Second morning at home ...

Mumbles, Wales
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

When you've traveled long distances across several time zones and are back home again, sleep and dreams play tricks on you. All night, I travel across green moors and plains, walk neatly laid footpaths, wondering what I will see around the next bend, and I hear the sounds of sheep bleating in the fields. We have a cool wind blowing in Poway; and both yesterday and today, I woke to the sound of chimes and cowbells (yes, I have some in our back yard), enhancing whatever dream I was in at the time.

We are tired by 9:00 at night, and we are awake shortly after 4:00 in the morning. It's about an hour off for me, but two or three hours off for Lauren. By this time next week, Pacific Standard Time will have caught up with us, and we'll be back to our normal routines - except that Lauren's job for the season is over and he'll be home most days. That's a good thing. We enjoy being around together. It must be a good sign that's true when you stop to think we've spent 24/7 with each other for the past 30-plus days. Not too bad. Not too bad at all!

Yesterday, we weeded and trimmed the yard. The weeds had nearly covered our little stone patio out back while we were gone. The amaryllis blooms had come and gone, as I knew they would, and our roses had faded. We filled two garbage cans full of trimmings and grass and adjusted the sprinklers for the season.

Our tomatoes grew while we were gone. Last year, we planted them too late because we were traveling during the early part of the season; so this year, using a contraption a friend gave Lauren, we planted before we left. Lauren spent several days designing a path for the sprinklers so the plants would stay watered, and it seemed to work. I hope these tomatoes are as delicious as last year's. The English eat grilled tomatoes for breakfast, and I loved them. Fresh ones will do for me, though - juicy and sweet!

There were so many images to remember from our tour of Britain, and although I took many, many (and maybe too many) pictures, there were many more I wanted to take.

One of the pictures I didn't take was a good one of the stone walls separating the fields, especially in the Midlands and south and west into Wales. This picture isn't good, but it does suggest a little of the detail of the stones placed in a vertical position on top of the stone wall.

Not only is the picture somewhat blurry, taken at the last moment just as we passed the wall in the car, but the stones are more carelessly placed than most of the ones I saw.

I grew seeing pictures of Britain, the hazy green fields in the distance as one hill rolls just past another, and those pictures came to life for us. It's an amazingly beautiful place!

Yesterday, I finished the 6th hat I started during our trip, with the yarn and needles I bought during the first days of our tour. I'll take a picture of it and post it later. It's modeled after the same 10-stitch recipe I used for the last one. I like the fast decrease at the end, decreasing every 10 over 140 stitches. It makes for a roomy cap and only a couple inches of shaping at the crown.

Today, I'm going to cut out pieces for a crib quilt for a shower in June. I found a pattern in the March/April 08 Quiltmaker magazine (page 20, if you have the magazine), and I'm going to adapt that and use some bright greens, blue, yellows, and oranges. I think I'll use a flannel plaid for the backing and use something really light, maybe plain white flannel, for the batting.

Soon, I'll be quite content to be at home again; but it will be a few days before my feet no longer want to trod another footpath, turn another corner, see another waterfall, wonder at another view. Travel is so addicting to me. My sense of being tired always fails, and I just want to keep going on to the next thing I've never seen before.