Here's a little question to start off this chapter. What is shown in the picture to the right? I'll give you a hint: it's a quilt block. The question is: a quilt block of what? My mother and brother both flunked despite several hints, so look closely and I'll give you the answer below.

Everything is cooking around here. The weather is cooking with daytime highs in the mid 90's and sometimes above with heat advisories and pollution advisories. Our outdoor cats have learned a new appreciation for air conditioning and are spending more time indoors for their naps.

The tumblers are cooking along rapidly, and I've emptied both of them this week and spread the compost on the beds. It was too hot to make compost mulch, though, so the stuff went on straight early in the morning with a few chops of the hoe to break up the few paper clumps still left before I retreated into the house. Even though the morning temperatures are more bearable, the humidity and pollution are deterrents to gardening in themselves. I tear up lots of paper to refill the tumblers along with kitchen scraps and water and consider my gardening duty done.

That isn't to say that I've been goofing off. It literally does take hours to tear up enough paper to refill the tumblers, whole bushels of it. That has largely solved the constipation problem except for a few clumps of paper that get caught at the right or left end of the load and don't get tumbled in as well as material nearer to the center. As long as I keep up with it, the actual time for each session is reasonable and I count it as exercise time. I exercise my arms and shoulders tearing up the paper, and exercise the rest of me spinning each mound into the load in small amounts. I sweat as much as I would by working out on exercise equipment in a gym and don't have to wriggle into spandex to do it.

I start by making a quick trip to check on the veggies and pull a few weeds to throw in the tumblers on the way back in the house, so I've been keeping the rows fairly well weeded. The mustard greens are big enough to pick, and the Roma tomatoes are setting more fruit. The largest tomatoes are about the size of a plum, so they should start ripening soon.

After that, I take my seat beside the piles of newspaper and other recyclable paper and start tearing. The cats sometimes join me and settle down for a nap or play with pieces of paper that they merrily scatter across the floor. I turn on the radio to listen to the news as I reduce the news of weeks ago to bits destined to become rotting wood pulp among the disintegrating melon rinds and wilting weeds. It is a poignant reminder of the fleeting importance of human events as stories of great tragedies and political intrigues mingle with comic characters and car ads.

In just days, they'll be darkened scraps of paper indistinguishable from each other and from the kitchen scraps in a few days more. The tumblers quickly reduce everything to its organic basics unimproved by mankind's efforts to bring order to its world, yet in that state they can do more good in my garden than if they wound up in a landfill. The newspapers feed our curiosity about the vanities of mankind before they feed the tumblers, and there will be a never ending supply landing on our driveway or lawn as long as we keep paying for the subscription. I'm not sure which is more nourishing, and I'm leaning towards feeding the tumblers as the answer to that.

Speaking about answers, I did promise to tell you what that picture was. Yes, it is yet another quilt in the making. I haven't even finished the fifth quilt which got set aside over my vanity about not wanting to wear glasses again as I explained earlier, yet I'm back to piecing more blocks again.

That came from buying more fabric to sew a few nightgowns. I had meant to buy some when they went on sale at the end of the winter since I prefer flannel nightgowns but try to snap them up when they go on clearance. This year, I forgot to get to the store in time and they were sold out before I finally got there. The only things on the racks were skimpy spring and summer styles in flimsy fabrics. At my age and size, things are better covered up than flaunted, so that meant a trip to the fabric store and considerable cutting and sewing.

My cheap brother was actually in favor of that. I had done an internet search for flannel nightgowns and discovered that the prices there were high enough to give him fits. He liked the idea of my buying fabric at the local fabric store having a sale with lots of work to turn it into a usable garment. Off we went, only to discover that flannel there was either in a rustic woodsman's plaid or a child's theme print meant for a youngster's quilt. I got a piece of a blue camouflage print and a piece with wild pink and purple flowers and retreated to my room to find my simple pullover shirt pattern that I used in such emergencies.

