Quilt Progress and Train Ride

I now have all the "horse pieces" fixed down to my background. I took these pictures at night, so I'm showing you both the picture with flash that is very washed out, and the picture without flash that is pretty dark. Now that I added white socks on the horse, I wish I'd chosen darker "water" fabric, but it is what it is. Also on the left side of the picture you can see the wood-grain fabric that I will be using to make the picture frame. I'm thinking I will miter the corners, like a real picture frame.

On this second picture, you can see the socks and the hoofs a little better. In doing my research, I learned that horses with white socks or legs have a light rosy tan color hoofs. And black legs have light grey hoofs. I always thought horses had shiny black hoofs.

Now to show you a picture I snapped from the train ride we had today. The Grand Canyon Railroad was celebrating National Train day with rides on the train pulled by a steam engine. They don't run this steam engine very often anymore, because it is not very eco-friendly. But they have improved matters by switching to reclaimed cooking oil. (It doesn't smell like diesel, but does not smell like french fries either!!)

There were also several N-gauge model trains set up, one group was from Tucson! The kids could even hop on a bicycle that had been converted to generate power to run a "Thomas the Tank" layout.

Garden Report: Sorry, I didn't get any pictures taken today of the garden. But the tomatoes and cabbage are doing pretty good, and the radishes have sprouted. I'm still waiting on the onions and carrot seeds. We are starting to see several weeds popping up too, and are pulling several every day. But I have to be careful, because I don't know what the baby carrots and onions will look like. The neighbors are probably very happy we are finally moving the leftover rock we used to make the sidewalks out of the front yard. Hubby used some of it to make a path from the back patio to the back of the driveway. Well, he is 3/4 the way to the drive way. But there is more rock, so we will be able to finish that path, plus make some others. Plus the sugar snap peas have sprouted in their "little greenhouse" I have inside the house. We need to make a bed for them along the back fence. These will need to be fenced in also.

Oh, one more picture I took several days ago. Below you can see most of the dozen "breast cancer awareness" tulips I planted. But if you look close, just below the rock, and to the right of the rock, you can see two tulip plants that are totally wilted. Actually the one below the rock has a couple good leaves. Where the rock is was also a tulip that wilted. They were fine one day, and totally wilted the next day.

So what happened? Under the rock is the hole I dug, checking that bulb. I dug down, and tada! NO BULB! but just below where the bulb should have been, a vole tunnel. (Voles are like small gophers!!) Yep, they ate my tulip bulbs. So it is all out war. Down the hole went gopher poison. Now, don't get me wrong, I hate killing animals, BUT these little voles are destroying my gardens. My main flower garden in front of the house, that I've had for three years, they have totally tunnelled, and piled dirt on top of plants that should have come back this year. So it is WAR! I'm going to have to save the plants in that garden the voles did not destroy, then totally take the dirt out, line the bed with a wire mesh smaller than the voles, then put the dirt back. What a pain!! If you have any methods of getting rid of voles or gophers, please let me know.