It Darn Well Better Be the Last Mowing of 2009

I'm tired of mowing the lawn, pushing the mower up the hills and running after it down the hills, not letting it toss me into the garden or run over my foot when I'm mowing tight to the back of the fence. In my next life I'm going back to having a flat lawn. Flat. Maybe I'll have a gardener to make flower beds and manicure my lawn. Or better yet, I won't have any grass, not a blade. I'll have trees, perennials and long decorative grasses that wave in the breezes, pretty flowers that attract butterflies and hummingbirds and no grass to mow. Yeah, that's what I'm having.

I just realized that I've kept myself on the move doing chores and fixing things around here, probably to avoid sitting down and writing. Tsk, tsk. That's not going to cut it next month when I'm signed up to do NaNoWriMo. What's that, you ask? It's a challenge to write a complete 50,000 word novel manuscript first draft in November. That's 1667 words a day for 30 days. I've done it 3 times and I'm signed up to do #4. Just think of all that raw material I've got lurking in my hard drive. You're jealous, right? So what's stopping you from signing up and putting your own words on paper?

October 18--Camille Pissarro, The Church and Farm of Eragny. Cam leaned close to the canvas and squinted to get it just right. He shivered in the chill of the winter in his poorly heated rooms. He didn't mind the way his hand shook, the tiny movements spread the paint, softened the edges which pleased him. Painting scenes of hot summer days reminded him that winter would pass and the golden heat of summer would return. He and his best friend, Claude would once again pack up their paints and take the train even farther south to the tiny village where they rented an old farmhouse with a barn they could use for a studio. If they were lucky one of them would sell a canvas or two, then they could paint on through the winter and be able to afford both rent and heat.

It's hard to write to the same picture two days in a row, usually I turn it over and go back to the one from 6 months before, but I kind of like this one.
--Barbara