Good Thing I Mowed This Morning

'Cause it started raining just after lunch and it hasn't stopped yet. I was impressed to see the female Oriole sipping away at the grape jelly even in the rain. She kept ruffling her feathers as if to shake off the drops. I was also impressed with myself because I mowed the whole yard without a break in the middle like I usually do. I knew if I stopped I'd have a hard time starting up again so I just kept going. And of course it's raining. I don't remember a Memorial Day weekend lately when it hasn't rained at least one day.

Yesterday when I filled the feeders I brought the Hummingbird feeder in because it was moldy and looked like no Hummingbirds had visited. I was going to try to clean the feeder but I ended up tossing it because it's plastic and very difficult to clean. So I moved the old finch feeder down to the crook that the Hummingbird feeder was on and one of the Goldfinches found it today. She's not bright yellow like the males but she's just as welcome to stop over for a snack.

A male Oriole visited a couple times that I noticed. He's so bright and pretty. He hopped around from crook to feeder and back to the crooks a couple times until he landed on the jelly dish just right.

I decided to try my hand at another hollyhock painting today, making the flowers bigger and more ruffly. It kind of worked. I'm happier with this one than I am with the ones I painted on Friday. Maybe I'll take a stab at tulips tomorrow since I wasn't thrilled with Tuesday's tulips last week either.

While I was mowing I noticed that one of the poppy buds opened. I'm glad I took its picture when I did because I suspect that the rain has beaten it down. Darned rain.

I even managed to draw a Gratitude Journal page this evening. I mostly put the rainy afternoon on there because I like the way I draw clouds and raindrops. Silly, don't you think?

Last week the watercolor teacher suggested that I seem to do better on smaller paintings, that they're my size paintings so I went over to Michaels and picked up a couple smaller flat and round brushes to facilitate painting smaller papers. A 1" flat brush is just too big to use on the little postcard size papers so I splurged on a 1/2" one. I tried it out on the hollyhock painting and it worked like a charm. Good buy, Barbara.

I also checked on eBay and found an embossing machine and plates for not a lot of money. I should find out in the next hour if I've "won" the bid for the machine. I had such fun with the embosser that KA brought to the Schoolhouse for us to play with. I cut up old paintings and glued them onto card stock that she brought too. She even brought envelopes. I decided if I could find some used ones for not too much money it'd be a fun thing to play with and for the grandkids to play with too. Time will tell! It would be a good use of the stacks of watercolor paintings and postcards I have laying around here.

--Barbara