The First

This afternoon I filled the bird feeders and watched to see who would be the first to discover it. This Sparrow was the first. It landed on the suet nuggets feeder and got right to work pecking away at them. Every type of bird, except for the ground feeders, takes a turn on one of the suet feeders. It's mostly Sparrows and Woodpeckers but the Starlings get in there too. And, of course, the squirrels take their turns too.

 

And this House Finch was the second to arrive. A pair of female House Finches were on the platform feeder but they're such blah colors that they didn't show up in the picture. So you get to see this male House Finch in all of his mating colors glory. Sorry he's blurry.

 

I'm including this picture of yesterday's Hummingbird just because I want to.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Symbols & Signs so I drew street signs, dollar signs, punctuation marks, musical signs, any signs I could think of. I just used a pen so they're not colorful but I like them.

 

I took a walk in the late afternoon and couldn't take my eyes off some birch trees in the neighbor's yard. They haven't leafed out yet but the trees behind them have. So I left out LJ's house behind the trees and painted the birches. I think they turned out quite well.

 

As I was putting away my painting stuff I saw that the sun was setting and tinting the clouds pink so I went out and took a picture. It wasn't warm.

 

I watched a YouTube video from ProWritingAid yesterday about Showing vs. Telling so I had it on my mind when I was skimming through the manuscript today. I found some telly spots where I added some dialogue and some action so that they're more showy. I think it made it better. I found out the other day that ProWritingAid is AI. I don't know why that surprised me; it's great with punctuation and grammar but I don't take its rewording suggestions. Sometimes I look at them when it points out passive voice but I fix it myself. I also realized that near the end I referred to something that isn't earlier in the manuscript. Oops. I'll work to fix that this weekend.

Do you realized that this weekend is Memorial Day weekend? Doesn't it seem early? It's been chilly, in the low 50s here all week and rainy, not exactly feeling like the start of summer. I'm planning to ignore it.

--Barbara