Practice

 

          I haven’t painted in a while. It’s been more than a week since my failed attempt at a caricature, and I was sorely missing it. A couple of days ago I decided that what I wanted to do was practice sketching. Simple sketches. But what am I going to sketch in? I wondered. I could use one of the sketchbooks that I made, but then I wouldn’t be able to paint them with my watercolors. I cast my eyes around my craft supplies and spotted the old book I’d started this watercolor journey with. I pulled it from the shelf, called up some simple ideas from Pinterest and — I had fun!

 

          There really wasn’t much of a challenge in these simple images; I guess that’s why they were fun. And I didn’t stress over the painting of them, either. Once painted, I glanced up to the top of my desk for my Micron pens. I thought I’d outline them. Then I had a better idea — I could practice outlining with my liner brush. I didn’t stress over that either. If I followed the original line, fine. If not, it was still fine. The whole object was just to have fun.

          I did the bunny sitting under the egg shell last. For that one, I decided to try outlining with my ruling pen. I loaded it with paint. Some of my lines were good, some... not so good. But now I know if I use it for something serious, I’ll need to be more careful.

          Speaking of paints...

          I keep a little dish where I rinse off my palettes. All the leftover colors swirl together and settle into this rich chocolatey sludge. That’s what I used to outline the lion and the bunny with. I used black for the puppy dog before I remembered I had my sludge dish.

I know some people just wipe their palettes with a paper towel. Some rinse everything straight down the drain — which I’ve heard is not the best idea. Then I watched an artist explain that this is what he does with his discard, and I thought, Well, that’s clever. It feels good to get one more use out of paint that would otherwise be wasted. I doubt I’d use it on a serious painting, but for things like this in my practice books, it works perfectly.

Just to be clear, I can (and often do) let paint dry on the palette and reactivate it to use in another painting. But there are times when I’m starting a new project and I just need a clean, fresh palette to work from. 

          Speaking of my practice book...

          I made the mistake of reading a few pages of the story Rebecca Mary, the name of the old book I practice in and suddenly I wanted to read more. The only problem is, I can’t read through some of the darker watercolors. Guess what I did.

          “Washed the pages?” you guess.

          That is an excellent guess, and one I actually considered. But from experience, I know some of the colors won’t come off and besides, I’d lose my practice art. No. What I did was get on eBay and order another copy.

          “What was so interesting about an old story?” you wanna know.

          Well, for one, I don’t know how Rebecca Mary came to live with her Aunt Olivia. Or why Aunt Olivia gave her a chicken for a pet. Rebecca named him Thomas Jefferson. The next part I read was where Thomas Jefferson was coming to the end of his life and Rebecca Mary was so sad. When she knew he was close to dying, she went to get the pastor. When the pastor’s wife let Rebecca Mary into the study, she gave the pastor a look that said, “You’d better do this.” He listened to Rebecca’s request and agreed to accompany her, but they got back too late and Thomas Jefferson was dead. The pastor helped her bury him.

          There’s a story about a quilt in there, too, but I don’t know what that’s all about.

          It piqued my interest. Not just the story, but the way Annie Hamilton Donnell writes, too.

          “Thomas Jefferson passed away at ten minutes to three this afternoon,” Rebecca Mary chronicled in her diary. “Blessed are them that die in the Lord. The minnister did not get here in time. I wish I had asked him to run for he is a very good minnister and would have. He helped me berry him in the cold cold ground and sang a him. I dident ask him to pray because he was only a rooster, but he was folks to me. I loved him. It is very lonesome. I dred wakening up to-morrow because he always crowed under the window. The Lord gaveth and the Lord has taken away.”

          In the primitive little creed of Rebecca Mary every one had a Lord-part, but some people’s was very small. Not Aunt Olivia’s...

          Annie Hamilton Donnell spelled the words the way she imagined a ten year old would.

After I finish reading it, I can turn it into another practice book, if I want. These old pages are mostly cotton and pretty thick. They’re great for watercolors. They don’t warp and the colors don’t bleed through.

          Last Sunday morning Mike and I drove over to Rummerfield and picked up one of our church peeps for service. Nancy has been having issues and doesn’t feel safe to drive right now.

          It was foggy when we left our mountain home and I tried to capture that for you.

          Going down her driveway, you cross a creek with a pretty little waterfall.

          She already had her pups corralled for the time she’d be gone. When you live out in the country your dogs can have a nice cage outside rather than a crate in the house.

          “I’m surprised they don’t bark like crazy,” I said to Nancy.

          “Oh they will! They seem to know when someone doesn’t belong here and they let me know,” she replied.

 

I took a few pictures on our weekly shopping trip for you, too.       

