So Close

This morning a Flicker landed on the patio and just as I was going to push the camera shutter button a Bluejay flew in and scared it away. Arrgh! Two birds that I want to take pictures of and one scares the other one away. So I searched through my photos and found a picture of each and I'm putting them on here. First the Flicker. It's a ground-feeding Woodpecker and it's called a Flicker because there's a bright white patch where its tail meets its body that flickers at you when it flies away. I saw that white patch today but didn't get a picture. I just wasn't fast enough.

And the Bluejay. I've been trying to get a picture of one for a couple weeks now. A nice big Bluejay comes to the birdbath at least once a day, takes one sip of water, turns around and flies away. Arrgh! Here's pictorial proof that one bird stayed long enough for a photo op.

Another Stella d'Oro lily bloomed today. This is the third one in a row so I'm cheering for them all to join in.

I drew a few flowers from Draw 500 Fabulous Flowers and they turned out okay but I really like the flowers that I drew out of my imagination on the next page. I confess that I didn't totally make them up, they're approximations of others that I've drawn but I like them better. So here they are.

Then I decided to try my hand at painting Dad's Rosebuds from yesterday. I took my time and thought about what I wanted to do and it didn't turn out too badly.

The most frustrating part of my day was a visit to the bank. I've been thinking that I should have a separate account for my book money, to make record keeping easier, so I decided to go up to the bank a block away and get it done. Oh no, you don't. You have to have an appointment to open an account. That never happened before but evidently since COVID they have fewer staff on duty so you have to have an appointment to do anything more complicated than cash a check. I was not a happy camper. Now I have to go back on Tuesday morning to get the job done. *sigh*

I've started taking a little walk after supper just around to the corner and back and, man, am I out of shape. Seems like everything that I do all day involves sitting down.

Oh, and I thought there was something wrong with the clock on my phone because when I set the alarm for 7am it wouldn't go off. On all the other times it worked just fine. In the spirit of trying again, I set it to go off this morning, didn't hear it, and there was a little icon when I got up at 8am saying that I'd missed the alarm. I set it to go off a minute later and it sounded loud and clear. I couldn't figure it out so I resolved to set the alarm for a minute earlier but just now I checked one more time to see if I could figure out the problem. Yup, got it. Somehow the alarm sound and vibrate settings on the 7am alarm were turned off. How that happened I do not know but it's fixed now. I've got it set for 7am tomorrow to make sure it works so I don't oversleep on Saturday.That would be bad because I need to drive away at about 8:30am to get to the bookstore in Oshkosh (about 60 miles away) in plenty of time to set up my display before starting at 10am.

--Barbara