A Perfect Day

For mowing the lawn. I don't have a picture because there's nothing really photogenic about walking up and down and around the yard for half a mile making the grass and weeds all the same height. But it was a cool day with sunshine and a breeze so I didn't bake while mowing. I was a good girl and put 50 SPF sunscreen on my face and wore a wide-brimmed hat. I do not want to ever have to use this face cream medicine again. I'm all spotty and now my face is starting to itch. I'm choosing to believe that means it's beginning to heal.

I was lucky to be looking out the patio door when this male Goldfinch swooped down and landed on the edge of the birdbath. I was so afraid that he'd take off right away but he stayed long enough for me to take two pictures. In this second one it looks like he's looking straight at me, doesn't it?

While mowing I noticed that the Spiderwort on the side of the house is blooming. It's one of my favorite plants because it says right on the tag that it enjoys poor soil and neglect. Two things that I'm good at! My house is on a landfill so the soil is dodgy and I forget about watering so it only gets rained on. Lucky for it we've had plenty of rainy days this Spring. BTW, the flower on the left tucked under a leaf is the correct color. I don't know why the one in front is washed out.

I haven't seen an Oriole in a few days but this pair of House Finches have been enjoying the grape jelly. I'll have to check tomorrow to make sure that there's enough in the dish so that if an Oriole does come there's some for it to snack on.

Today's watercolor in Ink & Wash was a bird's nest. Not much of a picture but it was kind of fun to draw and paint. My paint is thicker than hers is in the book but I don't think it looks bad.

Since I am not really enjoying knitting on the Monterey Beanie I decided that I should knit two rounds a day so that I'm making slow progress and not only knitting on it on Friday nights. The flash didn't go off in this shot so the yarn colors aren't correct. They're much closer to the colors on the chart which shows the knitting directions. It isn't particularly complicated, just the knit stitch with one "trick" stitch thrown in every once in a while but I've never learned how to knit with two colors so I feel awkward and am sure that I'm knitting it too tight and doing it all wrong. Ah well, time will tell. The orange Garibaldis on the hat are duplicate stitched over the blue and green stitches when the hat is done. That should be interesting.

I even managed to draw a Gratitude Journal page this evening before coming back here to blog. It's nothing earth-shattering but I like doing the page and drawing and coloring the little cartoons of my day.

I spent time reading Open for Business chapters this afternoon after my post-mowing shower. Every time I read a chapter I find a typo or something that needs smoothing out. I swear that I'm nearly done. I'm halfway through this read-through and hope that it'll be done when I'm done with this one. Maybe. Tomorrow I plan to resurrect the first draft of the next book in The Seaview Series and see if I can't tidy it up a little before it's time to start sending parts off to be critiqued. It's last year's NaNoWriMo and I know that I may have duplicated some of it to get to the word count. I want to remove the duplicated part before I sent it out for critique. This writing thing is a lot of work.

--Barbara