as I do. The cable is solid copper and he brought home about 50 lbs of it. I'm sure someone didn't realize that they were tossing money into the waste piles. It bends pretty easy - I did have to use pliers - and some of the cable lengths were larger than others. The trunk is part of the cable that I left twisted and just lapped other cable on top and used separated pieces to twist those together. The long separated pieces I used to make the branches and bought some copper flashing from the hardware store to make the leaves. For 17 years I have tried to get something to grow in that corner of my yard without any success. It may be that it just does not get enough sun or, there may be some construction debris that was pushed into that corner and so nothing grows there. So, after years of frustration and dying plants, I now have a copper tree.