Beginning of a New Week

Or the end of an old life as I start Weight Watchers for the first time in about 15 years tomorrow night! I am not feeling too confident but will try as I have gotten into some awful habits lately!



Today was another of our beautiful spring days so Warren and I took the opportunity to explore Durand Eastman Park. This park is located right on Lake Ontario and is about 1000 acres and includes many paved and dirt paths to explore. What a treat. One thing about dull old Rochester, when there is color, there is COLOR! This is just a view looking out over Trott Lake one of the two of the larger lakes in the park.

We have been trying to get around and continue the exploring we did in the area two years ago when Warren first retired. Last year we were in Colorado at this time at the beginning of our "great adventure". When it rains, I work furiously on machine quilting the quilts I have lined up. I finished the Yellowstone piece and am now working madly on the batik sampler. I am trying to keep quilting time down to no more than an hour or so at a time. When I did the big sampler quilt, I lost use of one rotator cuff for over a year and I don't want to go through that again!! So far, so good. I am beginning to think it was the hand quilting that did it, like Jane Townswick warned. I am now also more careful with this and keep a shorter thread which is what she advised. The batik quilt will have no hand quilting though -- batik is not fun to quilt through!

Just took a few pictures and put them up on a Picasa album but will share a few here as well.

This is more of the magnolia blossoms. Because Durand Eastman is so close to Lake Ontario which is still very cold, trees bloom about two weeks later than further inland.


This is one of the many turkeys that Warren always sees going to the park. We only saw two but he says that this group of 10 or so seems to be hanging out at this south end of the park -- this time in someone's driveway.
This one of the many white dogwoods in the park
This is one of two sets of nesting pairs of mute swans we saw on our walk. The males are very attentive to the female who is very sleepy in this picture.
This is our one lonely rhododendron that we have in front of the house. It doesn't bloom all that often but we were treated this year.