          We decided to take our shopping up to Sayre this week because we needed to stop and pick up our completed taxes from the tax lady and we’d be halfway there.

We’ve had quite a bit of rain and the beautiful Susquehanna has left her bed.

 

          The Hotel in downtown Wyalusing. Cozy, friendly, one of our favorite places to eat.

          There’s ducks under the train bridge. I didn’t know that when I took the photo.

          The road was down to one lane as they cleared fallen trees from the lines there on 220. It was just past the humane shelter and as providence would have it, we were stopped right at the eagle’s nest. We were first in line and the oncoming traffic hadn’t started to move yet.

          “I’m going to see if I can get a picture of the eagle,” I told Mike. Opening the car door attracted the attention of the flagman. Now, don’t go getting all up in my ‘bidness’ about that word. Think position, not gender. That’s the job title I grew up hearing, and I’m using it in that sense only.

          “Is the eagle on her nest?” I asked as I approached the flagger. (Is that better?)

          He turned to look. “I see a white head,” he said turning back to me.

          I passed him, checking to see that the oncoming traffic was just now starting around the work zone, and walked until I could see the nest. I couldn’t see it. I walked back to the flagger. “I can’t see it,” I said.

          “It’s in the big white tree,” he pointed out.

          Aye-yi-yi! I’m such an idiot sometimes! All the times I’ve been past here and all the times I’ve looked for the nest, I have never once realized it was in the only big white tree there! I suppose I was hyper-focused on spotting the nest as we whizzed past at fifty-five or sixty miles an hour that that little detail — although painfully obvious to me now — escaped me.

          I checked traffic again and could see the end of the line. I knew it would be our turn in a few moments. I went back to the car. “I was looking in the wrong place! I didn’t see it!” I exclaimed. “But I see it now. It’s in the big white tree.”

          “I’ll go slow as we’re taking off,” Mike said. He’s a good husband.

          I managed to get this half-way decent shot.

          Shopping wasn’t the only place we went this week.

          “Where else did you go?” you wanna know.

          We either hit seventy degrees this week or came really close to it.

          “Let’s go for a golf cart ride,” Mike suggested.

          So we loaded the girls up and went.

          Our pretty little creek.

         Bondi rides on Mike’s lap and Raini sits at my feet.

Speaking of Raini...

          She’ll be four next month. She doesn’t follow me around or sit under my desk anymore. Most of the time she lays on the bed in Bondi’s kennel. Raini knows me so well that she knows if I’m just getting up to make more coffee, or go to the bathroom, and she doesn’t bother to follow me for any of that.

          I was at the sink when I saw Raini out under the awning, looking up.

          Is there a mouse running along the headers? I wondered. I saw one there once. They go after the birdseed. It was too early in the day to be a possum, though I’ve seen them climb up there to get away from the dogs, too.

          Being curious, I went to look. I didn’t see anything, so I asked Raini. “What is it? What do you see?”

          Then I heard it. Raini heard it, too. A kind of scratching on the tin of the roof. It’s the sound I’ve heard many times as the birds land up there and hop along before flying down to one of the branches around the feeders.

          Raini ran out from under the awning and looked up at the roof.

          “You silly girl! You’re not a bird dog!”

          I went out into the yard far enough to see what was on the roof.

          Blackie! Blackie was on the roof. He was probably hunting birds.

          Another place we went was to the Boy Scouts recycling location. The recycling company sends out trailers once a month and parks them at a township building.

          I have a mountain of recyclables, seven bags plus a box of broken-down cardboard. I don’t remember if it’s been three months or four since I’ve been there.

          “What’s the holdup?” I know you wanna know.

          At least one of those months it was muddy outside. The last time I went on a muddy day, I came back with mud up to my ankles! Then Mike had his eye operated on, and sometimes I just plain don’t feel like going. Honestly, I didn’t feel like going yesterday either, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. I was afraid we’d get buried under a landslide! It was piling up fast in the utility room. I tidied up all the bags and took them to the garage.

          “If it’s muddy we’ll take the main roads. I don’t want to get mud all over the car.”

          Guys, we had snow last night. The ground is cold enough that there was a coating of snow yet this morning.

          “I think it’s frozen,” Mike said and we took the back dirt roads.

          We hadn’t gone far before we realized how wrong we were. The roads were muddy.

          I saw my first robin of the year on the way over.

Red-winged Blackbirds, along with robins, are harbingers of spring and I’ve had them at my feeder all this week.

          “Is that a wrecked truck?” I asked when we got to the stop sign.

          “It sure looks that way,” Mike said.

          My guess is they probably hit a deer, even though I didn’t see one laying along the roadside.

