Spring Is Springing

In front of my house spring is springing out like crazy. I went out this morning with the camera because I saw the first daffodils I ever planted here in September 1978 have started blooming. This clump of daffodils has been through a lot. They started out poking up through a juniper, then there was a mallard nest in the middle of them, then I pulled out the junipers, and the daffodils are still there and growing.

 

Nearby this hyacinth is blooming. The hyacinths aren't aging as gracefully as the daffodils but they're still in the game.

 

The squills are still going strong but I found one little grape hyacinth that's blooming despite the rabbit depredation. You can see that the leaves have all been nibbled down to nubs but these flowers are still blooming.

 

In the backyard the acrobatic squirrel discovered that I filled the cob corn feeders the other day and spent some time doing upside down crunches. I'm so impressed with this creature's stomach muscles. Amazing.

 

Look! I drew an elephant without looking at a picture or a 10-Step Drawing book. I'm so impressed with myself I almost can't stand it.

 

This afternoon I visited a knitting friend, VJ, who emailed me a couple weeks ago looking for leftover sock yarn for a project she's tackling. I rummaged around and found a bag of yarn to take to her. We had a lovely visit talking about crafts, health, and salt. Funny how when you reach a certain age you talk about your ailments a lot. Luckily we had a lot of other things to catch up on.

 

I took another stab at painting that tree and rocks. The leaves are marginally better but I don't like the rocks as well as yesterday's. Ah well, can't have everything.

 

Today's gratitude journal page wasn't as easy as I thought it'd be. I had to stop and think of what to put on there but I managed to fill the page and I didn't draw a terrible bird.

 

Next Saturday is the next Market on Military and the first market where I'll have copies of Spies Don't Retire to sell. So I designed and printed a couple of signs to stick in the display copy of the novel. I don't know which one I'll use--the big, white one, or the smaller blue one. I'll see which one shows up the best, I guess.

 

I worked on the critique for tomorrow's session with cda this morning and in the afternoon I tried to expand a scene I wrote the other day. I'm not sure I made it better but I did make it longer. I'm looking forward to dreaming up folklore about the constellations in the Bonaire night sky. That's what I plan to do next week.

--Barbara