A Different Woodpecker

This one is frequently seen on the ground, according to the Cornell Lab website, and it's a Northern Flicker. I saw it fly over from the roof and land in the grass. At first I thought it was a Mourning Dove, but then I saw the patterning on its back and knew what it had to be. It tracked across the backyard and I kept taking pictures, hoping that one would turn out. And it did.

 

Only one Sparrow took a bath, but I was lucky enough to catch it. In years past, a whole bunch of Sparrows would bathe together and splash out most of the water, but lately it's been just one bird at a time. Evidently communal bathing is out of fashion.

 

I refilled the square green feeder the other day and word must have gone around in squirrel-land, because this one was ensconced in the feeder and vociferously defended its perch when another squirrel dared to come near. 

 

This afternoon I was quick enough to snap a picture of this male House Finch enjoying an orange snack. The female had been there but she flew off as soon as I got the camera up and ready. Oh well. Her loss.

 

One of my knitting friends is expecting two grandbabies later this year. Two! But not twins, both of her children are expecting, so I need to knit teddy bears. I went downstairs to look for yarn I could use and noticed this really soft and fuzzy superbulky yarn. I have two colors of it. Coincidence? Maybe. I'm knitting it on smaller needles so that the spaces between stitches are smaller and the fabric is firmer. Not that it's firm exactly, it is extremely soft and fuzzy. It'll make good bears. I hope. This is a fun pattern. You knit the whole bear in one piece, like a pelt. It gets folded in half, sewn together, stuffed, the face gets embroidered on, the ears get stitched across, and a scarf is knitted to cinch in the neck. I knit them in acrylic yarn and stuff them with polyester so they're washable because we all know babies have no control over their bodily secretions.

 

I took a walk this morning. I'm slowly getting better at it. Then I spent the afternoon working on a short story. This one got long--over 8 pages--so I worked to wrap it up without it sounding like I just slapped "The End" on it and quit. I have a hard time with the "short" part of short story sometimes.

OJ had another soccer game tonight and they didn't win. It wasn't even close but OJ is playing hard. There are no games next week, two the following week, and two on the next Saturday. Then the soccer season is over for another year. I enjoy going. It's nice to sit outside in the evening and watch a herd of boys run around. I even missed the rainy game because I was at The Clearing. Whew. 

I didn't go to bed quite as early as I talked about last night but my light was out before 10 o'clock.

--Barbara 

Oh, Hail!

Today was a stormy day. Off and on. Mostly off but when it was on, it was REALLY on. The most impressive storm involved huge raindrops and penny-sized hail that pounded everything. It bounced off the patio and hit the patio door so hard I was afraid the glass would shatter and the hail on the three aluminum birdseed cans sounded like some sort of percussion section. There was a lot of thunder before the rain and hail and I just heard thunder again so maybe we're in for another round. There are leaves all over the street and the yards that the rain, wind, and hail tore off the trees. It was kind of scary.

 

In happier news, there was a Bluejay hanging around today. I took three pictures of it. The first one it was flying away and was a blur of blue and white. The second one wasn't much better. And here's the third one that finally looks like a bird instead of a smudge.

 

Two Downy Woodpeckers showed up at the same time. One claimed the suet cakes and the other one sat on the birdbath waiting its turn. That one wasn't very patient. It flew away before the other one left.

 

Before any rain came to beat them up, I went out and took pictures of Dad's roses. They really seem to be liking the weather we've been having because they're blooming like crazy.

 

I went out back to pull up the world's tallest thistle (probably not, but it was at least two feet tall), and noticed that the orange day lilies are starting to bloom. I took their picture between rain storms so they're a little bedraggled but not as bad as I'm sure they are now after the hail onslaught.

 

Next to the day lilies, the milkweed is getting ready to flower. I've got a nice patch of milkweed but have never had a Monarch Butterfly move in. *sigh*

 

 Before any of the rain, the lawn mowers came and zipped around mowing, trimming, and blowing. I'm impressed every time how quickly they get the job done and they do an acceptable job of it.

