All I Saw Was This Squirrel

I kept my eye out for the Hawks today but no luck. The closest thing that I saw was this squirrel getting a drink. Disappointing.

But when I was out checking Dad's roses for Japanese Beetles (and picking off three of the little chompers) I heard the Hawk but didn't see it in the trees. As I said I would once the Japanese Beetles showed up on the roses, I cut the cluster of them and brought them in to enjoy them indoors. They are so soft and velvety and they smell terrific.

This juvenile Downy Woodpecker undershot the suet cakes and landed on the platform feeder first. It hung there for just long enough for me to snap this picture and then it flew over to the roof of the suet cakes feeder and finally managed to get itself onto the grid where it could peck away at the cake. Kids. I guess it takes a while to get things sighted in.

I went back to good old Things With Wings today and drew a pelican, a cockatoo, a cupid, and a vulture. That's a cheerful mix of things to draw.

 

I knitted on the foot of the Kestrel sock tonight at Friday Night Knitting. See how it stopped pooling and organized itself back into stripes? Crazy.

 

This afternoon I got the cover of Island Dreams to review. I was so enthralled that I didn't notice at first that my whole name, all three names, wasn't on it but when I went back to admire it again I contacted them to fix it. And they did. He also offered to make a website for me--for a price, of course. I declined but he sent me a list of examples all of which were very successful authors, way out of my league. I double declined. I suspect that over the next few weeks I'll be getting a lot more calls about other services they'd be happy to help me with--for an additional fee. But I can be strong and resist most if not all of that sort of thing. Right now I'm happy with my book sales and the way things are going. I just laid out a chunk of change to get book #4 edited, formatted, and ready to be published. I'm taking my time.

--Barbara