Maybe They're Friends

The Sparrow and the Downy Woodpecker showed up at the round feeder at the same time again today. Still on opposite sides but not shooing each other away. Maybe they're friends?

 

On the gratitude journal page for yesterday I drew my most dreaded yoga pose--the Plank. I hold each pose for a minute and that is the longest minute of the day.

 

I did a whole lot better drawing today. The prompt was Apple and she figured out five different ways to draw an apple. I think I like the cross-section ones the best.

 

I went out to check the sedum just to see if there were bees, and there were. So here's another sedum with a bee picture. 

 

And the lawn mower came today. This is a different guy than the one I started with. He's wearing the same kind of clothes but this guy has earbuds and mows even faster. He also didn't have a younger kid along to do the trimming and blowing but he still was here and gone well within half an hour. And he's now mowing the tenant's backyard too. I suspect he missed a patch in my backyard. It looks unmowed. Not that I'm in a lawn competition or anything.

 

I bestirred myself and took a walk this afternoon. It's too easy for me not to go out there and walk, and I don't walk far, but I need to keep doing it. Soon I'll be at The Clearing and walking from my room to the Lodge and to the classroom a few times a day.

 

Then when I got home I went out to cut all the rest of the rhubarb and barely got 4 cups to make a batch of sauce. There is literally none left. There are a few droopy leaves lying on the ground and a couple of bruised and broken stalks but otherwise, nope, none left, so this is the last batch of sauce for the season.

 

I finally knitted enough of the sock to get to the colors. Just barely. I knitted two rounds of intermittent blue but there's more colors to come.

 

Oh, I want to tell you about a license plate I saw yesterday. It read: I H8 PPL. What a thing to have on your car! "I hate people" is not a motto I'd want to be driving around advertising although I suppose it keeps people away. I was laughing too hard to notice who was driving.

And I got all excited that someone bought 2 copies of Sailing the Seas a few days ago. It took me two days to figure out that that someone is me. I always buy the first paperback and eBook of a book which shows up on purchase reports. D'oh. But someone bought another copy so I'm not my only customer. Sometimes I'm a trial to myself. And I'll get half my money back in royalties, so that's a good thing.

--Barbara 

I Borrowed This From Mitch

My knitting friend MW likes to take photos of the sky when it's showing off. Tonight it was really showing off. He texted me a few photos and I'm sharing this one with you. I knew there was a vivid sunset tonight but didn't get out to view it in time. But he did.

 

Yesterday was a good day for the gratitude journal page. I like drawing my walking legs (I can't draw the rest of me yet) and picking out a yoga pose to try to draw. There was lots of weather to include too.

 

I wasn't at my best drawing this afternoon. The prompt was Watch and my watches are misshapen and cockeyed. I tried. I really did, but they're off kilter and probably don't keep good time.

 

Today I got to pick up LC and OJ after piano. I got there too early so this was my view--a busy, crosstown street and a hospital parking lot. I did have the new Richard Osman mystery audiobook to listen to so I wasn't bored.

 

I took this Sparrow-on-the-feeder picture because no other birds showed up while I was looking today. Probably when I left the room all sorts of exotic and interesting birds showed up but all I saw was this drab little Sparrow.

 

You know, I didn't mean to make the tangelo colored stripe on this hat as wide as it is, but I just kept knitting the yarn until it ran out. Now I've reattached the pale orange and I'll finish it with that. It'll look okay, I think.

 

I finished going through all 23 pages of the Manuscript Analysis this afternoon and gave into temptation to run another one so it'd tell me that the manuscript was just fine. Well, it didn't. In fact, it printed out 25 pages of helpful suggestions. I haven't had the guts to look at them yet but I bet there will be some that I'll disagree with and ignore. Pushy program. Who's writing this novel anyway?

--Barbara

Cooperation

Often birds don't like to share. Today a Sparrow and a Downy Woodpecker managed it, only because they were on opposite sides of the feeder (I think). I was surprised that the Downy didn't move over to the suet nuggets or the suet cakes, but stayed on the round feeder until it found a peanut and flew away.

 

Mourning Doves have started coming back to the yard. They hang around under the round feeder picking up fallen seed. The squirrels even tolerate them being nearby. Evidently they're not a threat.

 

One of the squirrels spent a few minutes on the suet nuggets this morning. It dismounted very awkwardly and clambered back over the crooks to the suet cakes feeder and then to the ground. It held onto two of the crooks between the coils of the Slinkys trying to look graceful and failing miserably.

 

The gratitude journal page for yesterday was fun to draw. I can't decide if I was more grateful for the bees on the sedum or writing a letter. Maybe it was a tie.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Fern. I was leery when I heard what she expected me to draw. Ferns are complex but she made them simple. Whew.

 

Here's another Dad's rose. Because I can. 

