Look What I Got

I had a lucky peek out the patio door and saw this Hairy Woodpecker on the suet cakes. A Hairy hardly ever visits the feeders so I was thrilled to see it and be able to take this one picture before it flew away. Score!

 

In contrast a Downy Woodpecker landed on the round feeder not too long afterwards. You can see how much smaller it is than the Hairy Woodpecker. 

She's hard to see in the shadow but a female Cardinal visited the platform feeder and even tolerated a pair of House Finches eating on there at the same time.

 

And this squirrel hung from its back feet on the suet nuggets nibbling away. This is the acrobatic squirrel but I wasn't fast enough to catch it dangling there.

 

I picked Green as my drawing prompt today. First I drew the aloe plant that lives on the table. Then I tried my hand at the daffodil that's starting to open in front of the house. And finally I took a stab at drawing a frog on a lily pad. They're not bad, and they're all green.

 

Here's the daffodil that's right below the mailbox just outside the front door. It's going to be fully open in a day or two.

 

At the other end of the flower bed these hyacinths are just sprouting. You can see the flowers beginning to poke their noses out of the clusters of leaves. They were Dad's favorite spring bulb so I'm glad they're showing up this year.

 

And my watercolor. I'm not so good at painting tree leaves. I try but I think I make too big marks on the paper. I like the way the rocks turned out and the trunk isn't too bad but the leaves don't look very leaf-like. Maybe I'll take another stab at it tomorrow. Short strokes, Barbara, short and stab-y. 

 

Just before coming back here I drew a gratitude page and drew the worst bird EVER. No, don't try to tell me it isn't, I know it, it's terrible.

I tried to tackle a note I wrote about something I need to add to the manuscript and couldn't find anything online. I want a little scene when two of the main characters are looking at the stars and I want him to tell her folklore tales about the constellations. Nowhere online, not even Wikipedia had the info I wanted so I guessed I'd have to make them up. I did find a night sky of Bonaire which showed the visible constellations and I remembered that I have a night sky field guide. Actually just now I remembered that I also have an Audubon Guide to the Night Sky. Those two combined will give me lots of info that I can finesse into folklore for the scene. Sometimes it pays to hang on to things.

The other writer-y thing I did today was watch an Ad School video about calculating Return On Investment to figure out which of my books is the most profitable and is worth focusing my ads on. I did the calculations and discovered that none of my books is making a profit so I can't do the homework because I don't have anything to work with. *sigh* I'll watch the next video but I feel like I'm whistling up a stump. I haven't made any new ads in a while so maybe I'll make a couple for the new title and see what happens.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and got up to 61 degrees so I had the house open to air it out. Oh, it smelled so good.

--Barbara

Just Arts & Crafts

I just realized that I didn't take any wildlife pictures or sprouts pictures today. I will say that the birdbath was iced over except around the heater so, yay!, it still works. But by the time I thought about taking an icy birdbath picture most of the ice was melted so no pix. And the only birds that showed up that I saw were Sparrows, Mourning Doves, and Starlings. I didn't take their pictures either.

 

I went back to the list of flowers in Sketchbook Challenge and the next one was a Peony. I didn't even try to draw one on my own, I went right to 10-Step Drawing: Flowers and got to copying. So much better than I could have done on my own. Plus it says to draw with pencil and then outline it in pen and it looks so good that way, I almost left it black and white but decided to color it in. It looks okay.

 

After supper I drew a gratitude page for today. The thing I'm most grateful for was getting to pick up LC after school and bring her here for a bit before her mom picked her up after she got off work. We shared some Clancy's baked cheese puffs and worked on her math homework. Not too exciting but I enjoyed the company.

 

Then I knuckled down to see where I could make room for more scenes in the manuscript. I did a little rearranging of one scene that was out of place. Then I tried writing something new. I got barely a page written before it was time for supper and Friday Night Knitting.

 

I got to the heel flap of the Zauberball Crazy Sock and somehow managed to be short a stitch. I didn't drop one so I must have inadvertently purled two together somewhere. Instead of going back to find my mistake I just made one stitch on the next row and kept going. It's going to be stuck in a shoe anyway so who's going to see it? Only me and I don't care. 

