An Herb, A Flower, and A Bird

Not much happening at my place today. I went out to water my new plants and some rodent (I'm looking at you, chipmunk or squirrel!) had dug out one of my marigolds and tossed it out of the pot onto the ground. I quickly picked it up and replanted it. I'll go out in the morning to make sure it's still in the pot. Fortunately the sweet basil I planted the other night is unmolested. Once locally grown tomatoes start showing up I think I might have to make a caprese salad for my supper. Mm, sliced tomato, fresh mozzarella, and basil all sprinkled with balsamic vinegar and just a touch of olive oil. Now that's summer.

So far the marigolds in the front yard haven't been molested. I was hopeful that more of them were this color instead of all yellow gold but I think that this is the only plant like this. I'm happy to have one.

And the bird. An Oriole, of course. It's my new favorite bird. I've given up on attracting Hummingbirds this summer. Once I discovered that the House Finches were drinking the nectar and I hadn't seen a Hummingbird after that first time I gave up.

From Ink & Wash today's flower is a Gerbera daisy. There was a lot of drawing with this one and very little painting but I thought it turned out pretty well and I love using my "World's Best Grandma" pot to hold my paintbrushes.

When I was taking the marigold picture I smelled roses and looked to see this new Dad's rose flirting with me from the side so I took its picture too. 

Tonight at Friday Night Knitting I got through the two-color part of knitting the Monterey Sea Life Beanie. Well, actually I cheated and skipped the silver "fish" in the last two rounds because they were mostly blue stitches and I'd had it with the whole rigamarole. If I miss the two "fish" in those rounds I'll duplicate stitch them on later.

 

I was supposed to get a haircut today but my stylist wasn't well so she rescheduled me to Monday afternoon. Thank heavens because I'm feeling a little shaggy.

I spent a bit of the afternoon working on my manuscript. I managed to eke out a few paragraphs of new writing and did some revision of another scene. So some writing work got done. Phew. I've been kind of slacking off because of doing the Amazon Ad Profit Challenge videos every day. I spent an hour making a few keyword ads for Open For Business. He says to make 5-10 ads per week to keep the Amazon algorithm happy but that's a lot of ads to keep making. I run out of steam at about that many a month.

Oh, and while I was out in the front watering the plants my neighbor pulled into my driveway and said that I could keep the woodchuck in my yard. I told him that I chase it away when I see it and he said, "Yes, and it comes to live under my deck!" Not my problem, dude. It was all good-natured teasing. He said he's got a live trap and when he gets home after the weekend he'll trap it and deal with it. Good. As long as it goes away.

--Barbara