 

The four-year-old and the toddler next door first noticed the horse head squirrel feeder today. When I came back from my walk this afternoon they came tumbling out of their house to ask me about it. The older one wanted to know what the camel head was for and the little one kept saying "horse" or something close to that. Their mama wanted them to eat something and I told them when they were finished to go outside and I'd be watching. I went out, got some corn kernels, and we went up to refill the feeder. "Corn" was the word of the hour then with the little guy. Mama noticed the conch shells on the privacy fence, so I took a couple down so they could hold them. The four-year-old heard the ocean in one and I blew the conch horn which sounded like a deranged elephant but they liked it. So they had to blow that one too. Evidently I'm the interesting neighbor. 

I had a critique zoom this morning with cda and got plenty good comments from her. Then she emailed me the right file of her manuscript so we could go over some questions she had. I was proud of her because she's not very tech savvy but managed to send me the correct file on the second try.

Then I spent most of the afternoon scrolling through the manuscript to find places to insert the lecherous landlord because he's so easy to dislike. That kind of characters are fun to write.

And it's raining. 

--Barbara 

A Yellow Surprise

I looked out the patio door this morning when I opened the drapes and was surprised to see a yellow flower up on the retaining wall. What was it? I grabbed the camera and went to investigate (once I was dressed, that is). It was a Stella d'Oro lily! One of those hasn't bloomed in at least a month and most of the leaves of the plants are yellowing and dying back. But today there was one brave lily blooming out. Hooray!

 

Next to the lily was the pink sedum and bees! It wasn't very sunny but there were bees swarming all over the flowers. I took a few pictures and a couple of them turned out. When I was back inside, I glanced back up at the sedum and there was a Monarch Butterfly on it. I tried to sneak out there to take its picture, but almost as soon as I opened the patio door, it fluttered off over the fence and away. Darn. 

 

Last week there was a piece in the NY Times "The Good List" about the Sunday Letter Writing Project that intrigued me so I went over to Substack and signed up. I signed up for the free posts, not sure I want to pledge before knowing if I'll stick with it. According to what I read, you can sign up in a cafe and get a pen pal, but I don't know if there are any cafes around Green Bay taking part, so I just found some stationery (of course I have fish stationery) and a pen and started. There's a weekly prompt. This week's was: Write about your favorite tree. Oh geez, that was a tough one. I don't really have a relationship with a particular tree, then I thought about my family tree and I do have a relationship with that tree. So I wrote to someone on that tree. I may choose another branch next Sunday, depending on what that prompt is. I enjoyed it. You know I love writing and I love writing to people (like I'm writing to you every night, Aunt B) so don't be surprised if one of these weeks you get a letter.

 

The gratitude journal page for yesterday was easy to draw because I had LC with me and I was grateful for the whole day.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Owl. She drew four different owls, so I did too. I think each of them looks perfectly owly, don't you?

 

While LC read yesterday, I sat on the other end of the loveseat and knitted on the Regia Summer Sock cuff. I got discouraged because I keep hoping that the color will show up. I guess I have to keep knitting. It'll show up eventually.

 

I'm still working my way through the comments in the Manuscript Analysis of Three Cheers for Murder. I think I made a lot of progress today. One of the suggestions made so much sense, I was embarrassed not to have thought of it myself, but I hurried to rectify the lack and hope the story is better for the additions. Every time I add a scene, I add it to the timeline (shown here) and sometimes I even have to shift the chapter numbers because I've added a chapter's worth of stuff. I'm really enjoying this.

 

Dad's rose is flinging blossoms out every which way. They're so beautiful and they smell so good. I can't resist showing you one every chance I get.

 

 --Barbara

The First Book

The first copy of Sailing the Seas arrived this afternoon. It looks just like I hoped it would, except for one thing. I forgot to ask them to put The Seaview Series on it. Oh well, I'll email them tomorrow, have them add it, and it'll be on the next shipment of books. No biggie. LC suggested I write it on with Sharpie in my best penmanship. I think I'll just wait.

 

I got to spend most of the day with LC. We hadn't had a Meemaw day in months and today was the day. We went to lunch at Home Town Cafe, then spent an hour or so watching DVDs of DS playing his trombone in high school band and jazz band and show choir concerts. LC plays the trombone too so she was very interested to see him. Especially since she's never seen him with a full head of hair. Or any hair for that matter. She spent a lot of time reading Christmas at Seaview and asking lots of questions about th characters. She said she liked it and thinks I'm a pretty good writer. That made me feel good. I knitted while she read. But we were together and that's what counts.

 

The gratitude journal page for yesterday was an easy draw. I was excited to see a squirrel investigating the horse head feeder and disappointed when the pictures didn't turn out at all. Oh well, I can draw what I saw. Sorta.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Tulip. Tulips are easy flowers to draw and the teacher had interesting versions of them to demonstrate. She drew six of them but I ran out of room after four, so I turned back to a blank page I'd skipped by accident last week and drew the rest there. I didn't take their picture.

