Moon Flowers Galore

Not so long ago I didn't even know what a moon flower looked like.  A friend gave me a single plant a couple years ago that I planted out by the patio in the back yard.  I think I may have had a single blossom a few times that summer, but never more than one at a time.  Of course, a moon flower blossom only opens once for maybe 14 or 15 hours, but one plant can have several blossoms.  Last year I discovered a whole bush of moon flowers that were volunteers down by the road in front of our house.  I saved some of the seeds from that plant and when I expanded the flowerbed in front of the new ramp, I planted a few of the seeds.  This was in January, so I wasn't expecting them to take hold... boy was I in for a surprise.  They cover the front and are taking over.  For right now I am letting them stay.  When the blossoms come out like this last batch, it is hard to think of them as being invasive, but that is what I am told.  Meanwhile, I am enjoying their beauty... and the bees are too.  There were so many bees this morning, you could hear the buzzing before you got very close.

We finally went to get a load of mushroom compost.  This stuff is amazing.  With our sandy soil it helps tremendously.  I bought some tomato and pepper plants a couple weeks ago, but waited to put them in the beds because they needed the compost.  I bought good size plants because I knew I would not have the compost right away as my source for the compost is not nearby.  Early this morning I was out there working at getting the soil in the beds amended with the compost and then successfully got all my plants in the ground and even got shade cloth in place over them.  I am posting this picture in the hopes that I will be able to post a new picture of their growth in a few weeks to see how well they are doing. In this bed I have a cherry tomato, roma, and two Tycoon.  I would plant more tomatoes, but I am the only one that will eat them at my house.  In another bed I planted some sweet banana peppers.  The nursery did not have any bell peppers when I was there. 

I have not been doing much quilting the last couple of weeks, but I got a new baker's rack earlier this week and was trying to find something to embellish it with.  The sewing machine stand was intended to display a quilt block... for quite a while this block was pinned to this stand without being quilted.  I sat down the other evening and did the quilting by hand, then turned the backing to the front for the binding and clipped it to the stand to make a nicer display.  Still playing around with what I want to display on this new baker's rack.  I do know that it already looks much nicer there than the old book shelf that used to sit under the window.