Hummingbirds Implied

A week ago I bought a new Hummingbird feeder, a glass one, made new birdie juice, and hung it out hoping against hope that I could lure Hummingbirds back. I've been watching but haven't seen one and I was feeling rather sad but then this morning I noticed that the level of the birdie juice in the feeder has dropped about an inch. So either some squirrel has discovered how to sip nectar from the feeder without spilling it all or there are Hummingbirds visiting that I don't see. I'm hoping it's the latter.

I found yesterday's yellow iris picture. For some reason the camera made a new folder that it put some of yesterday's pictures and all of today's pictures into. I didn't tell it to, it just did it all on its own. Kind of weirds me out that the camera did it by itself.

This morning I took some very closeup photos of the purple salvia that I like. The color's growing on me and I like the narrow focus of the picture.

Here's today's Stella d'Oro lily. More of the plants along the retaining wall are starting to burst out in yellow lilies. Hooray! Next will come the orange day lilies.

The next watercolor in Ink & Wash was eggs. To go with the nest in the previous project, I guess. I'm not sure that these look like eggs, especially the one on the right. I think it looks like a rock rather than an egg. I blame the watercolor that smooshed out of the lines. Couldn't have been a mistake on my part. I peeked ahead at the next project. It's a bird. A logical progression.

Both female and male Orioles visited the feeder today and I managed to take pictures of both of them. First came the female. She jumps around from crook to crook, lands on a Slinky or two, and finally makes it to the jelly.

The male Oriole is more direct. He just flies down and zeros in on the jelly right away.

Today's Gratitude Journal was another easy one. It was sunny all morning. I got the final files of the cover for Open for Business. And I Zoomed with cda for an hour talking about writing. It was great.

I finished the final read-through of Open for Business just before supper so tomorrow morning I'm going to publish it. Why wait? I've got the cover, it's on Kindle Create with all of the Front and Back Matter pages filled out and tidied up, and I've read it and critiqued it until I'm cross-eyed. It's time. Then I can get going on the next book in the series. Okay, I confess, I've already started working on it, it's last year's NaNoWriMo manuscript, and it's going to take a lot of work. A. LOT. But I can do it. It might take me a year or two but I can do it.

--Barbara