 

Today's drawing is a Frog. I know I've drawn it before but that's where the book opened and I wasn't unhappy with it so that's what I drew.

 

I was right. I finished a short story yesterday and jumped right into another story start. Some of them seem to almost write themselves and others it's like pulling teeth. Today was pretty easy. 

And it's raining again. I'm glad I live near the top of a hill, otherwise I'll bet the street is flooded down at the bottom. I am also extra-glad that OJ didn't have a soccer game tonight. They'd have been playing and would have called the game and we'd have to drive home in that hail storm. No thanks.

Is 8:47pm too early to go to bed? I feel like I just want to crawl in and fall asleep to the sound of rain on the roof. I'll stick it out until at least 9:00pm. Really I will.

--Barbara

Painting Practice

I decided to practice painting birch trees today so I taped a piece of watercolor paper to a plexiglass board, sketched in some trees, land, and water, and got busy. My sky and water are too pale, I think. The color barely shows and there IS color there. I masked out the birch trees and like the way they turned out. That bent one looks weird but I'll straighten it out next time. I don't know what happened there.

 

The only thing the mail carrier brought was a little cardboard box from Journey Arts with three tubes of paint in it. I've bought paint, paper, and palettes from Cheap Joe's Art Stuff over the years and was sad to learn that they went out of business at the end of last winter. I'd gotten a few of my favorite color paints from them and thought I was out of luck. Until about 10 days ago when I decided to google American Journey paints. There they were! So I ordered a tube of Skip's Green, one of Red Hot Mama, and one of Taylor's Flamingo. I mean, who wouldn't want to paint with those last two? 

 

A Robin spent time poking and pecking around under the feeders. I keep hoping to see one pull up a worm but I've only seen that once and didn't get a picture of it, dang it.

 

More Stella d'Oro lilies for your viewing pleasure. I'm waiting for all eleven plants to have flowers on them at once so I can take a long shot of the whole retaining wall.

 

And Dad's roses are still showing off. I took a little sniff tour of them today and can honestly report that each one smells better than the last one. So sweet, so rosy.

 

I cut and pasted a couple chapters of Sailing the Seas, the manuscript I'm working on with cda, and realized that the two chapters together were 42 pages. Waaay too long, especially for "one more chapter" before bed. So I spent the afternoon rereading them and dividing two chapters into four. Much better. Much easier reading. 

 

OJ's soccer game tonight was pretty much of a rout and they weren't on the winning side. But they played hard and will give it their all again on Thursday. We went to Smart Cow which was close to the soccer field for frozen yogurt to console the feelings of the player we love. I think he might have had more toppings than frozen yogurt in his cup. I just had chocolate sprinkles and boba on my chocolate and peanut butter yogurt. I was restrained.

--Barbara 

Squirrel's Back

Only this time it's a juvenile squirrel that can't figure out how to get to the seed in the square green feeder. It spent quite a bit of time leaping from the back of a patio chair to the top of the feeder, leaning down looking at the seed and the perch, and then giving up or falling off.

 

This is a terrible picture, but in the center is a brown and beige smudge that is the back of a hawk in the tree. It flew over the yard being chased by a bunch of smaller birds that kept mobbing it and generally throwing a fit while it sat in the tree until it gave up and flew away. 

 

The male House Finch posed on the square green feeder in the sunshine so its bright head and breast were shown to their best advantage. He didn't visit the orange or the grape jelly...

 

But the female House Finch (or a juvenile) had a nice grape jelly snack a while later.

 

I am crazy about these ostrich ferns. They spread underground and are moving around the flowerbed, crowding out other ferns, and shading the peonies. I couldn't even see if a peony bloomed there are so many ferns in front of them.

 

Today's drawing is a Daffodil. I know Daffodil season has passed, but it caught my eye and I thought I could draw it and not screw up too badly.

