All The Weather

We had hot, humid sun; cloudy, breezy but still humid; and thunder, lightning, wind, and rain. All today. The storms rolled in in the late afternoon and I suspect that they interrupted the special soccer match in Lambeau Field this evening but I hear loud music coming from that direction so I think things are back to normal over there.

I decided that it was time to weed the top of the retaining wall, especially behind the rental side of the duplex. There's a kind of vine-y weed with little white flowers that spreads out all over that side and even pops out between the blocks of the wall. First I went out at 11 o'clock in the blazing sun (I wore a hat) and managed to clear about half of it but it was just too hot and sweaty so I came inside to hydrate and cool off. I waited until the clouds rolled in and the breeze shifted from the south to the east to go back out and finish the job. It was a big job. I ended up with three bushels of weeds to dump in the back corner of the lot so it composts. I'm very glad that's done.

While I was out there I filled the bird feeders and a Bluejay discovered the peanuts before the squirrels did. I am thrilled that this picture turned out as clear as it did because the peanut wreath spends the summer at the back of the lot so that the Hummingbird feeder has a closer crook.

I wasn't too impressed with my drawing of a spinning top out of the 15-Minute Artist book so I'm jumping right to the Hawthorn sprig from 10-Steps: Nature. It's worlds better.

Then I paged back to the second set of facial features in 10-Steps: People and got drawing. For some reason I'm having better luck drawing these than I had drawing the first set. Maybe it's all the practice I'm doing or maybe it's a new sketchbook I started yesterday.

I thought that yesterday's watercolor lily was the wrong color. Then when I was pulling weed vines off the lily plant I popped off one of the blossoms so I brought it in, put it into a bowl, and set it next to the painting. They were almost the same color! Amazing.

So I tried painting it again. Not such a lucky attempt. This is what happens when I get frustrated and scrub the brush across the paper. Not my best effort but I'm determined to show off the bad and the good-ish.

Today's toss was a pair of bamboo cutting boards that I never use. I have a stack of nylon ones that I use all the time and can put in the dishwasher so I'm sure they're clean, so I wonder why I keep the bamboo ones. Not anymore.

I finally learned how to voice text on my phone. I had to Google it and watch a YouTube video and it was criminally simple to do but now I can do it. The temptation is to ramble, not be concise like when I'm typing texts but I'll get better at it soon enough.

--Barbara