I Love My Air Conditioner

It wasn't terribly hot, 81 degrees, but rather humid, 70%, and I mowed the lawn today at midday like a dunderhead. The reason I mowed then was that they predicted rain in the early afternoon (which never materialized) so I didn't want to have to wait until tomorrow when it's supposed to be hotter to mow. It takes me 45 minutes to mow my half-mile of up and down, back and forth, and I was hot, sweaty, and tired when I was done. It was luxurious to step through the back door into the cool. Almost made the hot and sweaty worthwhile. Almost. Once I cooled down some I went back out and filled the birdfeeders. You can see the beautiful carpet-like lawn behind the freshly filled feeders in this picture.

I also cleaned the swampy birdbath and watered the tomatoes which have burst forth in a few little green balls of potential goodness. The leaves have rusty edges which I thought might be some bug infestation. Nope, I need to water more. Oops.

While I was mowing I saw tucked next to the fence on the edge of
the yard that the lone remaining Stargazer lily has bloomed. Looking at it, I think it has been bloomed for a while because the flower looks a little old and bedraggled. But I'm still glad to see it.

A couple weeks ago my windchimes broke. I took them down and tried to figure out if I could fix them but realized that I couldn't. Dang it. So I bought myself some new ones and they came today. They are much sturdier than the old ones and will probably need a bit more wind to chime but I like them. And I didn't have to get up on a chair to hang them. I figured out how to wedge the hook on the end of a thick stick and carefully lifted it up to the gutter hook. Whew.

Here's the finished Lilacs watercolor. She said not to draw flowers all over the blob of color but just suggest flowers here and there. I was surprised that she didn't have us paint the branch but she didn't say anything more than drawing it with a pencil, tracing it with an ink pen, and then erasing the pencil. 

Drawing seemed like the thing to do next so I pulled out my sketchbook and 20 Ways to Draw a Tree and got busy. I really like the way the bee turned out and the moth isn't bad either.

And I managed to draw a gratitude journal page for the first time in three days. I was so out of practice that I screwed up the first attempt and ended up tearing the page out of the book and starting over.

I spent more time on my reassembling of the manuscript, scrolling through it labeling the chapters by the POV of each chapter. That will show me where I need to add 1st person sections. I'm feeling better about being back to about 150 pages and having the story playing out the way I want it to. I'll get this figured out yet.

I ran out of lunchmeat and watermelon and pineapple so I had to go to the grocery this afternoon. They had Haagen Dazs pints buy one get one free! So I did. Chocolate, of course.

--Barbara