One Red Rose

Another one of Dad's roses bloomed so I'm honor bound to share its beauty with you. Every time I look at them I think I see Dad smiling down at me with the gleam in his eyes that showed how much he liked them. And me.

 

A Chickadee came to the feeder this morning but the photo I took of it turned out blurry. So when another Chickadee landed on top of the crook and perched there looking around for quite a long time I took a couple more shots. Naturally in both of them the bird is looking over its other shoulder so I have a nice, sharp photo of the back of a Chickadee's head. Oh well.

 

This morning I was thinking that I didn't have time last night to draw a gratitude journal page so I did it then. I'm pretty thrilled at the way I managed to draw my hands on the steering wheel looking out at the highway yesterday. Sometimes I can actually draw what's in my mind. Sometimes not so much. Today was a good day.

 

The drawing/sketching prompt today was Clothing. All I did was draw a dress and skirt from the page in the book and added a hat and mittens to the page from my imagination. Some days my imagination takes a vacation. That happened today.

I worked on more short stories today too. I reread a couple that I'd worked on this week and decided they're done so I moved them into the Flash folder because they're short. Only one of the stories I've written in the last few weeks has been long enough to not be Flash. I especially like the one entitled "Elf Available." I'm looking forward to posting that one on Substack.

 

I wasn't going to paint the next thing in Art for Joy's Sake because it was a strawberry and it looked hard. But there was nothing I wanted to watch on TV tonight so I plunged in and painted strawberries. In the one on the left, she said to paint the berry leaving the seeds white. That was a challenge to paint all around the little ovals I'd drawn but I didn't do too badly. Although it looks like something's taken a bite out of the left side. Then in the one on the right, she said to paint over the seeds drawn on the berry and then pick them out with full strength white watercolor paint straight out of the tube once it was dry. I don't know. Both of them look okay to me.

 

I had to go to the grocery this afternoon because I was out of bananas and low on chocolate ice cream (Horrors!) I took my time and didn't stride through the store like I usually do so my knee didn't ache quite as much when I got home as it had been. I looked up how to treat a muscle strain and the only things I haven't been doing of the recommended RICE was rest, ice, and elevation. I am wearing a compression brace. It doesn't feel good if I sit here with my leg elevated. That seems to make the front of my knee ache. I'm convinced that part of my knee pain is from favoring the hurt part which is behind my knee. It's difficult to ice the area behind my knee too. According to the internet (which we know is the source of all truth), it could take weeks or months to heal. Yippee. 

--Barbara