 

The other day when I was trimming back the greenery around the horse head feeder I must have scraped something along my arm because I woke up this morning with a very itchy bump on my right forearm. It's been bugging me all day and I'm trying not to scratch, but it seems like a losing battle.

After I returned LC, I spent a little time playing with the manuscript. I can't leave my hands off it. I'm excited to read it and excited to make the changes suggested by the Manuscript Analysis. Hopefully I'm making it better.

--Barbara 

One Out of Three

Squirrels wasn't too blurry. One was so blurry I didn't even edit and save it. The least blurry squirrel spent quite a bit of time on the suet nuggets. It gloms onto the feeder and holds it like a lover, chomping away while crumbs fall to the ground.

 

Up on the retaining wall the second squirrel was a little blurrier contorting itself around the cob corn. It would reach up for a kernel and then hang from its hind feet while it held the kernel in it front paws and nibbled away at it. It too dropped kernels for the ground feeders.

 

I caught sight of a squirrel with its head in the horse head squirrel feeder for a nanosecond. I took a picture, but all of it was one green and brown blur. I don't know how or if I can get a picture from my perch at the table all the way across the yard to the feeder and squirrel.

 

This morning I remembered to make more Jello. Lemon-lime Jello. One four-serving box of each for a big bowl of jiggly green goodness. It's my favorite flavor. Yum.

 

Yesterday's gratitude journal page wasn't hard to draw. The weather was perfect--cooler and less humid--and I filled the feeders, did yoga, and worked on the manuscript. A good day.

 

Broom was today's drawing prompt. It seems like a silly thing to draw but making the jagged bottoms and drawing the lines of the broom straws was good practice.

 

I knitted a couple inches of sock cuff tonight at Friday Night Knitting. It's slow going because I'm using size US2 needles. I usually use US3s but my yarn is pretty thin so I went down a needle size. The yarn looks white but I think it's a very very pale green. At least it looks that way in real life. I can't wait until I get to the self-patterning part and have some colors to look at.

 

I added a lecherous landlord to Three Cheers for Murder today. When I was doing yoga (while I was supposed to be meditating), I thought I needed to add another character to give the main character/sleuth a bit of trouble. So I came up with Arnold "Call me Arnie" LaGrange who thinks he's God's gift to women and drowns himself in Brut cologne. If I'm going to write more than one book about this town and these people, I need more population to fill the pages.

--Barbara 

There Were Bees!

I went up to the retaining wall this morning to weed around the horse head squirrel feeder to see if I couldn't lure some squirrels there. While I was there, I looked at the bronze sedum and there were bees! Hooray! Lots of them but I only caught this one in the act. 

 

And right where I stood admiring the bees, I saw a spiderweb and there was a big brown spider in another part of the web. Pretty cool. I wasn't sure I captured its picture because I was using my phone and had to zoom in and couldn't see well but I got it. Hint: the spider's in the shade to the left of the white web right under the flower head.

 

When I cleared out some of the weeds around the horse head squirrel feeder, I noticed lots of mushrooms. I thought they only grew on rotting wood and I don't remember wood being there but whatever. It was fun to see them and two colors of them.

 

I drew a gratitude journal page for yesterday and ended up putting the book cover and publishing the book on the same page. I was so happy to get those cover files and be able to publish the book that I wouldn't have been surprised to have put it on three or four times. Hooray!

 

Speaking of mushrooms, that was the drawing prompt for today. I enjoyed drawing them and it wasn't until I looked at the picture I took of the page that I realized that they're all leaning to the right. Must have been windy when I was drawing.

 

I don't know how I can get a clearer picture at the distance I am away from the horse head squirrel feeder but I saw one investigating this afternoon. Maybe when the Hummingbirds are gone, I'll move that feeder down closer to the house so I can get a better picture. Today I spread a little peanut butter in the opening of the feeder to try to lure the little tree rats to it. It might work. I filled the birdseed, suet nuggets, and cob corn feeders today too, but didn't take pictures.

 

Just on the off chance that it'd work, I opened last night's blog post and, lo and behold, Blogger let me put on the pictures. So if you want to see last night's pictures, scroll back and check them out. 

I cast on a sock tonight but only managed to knit two rounds so what I did is barely visible. I didn't take a picture of it. I'll do that tomorrow night after Friday Night Knitting. Three hours of knitting should give me something to show for it.

Writing went pretty well today. I'm following the suggestions from the ProWritingAid Manuscript Analysis and feel good about it. I've taken out big chunks of writing that don't really advance the story and suspect there's more of that to come. I also sent the police after another suspect. And I took out the three small scenes from the murderer's point of view, letting the sleuth make some deductions to sneak up on the info instead of overplaying my hand and giving away too much to the reader. I'm learning a lot from doing it this way. Much more than I'm learning from the how-to book. This somehow feels more like my own idea and my own writing even though the analysis is basically coaching me.

--Barbara