And Rainy

We had a couple bouts of hard rain this afternoon. It's still hot and humid. I nearly suffocated when I went out for the mail and walked over to the front window to make sure it was all the way closed. It was all of about six steps and I could feel the heaviness of the air. They're talking about more rain tomorrow and then almost 100% chance of rain on Friday. I've got my fingers crossed that Thursday morning isn't rainy so the weeders can come and work without getting drenched. Hopefully Saturday will stay dry so people can celebrate the Fourth outdoors. It's definitely a picnic day.

 

One of the squirrels figured out how to get into the square green feeder. I suspect that this is the regular squirrel because I saw the young one on the ground when it was up in there chomping up seed and digging for peanut halves.

 

I did laundry today (ugh) and was looking for a snack. I remembered a WW recipe for apple dip made with powdered peanut butter (which I had), Splenda, and plain Greek yogurt. So I whipped up a dish of it, sliced an apple, and gobbled it up. Yum. Only 2 points!

 

Today I painted a Rose. It wasn't very difficult. I checked in the book of Easy Watercolor Flowers but that one looked complicated. Then I looked up the video of the 31 day floral course on Creativebug. That one was doable. So I did it. And it turned out just fine. I added the faint cobalt teal background to anchor the flower in place. I like it.

 

A juvenile House Finch paid a visit to the orange half this afternoon and was really enjoying it. At one point, it pecked up a bigger piece of orange flesh, surprised itself, and flew up to the top of a crook, but it soon went back to work pecking away at the fruit.

 

A Downy Woodpecker flew over to the suet cakes. Unfortunately the cake on my side of the feeder is pretty much gone so the bird hung from the bottom of the feeder to peck at the other side. So you get a view of the underside and tail end of a Woodpecker.

 

I'm half a leg away from being done knitting Teddy Bear #1. I'll finish that last leg, clip it together, sew it, stuff it, embroider on the face, and find some thinner yarn to use to knit a scarf to cinch the neck. Then I get to knit another one. But I enjoy this kind of knitting much more than garment knitting.

 

This afternoon I found a file folder of short stories I'd forgotten about. Oh boy! Six more stories to tidy up for posting on Substack. Every little bit helps the cause. These were stories I wrote to submit to The First Line, a literary journal that gives you the first line (duh) and you have to write a story from there. I submitted stories but never got selected or published, so they'll just get published on Substack. One of them is quite long and very unlike me. I was amazed when I reread it today. Totally not my story style. Fun!

--Barbara