 

Like I said the other day, the Stella d'Oro lilies are exploding into bloom. This plant has about ten or so flowers in various stages of opening or closing and more buds than I could count. Well, that I stood around counting. I could have counted them if I'd stood there longer.

 

Today's easterly breeze brought the fragrance of Dad's roses to me here at my desk this afternoon. It's a much more appealing aroma than Burger King which is also borne on the wind, but from the west. See, there's a Burger King a block away and I'm downwind when it blows out of the west. Sometimes it's almost impossible to resist the allure of charbroiled beef, but I manage.

 

I took a little walk today but I'm impatient for my physique to catch up with my imagination. I imagine that I can walk without huffing and puffing and having my lower back ache, but so far I can't. I am not giving up. I can tell that I'm a little better and maybe by the time I go back to The Clearing in October I'll be a lot better. If I don't give up, that is. But I won't. Promise.

I worked on a different short story today before critique Zooming with cda this afternoon. I might have finished the story today. Maybe. I'll have to reread it tomorrow to see if I'm right.

--Barbara 

I Got a Lot Done Today

My to-do list kept getting longer today but I kept up with it and got it all done. "Blog" is the last item on the list and here I am. I took a walk. (notice my socks don't match) That got crossed off. I washed the sheets. Crossed off. De-stemmed and washed the grapes. Check. Ran the dishwasher. Check. Wound the antique clock. Crossed it off.

 

Today's art is another watercolor of Iris. Actually there are two of them, one big and one small. They each have their good points but I think I'll post the big one tonight. I like that I thought to add leaves to them. Makes them look a little more real.

 

The writing today was working on a short story that keeps getting longer. Maybe when I figure out where it's going I can cut some of it and make it shorter and stronger. I do tend to run off at the mouth, er, fingers.

 

A Downy Woodpecker was back on the suet cakes. I can't say if this is the same bird coming day after day. It's the same kind of bird but whether it's the same one, that I don't know. I like the way it blends into the suet cakes and the grid of the feeder.

 

I was lucky enough to catch sight of a Chickadee and quick enough to nab a photo. It isn't a great photo but it's a photo of a bird that's tricky to get a picture of.

 

Last but not least, there's Dad's roses. They're exploding into bloom. I'm especially enamored of this cluster of flowers and buds that I think looks like a bouquet. For a fleeting moment, the breeze carried the fragrance to me here at my desk. And they smell soooo good. 

 

Wherever you are, thanks Dad, and happy Father's Day! This is Dad with his little brother Walt in 1944 when he was in the navy. Doesn't he look like just a kid?

 

Happy Solstice! Today is the longest daylight day of the year. From here it's all downhill as far as hours and minutes of light goes. Too bad we aren't having a beautiful sunset to commemorate it.

Edited to add: We are having a beautiful sunset! I saw it out the west window coming back from the kitchen. It's not the greatest picture but it's better than nothing. 

--Barbara 

No Squirrel Today

Only birds. The most interesting birds were these House Finches that visited the Oriole feeder. No Orioles anymore, they've moved on, but the House Finches love the orange half and grape jelly. I was lucky enough to catch the male flying up to the grape jelly while the female waited on the orange.

 

Then there was this Robin prospecting for tasty morsels under the feeders. I watched until it flew off but it didn't pull up a worm.

 

And a Downy Woodpecker visited the suet cakes for the third day in a row. It didn't pose as nicely today as it had the last two days but it was good enough to be posted.

 

The Stella d'Oro lilies are still blooming mightily and not one flower to a plant anymore but many on some of them. This is just one of many, some coming, some going, on one plant. If you look closely, you can see yesterday's flower shriveled up in the lower right up against today's flower.

