Peggy's Jibber-Jabber

She got it!

She finally got it!

“Who got what, Peg?” you ask.

My best old West Virginia friend, Trish. She finally got her Christmas present!

“Last Christmas or next Christmas? Because you know it’s only September,” you say.

Christmas coming. And I do know it’s only September. But here’s the thing. The older you get the more loved ones you lose. We’re old. And I’m afraid every day of losing another someone that I love. I didn’t want to wait for Christmas to give it to her. Not only that, but I was excited for her to see it and have it.

Ever since Trish posted this picture of her sitting in an old red truck I knew I wanted to paint it. I actually wanted to paint the truck too but in the end I opted to just paint her. The smaller the person, the harder they are to paint. That was a painting tip I got from watching a tutorial. And I wanted to paint her beautiful face.

I finished it on a Friday, two weeks ago and asked Trish if I could put it in my blog.

“I don’t want to see it until I get it,” she said. And that was okay. I could wait to show you.

If you like the picture, you’d really like the portrait. Photos simply don’t do it justice.

“You didn’t try to surprise her?” you ask.

Nope. Surprises are over-rated. Besides, there’s something to be said for anticipation, too, don’cha know. So yes, Trish knew I was painting it for her.

“Oh my-lanta!” she exclaimed when she pulled it from the envelope. Then she was quiet for a moment. “Oh, oh, oh.... I-I don’t know what to say! It’s me!” She was quiet again. “That is awesome!” She paused. “It’s beautiful! I never expected it to be this good!”

I basked in her moments of quietness as she took it in, and in the way she praised it.

I found my love.

I just so loved painting this portrait more than anything else I’ve ever painted. I’m anxious to start another people portrait and see if I love it as much as this one or if this one was especially loved because of who it is.

I sometimes take my artwork to church to show my peeps and I took Trish to show her off.

“I can see her in it,” Pastor Jay said.

“It’s her Christmas present.” Then I told him the same thing I told you. I didn’t want to wait till Christmas to give it to her.

“What did you do with the one you painted of my dad?” he asked.

“Nothing. It’s sitting on my desk.”

“You could give it to him for Christmas,” Pastor Jay suggested. “And I could make a frame for it.”

And there it is.

“There’s what?” you wanna know.

There’s what I’ve been waiting for. Interest. When I first showed it (before it was done) everyone liked it but no one asked, “What are you going to do with it?” Had they asked me I’d’ve given it away then.

“I’ll give it to you and you can give it to him for Christmas,” I said. Then I told him, “Jody asked me why I didn’t give it to you or your dad before and I said because no one showed any interest in it.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that. We didn’t want to seem greedy,” he explained.

And I mistook that for lack of interest.

I pulled “Dad” from the top of my desk and finished the shirt, added a background, and gave it to him.

There’s another, “She got it! She finally got it!”

This one was a long time coming. I painted Sammie last year. It was commissioned by my mentor California Susan. She and Patti have been friends for many years and Susan wanted to surprise Patti with a painting of Sammie.

This is the photo I worked from.

Susan gave it to Patti yesterday.

“Sammie's portrait is so precious! What a surprise. And you kept it a secret,” she told me.

“See! I can keep a secret!” I told her.

Susan wasn’t crazy about my use of purple and teal in the first rendition of Sammie.

“I’ll take it,” my little sister said. Phyllis loves all my art.

So, I painted it again, and this is the one she gave Patti.

Speaking of Phyllis...

She’s a wizard when it comes to the kitchen. She mixes up some fabulous dishes and seldom uses a recipe.

Lately she’s been playing with concrete clay and making beautiful yard art.

Falcor funnels the water coming from the roof. He’s 40” long, 24” wide, and stands 19” tall.

Isn’t he fabulous?!

Phoebe is a narwhal sitting in a wave. She’s used for the same purpose, to get water away from the house. She’s 25” long, 35” wide, and 15” tall.

Then she made a turtle and is thinking of calling her Fleur.

Fleur is about 14” nose to tail and is as wide as she is tall, about 8”.

And today Phyllis shows me a mushroom she’s made.

Will she name the mushroom?

“Oh, Peg! That’s silly!” you say.

I don’t know. Maybe it needs a name.

I just love all the yard art that Phyllis has made. People will be stopping and asking to buy them!

I did one fun painting in my old book, back on the first of September when I was sitting in the waiting room waiting for Mike’s eye appointment.

