Lots of Snow Melted Today

It was warmish and sunny today so most of the snow on the hill in the backyard melted. The snow in the front yard was not as quick to melt but it's going away too. This Cardinal visited the platform feeder this morning. You can see the snow on the hill started to melt and the snow on the feeder roof dripping to make an icicle. Yesterday I kept hearing clinking sounds from various parts of the house and thought I might have mice but it turned out to be all of the small icicles falling from the eaves. Whew. I do not need mice.

 

A Mourning Dove landed on one of the stones I use to weigh down the seed can lids and posed so nicely I took its picture. You can see how warm it was because the birdbath is thawed in this picture. By the end of the day most of that snow was all gone too. I'd remove the broken birdbath heater but I've taped it to the base of the birdbath and really don't want to go out and get all wet untaping it. It'll be okay until real Spring shows up.

 

The only other visiting bird I saw today was this Sparrow taking advantage of the suet cakes. Sparrows are equal opportunity eaters. They visit all the feeders, except the safflower seed in the platform feeder. They leave that one for the House Finches, Cardinals, and Chickadees.

 

The Sketchbook Challenge today was to draw a gerbera or daisy. I was overly proud of myself that I managed to draw these without having a picture to draw from. We'll see if I can keep it up. I know what most stuff looks like, I just can't get it to travel from my brain, down my arm, to my pencil.

 

Today's watercolor was an all-over floral page. My leaves aren't as fine as hers but I think the flowers aren't too bad. The pinkish ones are supposed to be anemones and the red-orange ones are supposed to be rosebuds but I think they look more like tulips. I don't know what the yellow dot flowers are supposed to be.

 

After lunch I drew a gratitude journal page for yesterday. I would have done one for today but the webinar this evening took more time than I thought it would. I suppose I could have skipped Jeopardy! after supper but I didn't want to and I knew the Final Jeopardy answer. Sometimes I really need that.

 

I spent a lot of the afternoon writing a new scene for my next novel. I managed to bang out four pages and I even think I know where in the story it's supposed to go. There's kissing, but only a little.

Tonight I attended a webinar about Substack which is a website for writers that isn't social media. It's a place to post your writing that counts as publication. I have a huge file of unpublished short stories that I can mine for things to post. I need to do more research but it sounds interesting. Just what I need, something else to work on.

--Barbara