The Theme is Squash

I worked on a stack of quilted pouches yesterday, which was a nice, low-key sewing activity. A front came through but the predicted wind never materialized, at least up here on the side of the mountain. We don’t usually get winds from the west; it’s the east winds that we have to worry about. Temps are still warm enough that whatever is falling is mostly rain and freezing rain. Honestly, it feels like March out there. I watched the National Weather Service Missoula office briefing yesterday on YouTube and the forecast into January is for an arctic blast with precipitation. We will get snow, but perhaps not until 2025. I checked the Snotel reading at Noisy Basin, which is in the mountains above our house, and it is at 135% of average. We’re getting moisture, just not in the form of snow.

The husband spent yesterday getting a job ready for a concrete pour this morning and came home covered in mud. He said it rained on them most of the morning.

I am a bit tired of English paper piecing so I switched back to embroidery in the evenings. I was going to work on my embroidered chickens—and I will, eventually—but I got distracted by the Squash Squad project. Apparently, I still have pumpkins on the brain:

This is the Queensland Blue, the third of nine embroidered squash. I will never be as good as Sue Spargo, but these are fun and provide lots of opportunity to be creative with thread.

And while we’re (still) talking about squash . . . the Baker Creek seed catalog arrived the other day. I’ve been growing Waltham butternut squash for the past several years, but it requires 100 days to maturity and sometimes it is touch-and-go. This year, only about two-thirds of the crop matured. I saw that Baker Creek is carrying a variety called Burpee’s Butterbush Butternut—say that three times fast—that matures in 75 days. I am going to try that one in 2025. Anna used all my extra butternut squash and Georgia Roasters this year. I told her I’d be happy to put those in again next year. She takes my excess produce and pays me in prepared meals, so it’s a win-win for both of us.

That is as far as I have gotten in deciding what to plant in the spring.

I think Dave may have figured out that there is another rooster in the coop. (The little rooster has been dubbed Little Roo, which is not a dignified name for a rooster AT ALL, but seems to fit.) Dave chased Little Roo outside yesterday while I was in the coop putting fresh pine shavings in the nesting boxes. The husband has not seen any aggressive behavior and thinks they are getting along. We shall see. Maybe Dave thought he needed to protect me. Who knows what goes through the pea-sized brain of a chicken?