Spring finally seems to be here. I know that our last frost date averages April 15, but it always seems to take its sweet time. I showed some of the azaleas before, and now the prettiest pink one has bloomed.

The deer stopped by one morning. Three were grazing in the meadow.

This one was watching me as I attempted to get her picture with the azaleas.

It seemed to take longer time this year for the azaleas to fully bloom, and after I took the pics above, I wondered why the others were taking so long. Going down to see the bushes close up, I found out that the last freeze killed a lot of buds on many of the plants. The buds are all brown and shriveled up. So this year, I won’t have the showy display all down the driveway, on the edge of the meadow, and around the island in the driveway circle.

The later blooming white one did survive, and those larger blooms are lovely.

The turkeys stopped by to peck at the seeds on the ground under the bird feeder.

Our car club picked a perfect day to have a drive with the lovely moderate temperature in the 70sF, and with the trees leafing out in spring green. We started out from Flat Rock, driving around the mountains. We had so many cars on this drive that we split into four driving groups, leaving 10 minutes apart to follow the same route.

We went by pastoral scenes like this one. There were horses grazing in this meadow, but trying to get them in the photo from a moving car proved difficult. But, I love the red barn on the left.

From the lower elevations with farms, we went back up into arbored roads along mountains. I love these roads, with the tree branches overhead and dappled sunlight.

Some of the route took us on really back roads, but the scenery was gorgeous.

We arrived at our destination, the Tryon Equestrian Center, for lunch. We were given a covered terrace for our group of over 60 people. The buffet was spectacular with pork loin or chicken breast entree, lots of sides and a fabulous chocolate ganache cake for dessert. Yum!!

We were overlooking the arena, and there was a jumping competition that day.

The horses were magnificent, so graceful. We really enjoyed watching the contestants put them through the jumps.

We couldn’t hear who won the individual contests, but we had a great time watching it.

Back home, I couldn’t work on my quilt while waiting for the replacement fuse, so I decided to bake one afternoon. I made My Sweet Babboo’s favorite cinnamon banana bread. I didn’t publish a recipe for this, just use your favorite banana bread recipe and add one tablespoon of cinnamon. Or two teaspoons if you want a lighter cinnamon flavor.

While the oven was hot, I mixed up a batch of lemon and poppy seed muffins from a mix. The muffin tops are baked just like regular muffins, but using a special Shallow Well Muffin Top pan.

I’ve been working on the veranda, getting it cleaned up and ready to move all the potted plants outside. I need to get to the store this week for some flowers for my hanging baskets, and some tomato plants for the planter garden. I didn’t start any in the basement this year, just never got to it and waited too long. The veranda looks a bit bare without all the plants. It was nice to eat at the table outside last week though, after grilling some ribs.

My bleeding hearts finished blooming, and the dahlia is coming up now. I need to trim back the geraniums and begonias for moving after the cold nights this coming week. The plant on the right is a hellebore, which bloomed in the basement in January. I didn’t really get to enjoy it much.

I’m still cleaning out, putting stuff we don’t need anymore up for sale, and trying to reduce the amount of unused items in the house. Two big boxes of dishes and tablescaping stuff went to the thrift store. Then, I took three large bags of scraps to guild last week, along with about 6 yards of fabrics I just don’t need. Last month, I picked up some great stuff on the rehome table with several art magazines, serger threads, a fall panel in sage green with soft browns, and this fun ‘fat quarters’ fabric.

I really fell for this French fabric with the pink roses, but it is just a scrap. I put it with some other similar theme fabrics and we’ll see what I can come up with later. I also got the spools of gold metallic thread which I plan to use for machine embroidery.

This month, I took the ‘fat quarters’ fabric back to the rehome table to donate it back. It didn’t appeal to me as much when I really looked at it. I came home with this wonderful fall print that I discovered was a panel when I got it unfolded. A couple of other fabric bits came home as well, including another Japanese print with cranes.

For those following Stashbusters on our facebook group, because of my illness, we missed the April check in. We’ll catch up in May.

I hope I can finish quilting the Quilt of Valor this week, and make progress on the bag I want to do with the embroidery and Asian fabrics.

I should have a nice amount of time at home to make progress on projects this week. Now I just need to decide what to do!

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New items on sale in the Milk Street Store including the latest cookbook from the TV series with over 700 recipes from every episode through season 9!! Plus try some new flavors in the Milk Street Pantry.