Spike's Meadow

...summer version. We have been avoiding it as we were afraid it would be filled with all manner of stickers and foxtails, but it has been much cooler today and we decided to risk it  as Spike deserved a good run. He's only been getting abbreviated, decorous walks in the hot weather.
John and I didn't run in unrestrained circles around the meadow, but the hilly walk did us good too. It looks like the goats have been been there and done a good job of mowing.  

A thorough combing (of Spike, not the goats)  yielded only a couple of stickers. Our first dog, a springer named Emma, only had to walk past a walk by  foxtail and it would jump into her ears, necessitating expensive trips to the vet to get them removed. I am madly knocking on wood as I write this, but Spike seems to be fairly impervious to them despite the fact that he sticks his nose into everything.

We're expecting our friends Mark and Teri tomorrow so spent some time sourcing food for the family dinner which we are cooking tomorrow. We had to pay a visit to our bank manager to pay for the wild caught salmon from Santa Rosa Seafood,  but it sounded good to us.... I'm sure there will be three men gathered round the barbecue overseeing the grilling.

I caught up with yesterdays stage of le Tour and was astonished at the pace maintained by almost the entire peloton as thye tried to bring back a very large breakaway. Primoz Roglich crashed out in the last 700 meter  and Jasper Phillipsen came out of nowhere, as sprinters do, to win the stage.  

While I watched, I worked on hand quilting the Winnie the Pooh heart quilt. heart quilt. I would never attempt hand quilting  a larger quilt, but crib size is manageable and I'm finding that, contrary to what I always thought, it  goes quite quickly and I enjoy it. My brief visit to sashiko made me realize that there is really little difference between sashiko and hand quilting.