I Have Five Pink Ones

Tulips, that is. They have managed to survive to adulthood maybe because they're clustered behind some daffodils and rabbits don't eat daffodils. I can't believe that I planted pink tulips but I must have because nobody else planted bulbs in my flowerbeds. Maybe they were part of a mixed bag and the others gave up the ghost.

I saw a Hawk! I don't know what variety of Hawk it was but I saw it land in the tree behind the house and then a smaller bird objected to its presence because the little bird dive bombed the Hawk. It flew away. But not before I managed to take it's picture.

The Goldfinches have been eating almost solely from the old feeder that I put out the other day but this morning I saw a male Goldfinch on the new feeder. He even flew over to the old feeder and then back to the new one. Maybe he's one of those guys who likes new things.

Speaking of birds, today's Daily Practice was to paint two birds. I don't know what variety of birds they are but I think they turned out okay. The one on the left, the half-painted one, didn't get finished because I started too close to the edge of the paper and there wouldn't have been room for its tail. So I started over.

And I even managed to draw today. These are out of 20 Ways to Draw a Jellyfish and I think they all turned out pretty well. I especially like the nautilus.

The lilacs are blooming! All over the bush there are these beautiful cones of purple flowers and they smell heavenly. Part of me wants to go out with a scissors and cut some to bring in but then I think that means that they'll die and another part of me doesn't want that. Honestly, who else has an internal argument over whether to cut flowers?

Here's today's Gratitude Journal. The big grateful is the one in the middle. Last Thursday I dropped a copy of Island Dreams off at the dive shop where I used to work since they give me permission to use the name in the novel. This morning the owner called to say that she wanted to buy one of each of my titles for herself but she also wanted copies of The Seaview and Island Dreams to offer for sale in the store. So I hurried down there and she bought 11 books. I was so excited I'm sure I grinned for the next hour. Now I hope she can sell them.

I keep looking out for a "Your items have shipped" email from Amazon. I ordered some more copies of a couple of my titles, one with the new cover design, and they said they'd arrive by May 6. That's in 2 days. I have a book signing a week from today and I hope hope hope that the books are here by then. They'd better be, my inventory went way down today. I'm not complaining, not by a long shot, but I do hope that the copies arrive soon.

I have more things to show you that are popping up out in the yard but I'll wait until tomorrow so I don't overload the pictures today.

--Barbara