Michigan Quilt Artist Invitational

This year the theme is "Italy" - and had some images in my head - arches, trees, coulmns, etc.
I couldn't get past Olive Garden - a little bit of Italy in your own back yard.

So this is the back yard garden. I have done a little free motion quilting in the background. Here are the olives. There will be flowers with olives for the centers. And a special olive martini flower, too.
I will work on them later today.

Must do some housekeeping this morning.

We have had LOTS of rain lately - over 3 inches on Saturday night. The creek goes well over the banks when that happens. I had planted 3 ornamental grass plants about a month ago - but the roots were not strong enuf to escape the current and there are 3 holes out there. I saw that Monday when the water started receeding. Oh well.........maybe they will grow downstream somewhere!!

The entire area will be digging out from the strong winds and water damage from the last few days. I have heard many chain saws and seen many trees, limbs, etc down. We have a large branch hanging on the locust tree in the front yard - it no longer will have a beautiful round shape. It's too high for us to get at with the extension ladder, but not very high on the clean up list.