My ten author copies of Spies Don't Retire came today. I got them all autographed, stickered, and bookmarked. I put two copies in the box in my car and two in the bag to take to the Market a week from Saturday. I was supposed to go to a Writers' Meet-up at the Art Garage tomorrow but I just learned on FB that it's postponed. I did fill out an application to have a booth/table at their next book fair on Nov. 1. I didn't realize there was a fee but it wasn't much so I paid it. It's always something.

--Barbara

Taking a Ride

One of my favorite bird antics is when a Downy Woodpecker flies over to take a little ride on a Slinky before fluttering over to the suet cakes for a snack. This little lady spent a bit of time on the ride before getting down to business this morning.

 

A Robin landed on the birdbath but never turned around so I could see its red breast. All I got was the back view. Oh, and I went out this afternoon to fill the feeders and planned to unplug the defective birdbath heater because it seems silly to leave it plugged in when it's not working. Turned out it was mostly unplugged so I plugged it back in. Now I need a night below freezing to see if it's working or not. There's a chance it'll get below 32 tonight so I'll maybe be able to tell in the morning.

 

The prompt I chose today out of the Sketchbook Challenge book was Orange. So I drew a couple oranges and some orange slices. Then I branched out to draw an orange-ish sunset. I liked the way they looked in the sketchbook better than I like them in the picture.

 

The next two pages in the Watercolor book were painting trees. I suck at painting conifers. But I tried. The lower one is better than the upper one and I like the shade of green of the lower one too. The upper one is too blue. 

When I went out to fill the feeders and carried new cob corn up to that feeder I saw that the sedum has grown quite a bit. I think they look like little blue green rosebuds.

 

And the Stella d'Oro lilies have started to send up leaves. The one under the cob corn feeders is nibbled almost down to nubs but the others are shooting up greenery.

 

I even drew a gratitude journal page just before I came back here tonight. I got some help getting rid of the wrong Dropbox account and getting the correct one on here. It's a good thing I had the tech guy on the line because I'd have never figured it out. Who knew that it would be so complicated?

 

I took another little walk up to the stop sign and back this afternoon. It looked nice and warmish but the wind had a little bite to it. Made me walk faster to warm up.

This afternoon I finished listening to Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea. It's a story about the Red Cross women who drove the donut and coffee trucks in WWII. Very good book. Long but worth it.

--Barbara

More

I couldn't take just one squills picture. I had to take two because there are two little spurts of them out front. They're so tiny and so sweet I can't resist them.

 

A Bluejay flew in to investigate the cob corn and stopped for just a few seconds on the top of the fence. That was enough time for me to snap one semi-blurry picture of it. It frustrates me that male and female Bluejays look the same. At least I think they do. I'll go check in the bird books. Be right back. Yep, there's only one Bluejay picture, no differentiation between males and females. 

I painted the next landscape in the No Experience Required Watercolor book. It's an odd one. Pink sky and water, yellow part of the sky, and pink/green gold/true green trees. Mine don't look like trees, they look like painted blobs, but I followed the directions as best I could. I'm not sure if I'll do this one again or move on. Guess I'll see how I feel about it tomorrow.

 

For drawing from the Sketchbook Challenge I chose Something Left on the Floor. And I picked my gratitude journal basket which lives under the chair to the right of where I sit all the time. I was looking down at it so I didn't have to draw the sides of the basket. Whew. I decided I liked it in black and white and didn't color it in.

 

Look what came! My new bookmarks with all six of my novels' covers on it. I put some in my purse and will put them into the author copies that are supposed to arrive on Friday. I've got a tiny pile of the old ones left so I'll hand those out at the next market and then start on the new ones.

 

I took my laptop to Cyberworks this morning so they could reinstall their Peace of Mind program that periodically scans my system looking for viruses and lets me call them for help which they can do remotely. In fact, I have an appointment for tomorrow afternoon to have them help me remove the second Dropbox account. I'd do it myself but I'm afraid I'd delete the one I want to keep too. Better have a tech guy's assistance.

