The Days of Dirty Snow

It's March and the snow keeps melting a little every day. The birds and the rabbits and the squirrels are doing their best to dig down to the fallen seed under the feeder so I've got a wide area of dirty snow in the backyard. It isn't very attractive but it does attract birds. Before these Mourning Doves arrived and stayed long enough to have their picture taken, a Cardinal stopped for a heartbeat, and a couple Robins paid a glancing visit.

I thought it was appropriate that the next page in Draw 500 Flowers showed these stylized daffodils since the real daffodils are doing their best to sprout and send up some shy little buds in the front yard.

When I looked out at the bed next to the patio I was surprised and please to see the tiny day lily sprouts there too. This is a no-sun zone so I'm impressed that things are popping up.

The next critter in Dr. Seuss's Book of Animals was this creature with eight legs. I don't know what it's supposed to be, something imaginary of course, but it turned out okay.

I'm happier with today's Daily Practice. This is the little pot of fake succulents that I bought at Michaels yesterday. Not the same, not even similar to what the teacher painted. She used very thick paint, used watercolor like gouache, but I just stuck with the transparency of watercolor and I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Once again I spent a lot of the afternoon trying to learn how to set up an Amazon ad only to discover that because I checked the box that the books weren't for kids under 18 I'm not allowed to advertise them. Evidently they interpret that to mean that the books have "adult" content. Sheesh. That meant that I had to go back into Kindle Create and uncheck that box and then restart the review process. I tried to redo the cover of Better Than Mom's because one of my friends said she thought they'd sent her a cookbook when she got her copy but I can't figure out how to change the picture, only the layout, and I couldn't find one that I liked better than what I have. Some days I feel like I'm wading blindfolded through thigh deep water. I'll figure it out one of these days.

And I frogged (ripped out) the Ozarks Cap. It was growing wider at an alarming rate so I yanked out the needles and turned the yarn back into balls. It's better that way. I also put the bag of yarn into the toss box. I've tried to knit something with that yarn more than once and it always grows too big. I'm through with it. Now I have to find something to knit on Friday night once I finish the sock toe.

--Barbara