Holding on to Summer

We have had such lovely weather this past week. The calendar may have flipped to September and the Labor Day weekend gave the traditional cool and rainy weather, now mother nature is willing to give us more summer-like weather before true fall sets in. I have a large trunk in my livingroom that I cover with a rotating display of my smaller quilts usually geared to the season and I am not yet ready to get out any with fall leaves or fall colors. But this one . . . I had just joined my first ever quilt guild, and people were showing off how their mystery quilts had come out. I was so taken with the design that I asked for the directions so I could make my own version. It called for many fabrics, much cutting of small pieces, and with everything cut and ready for sewing those stars with the log cabin centers, I took it to a weekend retreat. My good friend Judi kept saying to quit matching up fabrics, just grab without looking and sew together. I kept saying, that IS what I am doing but I can't have the same fabric showing up in the same place. Well, you know how that goes. But her chiding did make me get more random with sewing my blocks together, and I just love the way the quilt turned out. And for some reason, it does make me think of September and going back to school, with all that red fabric and even some strips of brick prints. My elementary and Junior High buildings were brick.

So with all that nice weather, I got a bee in my bonnet (not literally) and headed out to the library to pick up new reading material and then to City Beach to get my walk in. The sun was about to dip behind the mountain, the temps were in the 70's, there was a light breeze, and the sailboats were out! How perfect is that? I've been living minutes away from this gorgeous lake since 2006 and I still found myself asking that day, how in the heck did I end up here? Just very lucky.

This late in the day, this late in the season, there weren't many people but gulls were still hanging about. I always marvel at the way they often line up evening spaced apart.

And the geese . . . try as they may, those in charge of the beach area cannot rid it of geese and the mess they leave behind. So here they were again, and with my quirky sense of humor, I noted that they flagrantly disregarded the sign as well.