 I walked up to the stop sign on the corner and back this afternoon. I'm still pretty happy that I can walk that far without having to stop and catch my breath. One of my neighbors poked his head out to say that when I was on my way back home.

Then I met one of the St. Agnes Class of '65 crowd and her husband at Zambaldi for a drink and a visit. Her husband came along and he's a pro at telling dad jokes. Funny guy.

In writing news, I spent a couple hours after lunch chapter-izing the last part of my manuscript. I have more scenes to write and slot into that part because one of the story threads kind of peters out before that. We can't have that. First thing this morning I posted the weekly story on Substack. It's one of my favorites so I'm happy to have it out there. It was the first one that seemed to flow effortlessly from the very beginning.

 --Barbara

Signs of Spring

I looked out my bedroom window this morning when I opened the shade and was overjoyed to see tiny white flowers in the flowerbed. Squills! They're about the size of my pinkie nail and have a faint blue stripe down each petal. Lovely!

 

And look at the daffodil buds. They're swelling and getting taller, getting ready to burst open and shine their beautiful yellow selves. I'm happy to report that daffodils don't taste good to rabbits and squirrels so they leave the flowers and leaves alone. Not so the tulips. Those must taste good.

 

I snapped this picture of two Goldfinches on the finch feeder. They've got a lot of yellow on them. Yay!

 The male Cardinal landed on the platform feeder this morning and actually tolerated a House Finch landing across from him and pecking at the seed at the same time. This one is obviously not the bully Cardinal of last year.

 

First thing this morning I taped another piece of watercolor paper to the plexiglass and took another stab at yesterday's painting. The mountains aren't as dark as I'd like but I like the row of trees at their base better and the grass in the foreground much better than yesterday's. Moving on.

 

I pulled out Sketchbook Challenge and turned to the next one. It was Everyday Object so I chose my jar of paintbrushes. There are a few more brushes in the jar but I chose the ones I thought I could draw. Maybe another time I'll attempt drawing more of them in the jar.

 

And I drew a gratitude journal page for today too. The big thing I'm grateful for is figuring out the problem with Dropbox on my new laptop. When I open Dropbox on the desktop all of my files aren't there but when I go on Dropbox.com and sign in, they are. After logging out and in a couple times I realized that on the laptop my account picture isn't there and it's tied to a different email address. Aha! Now I have to figure out how to eliminate one account without damaging my "real" account. I think I'll consult with the tech guys at Cyberworks tomorrow. They're very helpful and I have a Peace of Mind account with them which gets me consults in addition to virus protection and security.

 

A Downy Woodpecker showed up on the suet cakes this afternoon but it hung under the feeder and pecked at the back cake so try as I might I couldn't push the shutter button when its head was visible. This is as good as I got and I never could tell if it was a male or female.

 

I didn't write anything new today. All I did was slot in what I wrote yesterday but I figure that counts as writing work too, don't you think?

I got to do the school run this afternoon because DS had an unexpected meeting at pickup time. Poor LC has a rotten cold and OJ was looking for seeds because he and some friends are planting a farm on the playground. That seems like a plan doomed to failure but it keeps them occupied.

Things are ramping up for the NFL Draft to take over the city in a couple weeks. Barrels appeared near an intersection that will be closed or diverted once the whole craziness starts. They've closed a portion of a main street near the stadium and more streets will be closed as the date draws near. DS isn't sure that they'll see much increased business because they're across the river from the stadium and people coming in on buses aren't going to be able to get there. I plan to stock up on groceries and hunker down to avoid the craziness.

Today my baby brothers turned 69 years old. Sixty-nine! I suppose it makes sense since I'm 73.  Actually it's hard to wrap my head around either number. We're just not that old. Are we?

--Barbara

Blooming

The second flower on the Christmas/Easter cactus is in full bloom. The more I look at the flowers the more I realize that they're really red-orange, not pink. The buds are pink but when they open they're red-orange. A much more acceptable color.