The appointment was for nine and they happened to be short-staffed that day. As I sat in the waiting room, waiting, I could hear one of the gals calling and rescheduling appointments. That’s how I know they were short-staffed. She was telling them that. It was almost eleven thirty until we got in to see the doctor so I had plenty of time to paint.

We worked on another section of the dog run. Mike put up some old, reclaimed picket fence to act as a barrier while we took down the back section. I took this picture because I liked the way the sun was shining on the field, but it’ll work here, too.

And this is the old fence line from the other side.

We pulled all the old posts then it was time to move the old fence.

We bought this dog kennel a long, long time ago. It’s not in sections. It’s one long piece of fence that wrapped the whole way around all four sides of the frame. We hooked a chain on it and pulled it to its new home.

The fence objected and collapsed.

It’s harder to pull dead weight. One little girl remembered that and when a man tried to abduct her, she simply collapsed on the ground. He couldn’t make her go where he wanted her to go, she was screaming at the top of her lungs, he gave up, jumped in his car and left.

The tractor didn’t care if the fence wasn’t co-operating and simply dug furrows in the ground as it drug it along. Quite honestly, I didn’t know how we’d get it put back together again, but we did. We pulled the sections sorta where we wanted them and stood it up. We used fence posts to prop it in place while we worked on driving posts and getting it secured.

We were feeling pretty good about it at the end of the day.

The next morning we went out and had to move it a little. We had it at the edge of the grass so we could drive a post, but when we tried to put the post in, it bounced. The grass had grown onto the concrete. Mike used the tractor to move it. We only had to go about six inches, but once again the fence objected and collapsed. Patiently, section, by section, we got it back up. We got the posts in and got it secured.

It only took us two days to complete this section.

You can see the weed line where the fence used to be. It goes past my rhubarb box then comes back right to the wall.

The next day Mike moved my box out and dug up some big rocks so he wouldn’t hit them with the mower anymore.

Bondi started barking like crazy at something in the yard.

“What is it?” I asked and Raini had to come and look, too. I was afraid Raini might grab it. “Leave it alone!” I told her.

I took a couple of pictures, then picked the praying mantis up.

I tried to get a nice close-up of him while I held him but I had the big lens on my camera and my arms aren’t long enough.

I took him to the tree and when presented with leaves, he happily climbed from my hand.

I wouldn’t normally worry about Raini grabbing things, but she surprised me the other night when we went out for our bedtime pee. She raced across the patio and grabbed this poor baby possum before I could stop her.

The possum did what possums do and played dead. I don’t think he was dead but he was bleeding from his rump where she’d grabbed and tossed him.

Raini circled him a few times and nosed him to get him to move. When I told her to leave it alone, she did. I got my poop shovel and rake and as gently as I could, put him on the other side of the fence. He was gone in the morning.

Speaking of critters...

Moving fence and digging rocks disturbed more than just the praying mantis. On the way into the house I crossed paths with a millipede.

Did you know that these little guys are not insects? They’re distant cousins of lobsters and shrimp, born with no legs but gain more with every molt. Some species, like the California millipedes in the genus Motyxia, are bioluminescent and glow greenish‑blue at night on the forest floor. Most don’t come anywhere close to a thousand legs, though one record‑breaker discovered just a few years ago had more than thirteen hundred, the most of any creature on earth. They move slowly, breaking down fallen leaves and turning them back into soil. They defend themselves chemically, with some species producing hydrogen cyanide to deter predators when they must. Their ancestors were giants — six‑foot-long recyclers roaming ancient forests.

I also came across a whole herd of ants enjoying a smorgasbord.

And a crane fly. We’ve talked about them before. They may look daunting, but they’re harmless. They have no mouth parts so they can’t bite, and they have no stingers.

He was on the outside of the door and I had the door open when I took his picture. That was a mistake. He came in. I tried to catch him but couldn’t.

I saw him on the wall over my desk, then later that night he came in to watch TV with us. They don’t live long and I expect he’s dead someplace where I don’t vacuum or dust. Like behind the TV.

I didn’t take many road pictures this past week, but here are the few I did take.

They tore down the big gray building next to the post office in Dushore. I think it was the lumber company. Millers, maybe?

This car caught our attention as soon as we pulled in the parking lot. It is LOUD! And I don’t mean in sound, either. The picture doesn’t show how neon-bright it really is.

We were coming in to New Albany when we see roadside flares.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

It didn’t look like anything serious. Everyone was on their feet except an EMT squatting by the bike, writing a report.

By the time we went for our daily dose of sunshine, it was afternoon and there wasn’t any sun on the patio. I went out and stood by the fence so Bondi could lay in the grass and get her vitamin D.