Big Birds

 I looked out the patio door this morning and saw a big bird come walking through the yard. Then this afternoon another one came by. Wild Turkeys! I've never seen them in the neighborhood before. Those things are big. They look like Ostriches when compared to the songbirds. This one pecked at the fallen seed a little. The first one hopped up onto the retaining wall, walked along the top, and turned the corner at the end.

Earlier I saw two pairs of Brown-headed Cowbirds pecking at the fallen seed. These are the birds that lay their eggs in other birds' nests and abandon them to be raised by others. According to the bird book, some birds kick the egg out of the nest or build nest over the top of them, some birds raise the chick as their own and the Cowbird chicks hog most of the food and tend to shove their nestmates out of the nest. Evidently the Brown-headed Cowbirds followed the bison in their migrations and therefore didn't have a place to nest so this was their solution.

The forsythia is blooming! I looked out the guest room window to see yellow flowers.

Oh, snow. It was snowing a bit when I woke up and there was a little snow on the grass that melted fairly quickly. The snow on top of the patio table stayed long enough for me to take its picture and it's actually snowing right now but it isn't piling up like it did in the western half of the state. Thank goodness.

The rhubarb is growing nicely. Pretty soon the stalks will be tall enough to cut and make into something yummy, even if all I make is some WW rhubarb sauce to put on plain Greek yogurt.

I was supposed to paint another abstract fruit bowl with gouache paints today but I'm not good at abstracts so I painted "fruit basket upset" (the brown swoop on the left is the basket that's tipped and the fruit is falling out). That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Then I found another art-y class on Creativebug that in the first part combines watercolor and ink drawing. I did the first lesson/class today in a small sketchbook. I watched the second part while I was drawing the motifs on the painted circles and tomorrow there will be collage under the drawing. Woohoo!

It was chilly and windy today with intermittent snow showers. In the morning I ran to the grocery and the pharmacy and then just goofed around the rest of the day playing with art supplies and watching wild Turkeys. My days are so exciting. It got all the way up to 34 today. It's supposed to be over 50 tomorrow.

--Barbara