A Flock!

There were lots of birds around this morning. A flock of Sparrows mobbed the square green feeder and spent time pecking through the snow underneath the feeder looking for fallout.

 

Then I saw a Red-bellied Woodpecker on the suet nuggets. It started on the back side but moved around so that I could see its red head and take a halfway decent picture of it.

 

When the Sparrows were here, I saw movement on the suet cakes and there was a Downy Woodpecker there. It started out on the right side pecking toward the back, so I could barely see it but it moved across the bottom of the feeder and ended up on the left side where I got a picture so you can see what it is.

 

Making the bed this morning I saw that last night's full Wolf Moon hadn't set yet so I grabbed my phone and took a couple pictures. One isn't too bad.

 

I tried the first flower in my new watercolor flowers book I got last night. It's a poppy. It doesn't look much like the picture but I'm learning to call less than successful paintings "studies" and deciding I can try again. My mop brush didn't act the way she said it would so my petals weren't pale and full like hers. I'm going to try again. You can see by the flash glare on the lower petals that it wasn't quite dry when I took its picture. Oh well. And I was practicing with different brushes on the bottom of the paper.

 

Tonight I drew a gratitude journal page for today. I did a lot of things today that I couldn't figure out how to draw, like donating a bunch of stuff to Goodwill and removing the last vestiges of childproofing in the bathroom. The word count today was 1,350 which is a lot more than the last few days. I stretched out an idea I had when I was falling asleep last night, happy that I remembered it this morning, and got it down today. Whew.

 

We're supposed to have freezing rain turning to snow tonight which means the roads in the morning will be challenging. I don't have to go anywhere until lunchtime so by then things should be much safer. I hope.

I managed to drag the ornament bin upstairs this afternoon without knocking myself off the stairs and started de-decorating the tree tonight after supper. I got part-way done but a friend called and talked for 45 minutes which means I'll finish tomorrow or maybe Tuesday. 

After Goodwill, I stopped at the gas station to fill up my tank and fill up the snowblower gas can too. I'm never sure how much room there is in the gas can so I never fill it. Today I got it about halfway before I got too nervous that it'd spill out the top so I quit. I also went into Goodwill and found a nice big white china plate I can use as a mixing palette when I use my paints that are in smaller containers without mixing space. I might have too much painting stuff. Nah.

--Barbara