Report on my Saturday

My Saturday went really well. I got to my quilting Block of the Month just on time. Showed my quilt and got several nice comments on it. Nothing big about the meeting, just nice. Then we had the Marti and me. It felt kind of rushed, but I'm ready to make the table runner. When I get a little bit of time!! Next month we will be doing a small wall quilt or table topper. Instead of purchasing the kit, I'm going to try my hand at picking out fabrics to do the project. We will see how well that goes. Oh, and the Girl Scout cookies I had ordered had come in, so I paid for those. We opened the first box tonight, the lemon creme ones. Pretty good!!

Then I ran to the Garden Symposium. It was a pretty technical discussion. Chemistry even got involved. Basically I learned that humas and mycorrhizal are important in the soil, and they help build top soil. I also learned some simple things by talking to other gardeners, like maybe I don't want to put my garden up in frames, because it is harder to keep it moist, and the dirt will get colder faster in the fall, which will shorten my growing "season". So we might dig the frames down in (to ward off the voles). Didn't get any good idea of how to get rid of voles other than trapping them or poisoning them. I don't think either of those methods will be very easy to do. Maybe I'll need to go to war with the little buggers. I'm afraid they've eaten almost all my crocus bulbs, and I'm worried about the tulip bulbs. I just have to wait to find out. Oh, and I did get information of seed saving, and a local seed catalog with seeds for this area.

I got almost to the end of the symposium, we were just going to start the Q&A, when my hubby called. I big storm was just blowing up south of the interstate. I left just a little early, and the snow was just barely starting as I came home. I'm glad my trip was pretty easy.

Oh almost forgot. I've been taking my fabric and batting scraps, cutting them up small, and putting them into my garden. Well, in talking to some of the people at the symposium, I was asked if the cotton was grown organic. Hmm, I don't know, but probably not. Well the stuff they spray on the cotton plants to make them drop all their leaves before they pick the cotton is related to the "agent orange" stuff they used over in 'nam. and it is a 'persistent' type of chemical, and most likely has "heavy metals" in the chemical structure, so I probably don't want it in my vegetable garden, and probably not even in my flower beds. Well darn it. Here I thought I was doing something good. I was just worried about the dyes, not the cotton itself. Guess I'll start looking for organic cotton for my batting, and maybe for my fabric too. I sure have a lot of fabric in stock tho.

The other thing someone told me is to watch out about cotton seed oil too. Apparently the cotton is not grown for food, so it is not watched by the FDA. But then the seeds are sold to other companies to make cotton seed oil from. Now I've never used cotton seed oil in my food, and didn't know people did. But if you do... you might want to make sure the seeds they use are from organically grown cotton.