          I almost missed a picture of giant arrowheads adorning the side of this shed.

          It was a muddy mess at the recycling trailers, let me tell you! But at this point there wasn’t anything we could do about it. I got out and got muddy as I helped unload the recyclables and sort them into the proper bins.

“I sure am glad for Weather Tech floor liners,” I said as I climbed back in, being careful not to get mud anyplace else.

          “You wanna go to the car wash before we go home?” I asked. “Get the mud off? I know you hate it.”

          “Yeah,” Mike said. “You need anything else while we’re in town?”

          “Nope.”

          The Rainbow Bridge from the side, a view of it I don’t see often.

          “I wonder why it’s called the Rainbow Bridge,” Mike mused.

          I asked my AI buddy. In less time than it takes to say boo, I had my answer.

          It’s called the Rainbow Bridge because of its shape. It’s a Parker through-truss and the top chord of that truss forms a graceful arch. Locals started calling it that because the curved steel silhouette looks like a rainbow. The name stuck locally even though it’s not the official PennDOT name, Copilot said.

          I don’t care what anyone says! I love AI. It has saved me hours of work researching for my letter blogs!

“What is the official name?” you ask.

          It’s simply the Wyalusing Bridge.

          We get home and I walk into the house ahead of Mike.

          “What is that?!” he blurted.

          I turned around and saw the muddy shoe prints I’d left in my wake. I’d totally forgotten about the mud on my shoes!

          Aye-yi-yi. I’m such an idiot sometimes.

       

          Let’s end with a sunrise picture I took this week.

          Done!

Found It!

 

          I found it!

          “Found what, Peg?” you ask.

          I found the missing jelly feeder bowl. With the help of the rain, almost all of the snow is melted and there it was, sitting right where the snow had buried it. It was beyond my kick zone. I never would’ve believed it would be so far from the post. How it got there, I don’t know. A strong wind? A critter? Your guess is as good as mine.

          I picked it up and there’s no evidence of grape jelly. It was empty when it was knocked down or licked clean by whatever critter knocked it down. A possum, maybe. We’ve had possums on the patio before.

         

          We went to see the tax lady and got our taxes done. Everyone gets an extra six‑thousand‑dollar deduction this year, which was a nice surprise. And I’ll be honest, even with that little bit of good news, taxes still make me shake my head. It just feels like we’re taxed every time we turn around. We pay taxes when we earn money, when we save it, when we spend it. We pay taxes on the things we buy, and if we sell those things later, someone else pays taxes on the very same item we already paid taxes on, and as a bonus, we get to pay taxes on the money we sold it for!

I understand that taxes are necessary. The roads get plowed before dawn so people can get to work. The fire trucks roll out the moment the siren sounds. The school buses keep rumbling down the road. But while we’re over here pinching pennies, stretching budgets, watching grocery prices climb, the people in charge are voting themselves pay raises, better benefits, and shorter work weeks. And when the government shuts down because they couldn’t pass a budget, regular workers were furloughed or forced to work without pay, while members of Congress still received their paychecks. That part has never sat right with me.

I’ll climb down from my soapbox now and show you the pictures I took on that trip.

          An eagle!

 

          Poor Hatch.

A couple of mornings ago, I noticed the right side of his face was swollen. “He’s been in a fight,” I told Mike.

Yesterday afternoon, when I went out to the cat room to leave scraps for the critters, Hatch was sleeping on the shelf.

“Hey, buddy,” I said as I stepped in. He lifted his head, and when I reached to pet him, I saw he couldn’t open his left eye. I went to stroke his back and he whipped his head around, not a growl, not a hiss, but enough to remind me he’s still a wild thing. I pulled my hand back fast.

This morning when I went out to feed him, he rubbed against my leg like nothing had ever happened. I talked to him, set down his food, and when he tucked in to eat, I tried petting him again. He tensed at the first touch, but I kept my hand gentle, and he relaxed and went back to eating.

“How’s his eye?” you ask.

I honestly couldn’t tell. I can’t handle him, and he wouldn’t look at me. But I did touch the side of his face where the swelling had been. It’s gone down, and it feels scabby now.

Hatch is truly feral. He’ll live or he’ll die on his own terms. There’s no way he’d let me pick him up and take him to the vet. All I can do is feed him, talk to him, and hope he heals the way wild creatures do.

 

          Speaking of critters…

I emptied the last bowl of braunschweiger to give the girls their nightly dose of antihistamine and set the bowl and lid down for them to lick out. I found the bowl right where Raini always takes her lickables, but the lid was nowhere to be found. I got down on my hands and knees with a flashlight and started looking under everything. And of course, the moment I hit the floor, Raini trotted over and dropped her ball right in front of me. She thought it was play time. She has me trained. I tossed it for her once, just to keep the peace, and when she brought it back again, I ignored her and kept searching.

