Smells So Good

I went out in the backyard to take pictures of flowers again and couldn't resist picking one of the Stargazer lilies. I snicked off the pollen thingies (that stuff is impossible to get out of clothing) and plunked it into a dish on the table. I was sitting back here at the opposite end of the house when I realized that I could smell the lily. Mm, smells so good.

The other flower I took a picture of was the red day lily that's up on the retaining wall. This is another flower that I have had limited success replicating in paint. Maybe I should go for the abstract look.

A Downy Woodpecker stopped for a few pecks at the suet pellets this afternoon. I managed to capture it before it wriggled around to the back side of the feeder and became essentially invisible.

The next lesson in the 30 Minutes eBook was a wedding cake. I did not enjoy drawing this cake no matter how enthusiastic the author was about the thing. I'm rubbish at drawing ovals, I can never get them even and they always look tilted. Bah.

I'm a little happier with the face that I drew out of 10-Steps: People although now that I look at him he looks a little wild-eyed and grumpy. I don't think his pupils are in the right place and his eyebrows are angry looking. Oh well, I tried and I'll keep trying until I run out of paper and pencil lead.

I stopped down at Zambaldi this morning to watch DS brewing the new hazy IPA. He had just started so there wasn't anything interesting to taste. The poor guy is suffering with allergies. He could hardly work for sneezing. I wonder if he's allergic to lilies because that's what's blooming profusely right now. It was hot and humid in there, he was sweating like crazy. I left before I started to drip too.

Instead of finding something to toss today I went out and pulled the weeds growing up in the driveway cracks. I let them get big enough that I could easily grab them and yank them out. I was impressed with the force it took to pull the darned things out. You'd think that having to grow in such cramped places would make them easy to pull, but no, it took some real muscle to get some of them out. While I was out there the breeze was wafting over me from the direction of Burger King which I really didn't need the temptation of before lunch but I resisted the urge to hop in the car and go to the drive-thru.

--Barbara