Week 45, Project 365

We're in the home stretch with Project 365! It's been so much fun and good discipline for documenting the year in this way. I know some started new blogs specifically for it to begin with; I didn't but now I'm thinking about creating one at the end of the year and moving all the Project 365 posts over.

Anyway, thanks Sara for being such a wonderful and gracious "hostess with the mostest"!

I've mentioned that the water situation is in our area is critical. Rationing is being implemented. A photo from a newspaper that I shared on Thursday showed a guy weed whacking weeds where there used to be a lake. Here are some photos we've taken not far from our house; the first is from February.

Now it looks like this.

Quite a contrast, isn't it? Now we'll swivel a little and look straight out across what used to be the lake.

As you can see, people are walking, horses are grazing, and we've seen more than a few four-wheeled vehicles having fun down there too.

Had a bit of a wind storm Friday night; got really excited thinking we were finally getting rain. And we did! All eleven drops of it. I was asleep but those who were up said it was the kind of rain that's so brief you just see splotches of wet amid mostly dry ground.

Ivan cleaned out our winter garden this week in preparation for planting the summer garden. It was a huge kick to eat a salad with the last of the winter lettuce and our first five cherry tomatoes from the plant that resurrected itself from last year.

Tucked in the back corner of our garden is a plant with long skinny leaves. We have no idea what it is. This week it suddenly bloomed.

No clue what it is (Sharon? Help!). I think it looks like an iris of some kind but it's not like any we've ever seen before. Whatever, it sure is beautiful. Nearby are these glorious clusters of brilliant pink blossoms. Tiny, oh-so-tiny, but boy do they pack a wallop of color!

We're not through with the out of doors yet. One final photo from our yard. We're going to have a bumper crop of peaches! The whole tree is loaded like this. My mouth starts watering just thinking about fresh peaches.

Peach pie, peach cobbler, peach ice cream (if we can find an ice cream maker), peach smoothies, sliced peaches over vanilla ice cream, peach chunks in my granola and yogurt...

My Christmas quilt project is coming along nicely. And I'm finished with the smaller piece that I'll be mailing out this week. It's my FIRST quilt swap and I'm pretty excited! I've worked really hard on this piece, undoing a number of things and re-doing them because I wasn't happy with the first attempt. But I'm VERY pleased with  how it turned out in the end!

My first border design had it six inches bigger than the 20" maximum size; the border I finally ended up with was actually Plan D. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating as I went, but the re-creating caused a few moments of anxiety :-) I think it's funny that I put so much work into something that's not much bigger than a placemat. lol Here are a few close-ups.

The bird is pieced in crazy quilt fashion and I used the embroidery feature on my sewing machine wherever fabrics connect. The wing is outlined in various shades of blue beads and there are clear beads quilted onto the background. I was going for a sparkly snow affect. Not sure that's what I ended up with, but we like how it looks. Silver beads form little whirligigs. I do love sparkle! 

One final photo. Argentines are serious about their asado! It's one of Ivan's favorite things so he was fascinated by the article in this magazine.

We learned some interesting facts from this. One is that you should never put different cuts of meat together on a platter or smaller grill to bring to the table. We did know that the proper way is to start with the thinner cuts and bring small pieces to the table, just enough for everyone to have a piece or two. You sit and enjoy it; no one is in a hurry. Eventually the "grill master" goes back to the parrilla and gets the next cut of meat and brings it piping hot to the table. Traditionally they do this with multiple cuts of meat and it takes a good portion of the afternoon or evening to work your way through an asado. I'm always full way before the really good cuts are served at the end. Isn't that sad? We're having asado for lunch today but we are only having one cut of meat. For only three people it doesn't make sense to have a lot of different cuts. But for most Argentine families, Sunday is the day extended families get together and they can really put away the carne!