I Couldn't Stay Away

I made it until after lunch before I picked up Ham and Honey 5 to see if I could edit out those 358 words that need to go so I can enter that short story contest. I whittled it down to 118 words left to cut, then to 51 words left to cut. It's getting so that I'm not sure how I'm going to find 51 more words that can go and still maintain the story but I'm willing to try. I really will try hard not to pick it up for a day or so, maybe then I'll find the excess words. Wish me luck.

I went out in the warm afternoon to clean out the dead coleus in the pots in front of the house and found that Dad's Rose is still blooming. One brave flower way high up on a cane so high that I had to reach over my head to pull it down to smell it. Those roses smell so good, like real roses are supposed to smell.

The rose has also made rose hips which are pretty in their own way. I like the polished green and orange look of them.

The purple mums which have been blooming since August are still showing off their flowers. I didn't get out there to trim them when they started sending up buds in July like I usually do and I thought that they would bloom in the summer and be done before autumn but they're still going strong.

In Sketching today it said to draw glasses, so that's what I did. The top pair is imaginary but the bottom pair is my "kitchen table" pair of cheaters. I think I replicated their shape and color pretty well, if I do say so myself.

Then as a Sunday treat I got out 10-Steps: Nature to find a Starfish. It was easier to draw than I thought it'd be and was great fun to color. I'll be sorry when this book ends but I have two more 10-Steps books--Flowers and Animals--that I'm looking forward to diving into. One at a time, of course, don't want them to run out too quickly.

I was pleased to see a Nuthatch at the feeders multiple times today. I don't know if it was the same bird over and over or a few of them but I managed to catch it on the platform feeder and on the suet pellets. Now I just have to decide which picture I like best.

Instead of finding anything to toss today, I folded a bottomless basket of laundry. I confess that I might have neglected to fold the wash the time before the last time I did laundry so there were a LOT of socks and undies to be folded and put away. Of course I don't pair up socks, I just make piles of them willy-nilly since none of them have mates. I love mismatched socks. It's such a chore to pair up my winter store-bought socks, I don't have pairs of handmade socks or if I do I don't wear them together.

I guess after tomorrow our Indian Summer weather will be just a memory. It's supposed to be 73 tomorrow and then drop into the 50s for the rest of the week. Ah well, it can't last forever.

After supper I knitted on the Get Off My Lawn! Sock gusset for at least an hour and you can't really tell that I worked on it. *sigh* That's the trouble with skinny yarn and needles, I knit and knit and hardly get anywhere. Maybe tomorrow I'll cast on another big yarn, big needles cap.

--Barbara