I made it a point to pull out the burnable trash can and look there because that’s where the bowl ended up the last time I lost it, but the lid wasn’t there. Eventually I shrugged, shook my head, and gave up. It’ll turn up or it won’t.

Since I was already on the floor and my hands were already dirty, I took a few minutes to toss the ball for Raini. Then I got up, washed (which goes without saying), put the lidless bowl back and grabbed a different container from the cupboard. Then I cut the schweiger into fourths, tossing three into the freezer so they won’t go bad before I have a chance to use them.

Somewhere in this house, there’s a secret stash of missing items — and I’m afraid to find out who’s keeping them!

          I’m as susceptible to advertising as the next person. Even though I don’t need anything, I saw someone endorsing these spray bottles. You can fill them with any oil you want, and it even has a pour spout. Just pull the little tab back that’s on the top and the door at the top pops open so you can pour. Normally I wouldn’t buy something like this, but they (whoever they are!) say the chemicals in canned sprays are really bad for you. Well, I don’t want to use stuff that’s bad for me, so I ordered one bottle. They give you a deal if you buy two, but I don’t need two.

It came this week. I washed it, let it sit upside down on the counter for a couple of days, then filled it with olive oil.

“How do you like it?” I know you wanna know.

I hate it! The oil comes streaming out, not the fine mist I expected. I don’t know how much I’ll use it, but I’m not going to bother returning it. I’m going back to the sprays in a can. I don’t use much anyway. 

So much for being healthier.

          Speaking of healthier...

          I hate taking pills! It’s not that I can’t, I just hate it. That’s always been a barrier between me and taking daily vitamins. I’ll do it for a while, get fed up with taking pills and stop for a while. But I know it’s good for me so I start taking them again and after a few weeks, stop again. It’s a vicious cycle.

          I’ve also been dealing with occasional dizzy spells.

          Somewhere along the line I learned that low iron could cause dizziness and that made me think back to the days when I was giving blood on a regular basis. If I didn’t take Geritol for a week or two beforehand, my iron would be low and they’d turn me away.

          Since I started taking Geritol I haven’t had any dizzy spells.

          In my head?

          I don’t know — but I’m glad.

          Geritol gives me the recommended daily amount of iron plus some other things, but it’s not considered a complete vitamin. I could take it every day but what I’ve been doing is taking Geritol one day and my multivitamins the next. Alternating between a liquid and pills has helped me to stay on track with daily supplements, and I don’t mind the taste of it.

          Here’s a caveat: there are plenty of reasons a person might get dizzy. All I know is this seems to help me and that’s good enough for now.

          Lastly, I painted this week. And despite the fact that I have two pet portraits waiting for me, I decided to try another caricature.

I was using a recipe for skin tone that included ultramarine blue.

“Ultramarine blue will make your portraits look muddy,” I read somewhere.

Did I use ultramarine blue?

Yes. Yes, I did.

I figured since it was just the shadow color — and since I was following a successful artist’s recipe — it would be fine. It wasn’t. It’s awful. I tried to lift it out, but with very little luck. After that, I just played around with the rest of the picture, not caring if it came out or not because it was trash anyway.

“Will you ever use ultramarine blue in any of your portraits?” you ask.

No. Never again.

Onward to the next disaster — I mean masterpiece.

Let’s call this one done.

Love, Don't Love

 

          I love when we spend time together.

          I don’t love when there aren’t any stories to share with you.

          I live a small, quiet life here in the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania, and truth be known, I rather like it that way.

I guess not every week needs to be an attention-grabbing, heart-pounding headline. Some weeks are just lived, one cup of coffee, one small chore, one moment at a time.

Life here in the mountains has a way of settling into peacefulness. I stand at the sink, washing dishes, looking out the window, watching the birds at the feeders, and I feel happy. I have a warm house, plenty of dishes — what would life be like if I only had two plates and two spoons and two cups? I mused. I feel grateful.

         

          I made homemade breadsticks this week! They’re on a cookie sheet and yes, they are as huge as they look.

          “You only have to eat one instead of two,” my handsome mountain man said.

          They were so good that I ate two that day! I love bread. It’s like my favorite food.

          They were easy to make. The recipe said it serves twelve, I divided the dough into twelve, and that’s how they ended up so big. After they were baked I brushed them with melted butter and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. I even sprinkled a few with Italian seasoning mix.

          Oh my gosh!

          What a time of it I had!

