Not Frozen

The first thing I noticed when I opened the drapes this morning was the birdbath wasn't frozen. That means the heater is working because all of the neighbors' roofs were frosty so I knew it would have iced over without the heater. I put the white rock on top of the heater so no pesky squirrel knocks it out of the water.

 

The gold mums are still blooming a little. I had the landscapers leave them the Saturday before last so that there'd be a little color in front of the house. The copper ones are fading fast and the purple mums are almost all finished but the gold ones are still making a little show of it.

 

I wondered why the round feeder was emptied so quickly and today I found out why. One of the squirrels has figured out how to hang upside down from its back feet and nibble seeds out of the bottom ports. When this squirrel left another one shinnied up to the suet nuggets and had a snack. I didn't see one in the square green feeder but the top was kind of cocked so I'm guessing one had been there.

 

I got to do the school run today and I finished the last few rows of Car Knitting Washcloth #18. Not that I've knitted 18 washcloths this year, that's from the time I started leaving a bag of knitting in the pocket of the driver's door. And there was the pandemic gap so about 10 years maybe.

Once the squirrels all had their afternoon snacks I went out and filled the feeders. I took down the platform feeder and took its crook out of the ground. Actually I stuck it in the ground closer to the house without the feeder on it because I didn't know where I'd store the big, awkward thing. The squirrels have rediscovered the cob corn so I filled that too. I'm determined to get rid of most of the birdseed and just keep the suet cakes and nuggets for the winter.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Light & Dark. She said to draw squares on the paper, number them, and then fill the squares with tone starting with light and moving to dark. My paper is pretty small so I only had five rows of four squares. I used my mechanical pencil, a #2 pencil, a brush pen, a Micron pen, and a wax pastel. It was an interesting activity.

 

I came back here meaning to write another 1000 words toward the next novel manuscript and instead I wrote the next writing progress email that I'll schedule to be sent on November 1 to my greatly expanded mailing list. Taking part in those free book promos has added over 100 names to my mailing list. Pretty good!

 

This morning I had a Zoom with cda. She sent me a poem that needed a couple tweaks and I sent her the first draft of the blurb for Anneke's Legacy. She helped me polish up the middle of it which it desperately needed. It's funny how other eyes can see things that you miss. 

--Barbara