You Are Not Gonna Believe This

I went out the front door to pick up a delivery this morning and saw this. It's daffodil and tulip sprouts. In January. In Wisconsin. That's how warm it's been all winter. We've had a couple snowfalls, one blizzard, and a few days of frigid temps but mostly it's been mild. Granted this is on the south side of the house and the sunshine bounces off the bricks and makes a little micro-climate in that front bed but this is way earlier than there have ever been sprouts before.

I spent a lot of the morning working on the Barbara Writes website (barbara-writes.com) because I realized that I didn't have my books listed on there or where they can be bought. (Have I shown you this? I don't remember and I'm too lazy to scroll back and check.) Anyway the website's only been up for about 6 days so I'm really fumbling around trying to do what I want to do, learning how by hook and by crook, but I managed. It took me a couple hours but I did it. I had to take new pictures of the books' covers and retype the blurbs so I could copy and paste them under the book covers. Then I wrote a new blog post because there's a blog attached to the website too. Blog posts I can do, it's the website setting up that's all new.

 

Today's lesson in the new drawing book took some concentration. I don't have permanent markers so I had to do the preliminary drawing with a black Micron pen and then color over it with watercolor markers. I forgot to wet the shrubs in the front, grassy area so that green spread all over but overall I really like this. I especially like the trees in the background with the various greens and the thin black lines. (I ordered a set of fine point Sharpie markers from Michaels and can go pick them up tomorrow.)

The metallic gel pens that I ordered the other day were delivered this morning too. I opened them right away and used the gold one to enhance the feathers I drew yesterday. It didn't change the look of them all that much but they'll be fun to use in future drawings.

This morning I looked out back and there was the Red-bellied Woodpecker on the suet pellets. The level of the pellets is low enough that the bird is on his side so it's a trick to get his head in the picture but I managed. Yay, me!

I looked out when I passed the front window at 4:30pm and realized that the sun hadn't dropped behind the neighbor's house yet and it was still kind of light. Proof positive that the days are getting longer. Thank god. And the sun came out this afternoon after days and days of overcast and morning fog. Hallelujah!

In the afternoon I went to KW's house to drop off a Girl Scout cookie order form. She offered to collect orders from the staff and residents of the senior living complex where she lives which is amazing. Even if she only gets a few orders they'll all help LC reach her huge goal of selling 600 boxes again.

I stopped at ALDI on the way home for a few things and bought more than I meant to as usual. I've been craving pretzel rods so I bought a canister of them. Oh, they're so good and crunchy and salty. Now if I can only control my consumption of them I'll be all right.

--Barbara