 

This morning a male Downy Woodpecker visited the suet nuggets feeder and actually got to spend a little time eating without getting shooed away by another bird or a squirrel. I tried to take its picture so you could see the red swoop on the back of his head but that didn't work. Trust me, it's a boy.

 

In the afternoon a quartet of Starlings came to mob the feeders. One of them landed on the suet nuggets, the rest of them just stood around getting in the other birds' way.

 

I dug out a watercolor how-to book and started it. It's supposed to be for absolute beginners but it emphasizes techniques that I'm not very good at so it's good I'm practicing. Today I'm not going to say everything that's wrong, I don't need to call out every booboo. I can see them, I acknowledge them. I'll do better tomorrow. I may even paint the same thing tomorrow.

 

This morning I had a Zoom critique session with cda which went well, then met the St. Agnes Class of '65 (or parts of it) for lunch, then I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the next manuscript. I wrote a 6-page scene and figured out where to slot it in. On my way home from lunch I went to the birdseed store and to pick up an Rx. I invariably head to the pharmacy when they're closed for lunch. Happily I could divert to the birdseed store and then backtrack a few blocks to the pharmacy. I don't understand why I am lured there between 1 and 1:30. It's just silly.

I put in a call into the dentist today because I went back to wearing the sleep apnea appliance last Wednesday and everything was going well until last night when the right side of my jaw woke me up in pain. I called to tell him I wasn't going to wear it anymore because obviously it isn't right for me but he convinced me to come in next week for another adjustment. I don't have a lot of faith that he'll be able to "fix" things but I guess I'll try. Naturally most people don't have this kind of trouble but then I can't have anything normal. I also suspect that people just stop wearing it and stick it in a drawer and never tell.

--Barbara

Sprouts & Birds

I was so excited to see that the rhubarb has begun to send up leaves. They're hard to see (they're very dark red and small) but I'm not moving the leaves to make them more visible because it's supposed to be a lot colder tomorrow. And I don't know if any little bugs or bees are overwintering among those leaves. So I'm leaving them be.

 

The daylily sprouts have gotten taller since I showed them to you last week. Every day there's a little more green out there.

 

And look at the Goldfinch. It's a lot yellower than it was last week too. I can't decide if they molt to change colors or if the feathers change colors on their own. I'm going with molt because it makes more sense although I've never seen a tiny little yellow green feather floating around, but would I?

 

I was lucky enough to look out just as a female Downy Woodpecker landed on the suet cakes. She didn't stay long but seemed to enjoy pecking away at the edge of the suet. As it gets warmer the suet sticks to their beaks and they aren't fans. Birds shake their heads and scrape their beaks on the wires to try to dislodge the sticky stuff. 

 

The chipmunk scurried out to hoover up some of the fallen seed and cracked corn. I don't know if you can see it but its cheek pouches are really bulging.

 

Today I decided to draw a Rabbit or three. I didn't find a picture to copy, I just drew, and think the gray head is the best. The other two side views of brown rabbits are just barely okay.

 

This is the last painting from the Wildflower Watercolor book. It's a bouquet but I put the leaves too low so you can't see the stems. I like the poppies and the cornflowers. All in all, it's not too bad. I wonder what I'll find to paint next.

 

I even drew a gratitude journal page for today. I slacked off the last few days and haven't drawn one since the 2nd but today I felt like I had the time and the things to be grateful for. I made myself take a walk to the stop sign and back this afternoon. I realized that in four weeks I'll be going to The Clearing for my watercolor week and will need to be able to comfortably walk from my cabin to the Schoolhouse and back multiple times a day. Having spent the winter pretty much sitting on my butt I need to get moving.

 

I spent some time today working on the critique for my Zoom with cda tomorrow morning and then working on the next manuscript. I have to dream up scenes that insert two characters in the later parts of the story. I've got some people moving around but need to incorporate others. It's like building a puzzle without the picture on the box.

I sure hope it doesn't snow tonight. Someone said it might. Ugh.

--Barbara