 

I'm watching this Dad's rosebud, waiting for it to open. I'm tempted to cut it and bring it inside so I can sniff it whenever I want to but then it won't last as long so I'm going to leave it on the rosebush and go outside to sniff. No one will notice if I'm outside sniffing flowers a few times a day, right?

 

Today's experiment in painting Iris was not as successful as I'd hoped. I fell back into my old habit of not waiting for one step to dry before adding the next one, not even using my fancy new heat gun. I'm such a disappointment to myself sometimes. I guess I'll paint an Iris again tomorrow and try to do better. Probably should have done a big one and a little one like KA had us do in class last week.

 

Both of the Book Funnel promos I joined the other day have started a day early. One is called Beach Reads and it's a sales promo for ebooks. Follow the link to check out what's offered. 

And if you're an audiobook listener, like I am, this one's for you. It's called the Official Soundtrack of Summer. There are over 50 audiobooks on here, 5 of them are mine. Click the link to check out the list.

There. Earlier I listed the promos on Facebook and now the links are on the blog. I'll include them in my July Writing Progress Letter and a couple more times on FB. I wonder if I can list them on Instagram. I'll see. They're both sales promos so no newsletter signup is required, just an opportunity to buy ebooks or audiobooks. Marketing, it's never ending.

--Barbara 

The Daily Squirrel

Every day I see the same thing. A squirrel hanging by its back feet, wrapped around the suet nuggets feeder snacking away. I don't know if it's the same squirrel every day or a different one. They all look the same to me. I have to remember to go to the birdseed store tomorrow for more suet nuggets.

 

A Downy Woodpecker visited the suet cakes for long enough to have a picture made. It didn't really pose but it did move from the back to the side so I could see the whole bird.

 

More Dad's rosebuds with more to come. I love watching them open and flood the air with perfume. Dad would be so proud. I just wish I knew what variety rose it is. I know it isn't Mr. Lincoln, that one was Grandma Angermeier's favorite rose. But I'm sure it's an old rose, not a modern hybrid because no one bred the fragrance out of it to get color or habit.

We had a wonderful afternoon. LC had summer band camp this week for the first time and today was the concert. It was at St. Norbert College in DePere and it was just great. First came two jazz bands--younger kids, then older kids. They were pretty darned good. LC was in the World Music Band which played marimba, drums, bells, and those gourds with beaded nets around them. She had a marimba solo and then played the bells which were metal cones joined at the narrow end, played with a wooden stick. Then all of the campers took the stage in the Concert Band which played patriotic music in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was a rousing end to a wonderful afternoon of music. We went for ice cream afterward, as you do.

 

Most of the morning I spent uploading audiobook mp3 files to Book Funnel which is another site where I can sell my eBooks and audiobooks. I joined two Sales promos; one is Beach Reads and the other is Audiobooks--Official Soundtrack of Summer. Both of them start on June 21 and run into late July. I'll promote them both on Facebook and my newsletter email list and maybe on Substack, although I don't think Substack is a "selling" site so maybe not. I got all of the files uploaded and then tried to listen to a retail sample. It was playing but I couldn't hear it. I sorta panicked, poking buttons and jumping to other sites to see if there was something wrong with the files. Turned out I had the volume on my laptop turned down. Once I realized that, the problem was solved. Sheesh.

 

The Stella d'Oro lilies are still blooming strong. I love seeing those yellow flowers every day. 

 

I keep seeing a baby bunny hippity-hopping across the patio. Well, this evening I realized that it's two baby bunnies. One of them was sitting in the grass preening its fur and then not too long after that I saw these two reclined in the grass nibbling on clover. Sorry it's blurry, I took the picture through a screen.

 

I didn't do any art today. The only art was music at the concert. The rest of the day I did battle with audiobook files and setting up special pages that let me sell and join promos. I thought I had all of the pages done yesterday but it turned out I had to do a separate page for each format. Luckily I remembered how I did it yesterday so I just knuckled down and tackled the problem. Maybe tomorrow I'll draw or paint.

--Barbara