Rain

Thunder woke me up at 1am. Lightning lit up the room and the thunder sounded like it was right overhead. I could hear the rain hitting the window too. I was just glad that the power didn't go out. It rained most of the morning and the afternoon was just overcast and dreary. It never really dried out today, just stayed wet and yukky.

I went out in a break in the rain to take pictures of the lilies. I found three asparagus (asparagii?) growing up through the straw mesh but it had already branched out so it wasn't edible. I had the devil of a time breaking the woody stems. Evidently the day lilies liked the rain because a whole raft of them were in bloom today, both the tall orange ones and the shorter rusty red ones behind them.

I spied a Black-eyed Susan just starting to open and thought that would make a nice change from full blown flowers.

The next lesson in You Can Draw It In 30 Minutes was a book and a drawing book at that. Perspective drawing like that means using a ruler to draw the lines. It's satisfying but feels a little like cheating.

I pulled out Drawing Cute and found a manta ray and seahorse on the next page. They remind me of cute greeting cards or kids' books illustrations. They're easy and fun to draw.

I've discovered that I like painting people. Here's an interpretation of the Page-a-day for this weekend only not in oil on canvas so the detail isn't there but I like the way it turned out.

Today's toss was a package of paper napkins that I'll never use. I had to go downstairs for a roll of paper towels and noticed a big box of packages of napkins next to it. Years ago I bought some dishtowels at Goodwill that I cut in half and hemmed to use as napkins that I can launder and reuse. I should probably figure out a way to use cloths instead of paper towels too. Hmm, I'll have to think on that.

I think that my right eye is pretty much as good as it's going to get. I can see much more clearly than I can through my glasses lens with my left eye. Maybe they're right and all I'll need are cheaters for reading. Wouldn't that be great? Time will tell. Next Thursday is coming fast.

--Barbara