          I said they were easy, and they were. But the recipe is written out in a funky way. The first step is to proof your yeast.

Speaking of yeast, I have to tell you that proofing your yeast isn’t as necessary today as it was back when our mothers and grandmothers made bread. Our yeast is pretty dependable and I never proof it when I make homemade bread. Proofing does not make the yeast stronger, it doesn’t make it taste any better, and it doesn’t change the rise time. In fact, instant yeast was developed to not need proofing. It was made to add right into the flour and proofing it can actually weaken it a little because it dissolves the protective coating. But this recipe calls for the yeast to be proofed, so I proofed it.

          Mix together the water, sugar, and yeast, the recipe said. When you look at the list of ingredients and amounts, the water is at the top, the sugar is in the middle, and the yeast was on the very bottom.

          Why?!

          Why would you write a recipe like that?!

          I mixed the water, yeast, sugar and put it aside.

          The next step was to mix the other ingredients and that’s where I got confused. I put the flour in, listed right under the flour is sugar. I put sugar in. Next was garlic. When I found garlic on the list, my eyes traveled to the front of the line to see the amount, and it said four and a half teaspoons. I was scoopin’ in the garlic powder and after four, I got a big whiff of garlic and thought, that’s a lot of garlic powder. I went back to double check the recipe and aye-yi-yi! It was supposed to be one and half teaspoons! I’d read the amount for yeast, which was written directly under it!

          Luckily I’d dropped the garlic in different places. That helps me keep track of my count. I took a spoon and lifted out two and a half piles — along with some of my flour. I took the measuring cup from the flour bucket and guessed at how much to add back.

          What else did I mess up? I wondered and checked the recipe.

          The sugar! Oh my goodness! The sugar was for proofing and wasn’t for the bread! I shrugged my shoulders and thought, no big deal, it’ll just be a little sweeter.

          It turned out well despite my flubs. I just hope when I make it the right way that it’ll be just as good — or better!

          Speaking of the next time I make them, I’ll divide it into fifteen or maybe eighteen and make them smaller. And the next time I make them, Mike wants me to cook up some sweet Italian sausage and he’s going to use one to make a sandwich.

I shared the breadsticks with the Kipps, giving them six. “They’re wonderful!” Miss Rosie said. “Even after two days they still warmed up nicely,” she told me.

Mine were all gone the next day.

The recipe is called Make Ahead Frozen Breadsticks because you can freeze the dough and bake them later. I wanted them that day and didn’t freeze them, but I’ll freeze some for Miss Rosie, then, when she makes a pot of chili or soup, she can get a couple out, let them sit for an hour or so, and bake them. There’s nothing better than hot, fresh bread right out of the oven, don’cha think?

Raini and I took the garbage out for pickup on Tuesday morning. On the way back I decided to take her for a walk. I let her drag her leash and it left a mark in the snow.

See! I told you it was a quiet week when all I have to show you is drag marks in the snow!

Actually, that’s not quite true. I did take a few other pictures. 

The first thing I noticed was we had a tree down by the pond. It wasn’t a very big one but it’s still going to require a cleanup when spring hits.

Dried milkweed pods decorate the landscape.

Bittersweet red pops!

The truck and bus hoods dressed in a layer of snow.

The wind was blowing cold on my face. I turned and headed for the house rather than going past the upper barn.

Raini knows there’s a whistle pig burrow in this mound and she went to sniff it out.

Then, when she saw me coming, ran for home.

Coming back from our shopping trip, I spot flares burning beside the road just before you go down the hill into Meshoppen.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

A semi had turned up the road by the tire place.

“Where’s the truck?” Mike asked.

“They unhooked it. It’s just a little ways up the road.”

I expected to see a wreck but all I saw were these guys fussing with something.

“It looks like he took out whatever was there on the corner,” I said.

“Yeah, but why unhook the truck?”

“Maybe he thought it was going to explode or something.” That was all I could think of. The next time I go past the place I’ll look and see what’s put back.

My friend Jody came and played Quiddler with me for a few hours one afternoon. I do so enjoy her company and the fact that she’ll play Quiddler with me.

Tiger was feeling neglected and laid on top of our cards.

“Didn’t I take a picture?” I asked Jody.

“Nope,” she said.

“I guess that explains why I couldn’t find it.”

Tiger does the same thing when Mike and I play Skip-Bo. In the photo Mike is trying to coax Tiger into sitting on the papers near us rather than on our cards.

“No thanks,” Tiger said and stayed where he was.

I had to pick him up and move him out of the way. Two minutes later he was back. He is persistent, I’ll give him that.

And that, my loves, is all the jibber-jabber for this week.

Done!