Resisting the Siren Call

Now that it’s May, I’ve been out in my yard assessing the depredations of winter and deciding what projects to tackle.  It looks like I face utterly unexciting but necessary tasks like spreading aged compost, trying to eradicate invasive vetch, and edging and mulching the beds.  I want to plant colorful flowering plants, but I must steel myself to ignore those aisles in the store and proceed to the bags of mulch.

I face a similar temptation when I go to a quilt shop.  My eyes greedily take in all the bolts of wonderful new fabrics, while my feet trudge to the rolls of batting kept in the back.  Yes, I really need batting and interfacing and stabilizer and thread, not yet more fabric.  But the heart wants what it wants.

So, it’s rationalization time.  It’s easier for the yard than the fabric.  I know that any annuals and many perennials I plant will become an expensive gourmet salad bar for the many deer that swarm my yard like vermin.  They gnawed a young magnolia tree in half over the winter, and kept a Japanese maple in bonsai form.  Let me know if you’d like a list of the 10 plants in my yard deer won’t touch.

As for the fabric, I’m a Fabriholics Anonymous chapter of one, trying to keep from buying more.  Each day I visit my pile of unfinished quilt tops in the hope I can do enough work to move a few to the next step.  Occasionally I get to move one to the to-be-bound list.  I’ve been fossicking through fabric I already own for border and binding material.  Right now the count stands at two with binding in progress done(!), two sandwiched and awaiting quilting, four ready to be sandwiched and quilted, and one in need of borders.  Sigh.