My favorite month

May is my favorite month. On Friday, May 1, I made an executive decision to cut our shop hours by 12 a week. Back in the heyday, when we were the first big fabric shop on the internet, it took us all day to cut our orders. We're still the first, but now there are hundreds of others, and our orders are less than a third of what they were in 2000. So my people spend the last two hours of every day looking for something to do. Its silly to pay them for that. I don't want to lay anyone off, my help is the best in the world, so this works. We'll open at 11 and close at 5. On Saturdays we'll open at 9 and close at 3. If the economy picks up, we'll go back to normal, but less utilities and payroll will help with the cash flow. (Lots of orders would help, too!)
Then on May 2, we had Victory Club, and it was bigger than ever. Over 40 people came, had lots of their blocks done, and other inspiring quilts at show and tell. I'd show the pictures I took, but they are in my camera at work and I'm home (it's Sunday night.)
About noon, I went out to our property about 2 miles south of town. We've got raspberrys planted and fenced, and the garden has been tilled once, and I planted potatoes. Today I planted beets, onions and radishes. Most of the work in the garden is still picking up rocks. I've got two goodsized piles now, from what I pick up in the garden. But its planting time, and I love working out there. A mule deer came thundering up to the garden, looked at me and took off in a different direction. There were two pheasants in our ditch, courting. There was an eagle soaring around, and my neighbor's six horses graze on our property and theirs, because we don't have a fence up between us yet. Dave is working on fencing our garden so they don't wreck it. Our other neighbor has longhorn cattle, and one of them is kind of a pet. I took this picture of him, and I'm going to make a quilt from the picture as a surprise for them. I'm pretty sure they don't read this blog, I don't even think they have a computer. They call him Smokey, and he comes when they call for a neck scratch. I'll post the quilt in progress. Tomorrow is our art quilt club meeting in Cody, and I've got to get a couple other ones done for show and tell. I'll post them soon.