I also returned to the internet to investigate fabric.com, an online store which had also thrown Steve into fits but which had nice looking flannel fabrics on its site. The fits were due to its enticing selection of quilting fabric as well as other goodies. I have to admit a weakness for those artistic quilting fabrics. They come in a wide range of beautiful patterns meant to be matched in wonderful, innovative combinations. However, to get some into the house requires justifying the purchase by actually using it in something useful. The nightgowns opened the door to getting more to join the ones tucked away discreetly among my craft supplies.

The first time I ordered, I stuck to buying some flannel to check out the quality, just enough for two nightgowns. It was very, very nice thick flannel which washed well and held up well. Of course, that meant that it was a good source to get more. By then I had discovered a tragic fact about the fabrics I had bought locally. The nightgowns turned out fairly well, until I had worn them a few times. The blue camouflage one is holding up fairly well, but the flowered one quickly fell apart in shreds. I'd gotten a bad quality fabric which was perishing before my eyes. I threw all the flowered flannel out, nightgown and all, as hopelessly defective.

I cruised among the pages of the site, looking at all sorts of goodies and finally ordering some flannel and some unbrushed cotton prints which could be used for nightgowns -- did you catch the code phrase for quilting cottons? Well, they can be used for adult nightwear, after all, and the scraps used for quilting. My brother cheered each time I tried to order something from the sales pages, only to be told on the shopping cart page that it had been sold out. The next few days were spent in a mild frenzy of anticipation awaiting the arrival of the box with my brother grumpily threatening to cancel the order and send it back. . .fat chance of that!

I checked the shipping company's tracking page frequently and met the delivery man at the door. I popped the flannel into the washer and washed away on hot to shrink it. That officially made it non-returnable, I convinced them. The unbrushed cotton prints got slipped into the closet since there wasn't enough room in the washer to wash them, too.

After waiting a few days while diligently feeding the tumblers and slaving in the kitchen over lots of home-made cookies, I finally got the flannel out and started cutting and sewing the nightgowns. I brought out the new nightgowns with great fanfare, showing how hard I had been working to make something cheap yet useful. I had quite a pile of flannel scraps left over by the time I had finished.

Then my mother suggested that I could make a quilt for the cats out of the scraps. They love wallowing on quilts, quilt batting, and anything soft like those flannel scraps. They had been helping me with the sewing as they do with many of my projects, so that my efforts had been punctuated by frequent yells at them to get away from the hot iron, sharp objects, and things about to be turned into a cat toy. It wasn't too bad an idea, except that she had overlooked the absolute necessity of the addition of a big piece of flannel for a backing. That would have to be bought, of course, and you can guess what that meant.

So, in the cats' honor, I sketched out a cat quilt block. That's what the block is, a cat comfortably crouched down. When I showed it to Mom, she guessed that it was rockets. Steve guessed that it was a handkerchief. I gave them several hints about our two cats, then finally had to tell them. I thought that the two cat ears would be a dead giveaway, especially since our cats spend so much time resting in that position. Mom perked up and said that it looked like a cat with big, black fleas. She was quite pleased with her cleverness. She was happy about the quilt being underway.

I slipped out to the computer late at night and cruised over to fabric.com. I got the necessary backing piece big enough to handle any quilt that would fit my bed and checked out the sales pages and flannel pages. Our pampered cats had to have a proper quilt, so that called for checking on coordinating flannels. I found a pretty kitty themed gold flannel, and then spied an irresistible "Let's go shopping" themed flannel. A yard of the kitties joined the shopping cart along with a yard of mint green flannel for more color, and four yards of the shopping flannel went in for another nightgown with enough left over for some cat blocks. It should make a dandy late-night internet shopping nightgown.

I restrained myself from getting more fabric for the time being. I've got lots of things on my agenda, especially once cool weather arrives, to keep me busy. I really need to get back to the earlier quilt and the new quilting blocks once the new fabric arrives, and I've got seedlings needing to be transplanted into individual pots. The gardening season is not quite over, but it is getting close to the end of the planting season. I can still put out more compost as it finishes to prepare the beds for next year, and I still have some pruning to do to finish cleaning up the yard. It will take a little while before I make enough cat blocks to see what size batting I will need, which of course must be bought somewhere that usually has quilting fabrics.