A Little Sunshine

It was cloudy this morning, thick overcast, but in the afternoon the sun came out every once in a while. Boy, sunshine really changes things, don't you think? It does for me anyway. I perk right up. There was a nice big iceberg in the birdbath this morning when I went out to top it up so I lifted it out and tossed it on the ground. It's not supposed to get up to freezing tomorrow so it'll probably be back in the morning.

I thought I saw a Bluejay flying away from the peanut wreath and I watched but it didn't come back. I did see a Goldfinch on the finch feeder and it stayed long enough for me to take its picture. It's not changing color yet but it's early for that kind of frivolity. 

Today's Daily Practice was to paint another still life, this time of a flowering plant in a mug. I like the way my flowers turned out and I like the background.

Then I pulled out a piece of good watercolor paper and tried my hand at that brush play exercise again. I can't decide if I did a better job the second time or if I just like the red color better than the gold I used the first time. That dagger brush is tricky to control.

 

In the afternoon a Downy Woodpecker showed up on the suet cakes. It hung around just long enough for me to snap a picture. As soon as I did all of the birds, Sparrows, Mourning Doves, and the Woodpecker took off in a flurry of feathers. I expected to see a hawk flying overhead but didn't see one so I don't know what scared all of the birds off.

My gratitude journal page was easy to fill up today. The first thing was a check I picked up from the neighborhood used book store because she sold 3 books. Hooray! She was going to mail it but I went to pick it up so that I could drop off copies of Better Than Mom's and Island Dreams which she didn't have. I neglected to check which books she sold so I'll have to stop in again and check the shelf.

Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment to have my teeth cleaned. I really don't like going to the dentist. My teeth are pretty sensitive and the scraping makes me cringe. But first I have the last meeting of the Novel Critique group of this session. I did sign up for the next session so in 2 weeks that will start. I'm getting a lot out of it. It's really helping me make the story better.

And it was very disappointing to watch Ben Chan lose the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. I was sure he'd pull it off but when he lost all his money on that Daily Double I knew that he couldn't win. Too bad. He had a great run.

--Barbara