July.
We’re on the downside of the year.
The days are growing shorter, and somehow, we’re speeding toward Christmas!
“Peg!” you exclaim.
I know, right! Don’t rush it. We’ve got lots to do, lots to see, lots to love between now and then. We need to set our focus on today. I know these things. However, I’m acutely aware of how quickly time is speeding by.
In a few days, it will be ten years since the heartbreaking accident that claimed my daughter Kat’s life. I thought I’d repost the story I wrote surrounding that event and I did start to edit it, but never finished. Let me know if that’s something you’re interested in reading again.
This past week I had two back-to-back dental appointments. Monday was for a regularly scheduled cleaning. While I was there, I talked to my hygienist about the problem with the root canal tooth.
“Dr. Joe, who did the root canal, took an x-ray and didn’t see anything wrong with the tooth or any sign of an abscess,” I told Laurel. “But he thought the gum may be infected because it bled so easily. I just finished the meds he gave me, and it’s not any better.”
Laurel cleaned my teeth and when she finished she said, “Your gum didn’t bled when I cleaned it. But I’ll talk to Dr. Steve about it.”
When she came back she said, “He’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
The next day I got a permanent crown on a different tooth. “The color is a good match,” he said to Robbie, his assistant. “Considering all the different colors in there.”
He had his fingers in my mouth, holding the freshly cemented crown in place while it dried, and I couldn’t laugh out loud, but I laughed in my head. I have calico teeth, I thought and a picture of Mama, the Kipps’ calico cat, flashed in my mind’s eye.
Now. Calico teeth aren’t really anything to be tickled about. No sparkle, no shine. Just the quiet truth of wear and time. But it is just cosmetic.
You watch old movies and it jumps out — those classic stars didn’t have the blinding white smiles we see today. Their teeth were real. Lived-in. Human. Somewhere along the way, we’ve decided everyone’s smile should look like a toothpaste commercial.
With all the dental work I’ve had done, whitening’s off the table. So I’ve made peace with it. These teeth tell a story. And if they’re a little patchy, well, so is life.
Dr. Steve took an x-ray so he could see the tooth after the root canal. Just like Dr. Joe, he doesn’t see anything wrong. “Let’s do a round of steroids,” he suggested. “It’ll reduce any inflammation that may be there.”
And the very next day, after starting the meds, I felt like it was better.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures on either of those trips, but I did take some.
The Day Lilies are beautifying our roadsides.
“How do you say that?” Mike asked of the license plate on the car in front of us.
“I don’t know,” I said. The light changed and the car took off with roar.
“Like that,” Mike said.
And I laughed.
Mike took a back way home and he did it for us — you and me. He doesn’t really like to go that way but he did it so I had some new photos for my weekly letter blog.
We talked about artificial intelligence last time, do you remember? I gave you an example of how AI helped me by converting a recipe from quick bread to cookie for me.
This week, taking a photo through my side window of old upside down cast iron bathtubs, it had a glare on it. I didn’t have time to put the window down like I would’ve if I’d known in time that I wanted this photo.
“Can you remove the glare from this photo?” I asked Copilot.
And he — it did.
The tubs were watering troughs for the livestock in the fields at one time and were now being stored.
Then I had this photo and asked Copilot to take out the yellow truck.
Not bad. And all I had to do was ask and wait. If I’d’ve done it myself, I’d’ve had to fiddle with it a long time to get it this good.
We saw a fawn beside the road. Deer pictures don’t really excite me anymore, but I took it anyway. We get closer and he turns back and bounds into the field.
Mike creeps along slowly in case there’s another deer and there was. “There’s his mom,” I said. Just then, the larger one turned and took off. That’s when I saw antlers. “Nope. Not the mom.”
I was surprised, though. I didn’t know that a buck and spotted fawn would be together.
“What you saw is actually not that unusual!” Copilot said. “Male deer (bucks) typically do not stay with does and fawns. After mating season, bucks go off on their own or form bachelor groups with other males. However, young male deer (yearlings) may still be seen near their birth area before dispersing. It could also be a chance encounter at a food source or open area.”
AI learns. I’ve recently used Copilot to help me fix the photo of Scout, the dog I was trying to paint.
“Make this photo better and give me a clear light source so I can paint it,” I instructed.
And this is what it sent back to me.
I’m going to shelve that project. If the perspective on the original photo looks funky when I paint it and I’m not sure the improved photo looks like Scout anymore, I have nowhere to go with it.
After I questioned Copilot about the deer, it asked, “Would you like to sketch or paint that scene? It sounds like a beautiful moment.”
I smiled. “Go for it!”
Copilot made and sent me this.
I could make changes to it, if I wanted to. I could tell Copilot that the buck I saw had a smaller rack and the doe wasn’t there and it would change it, but I don’t care enough to spend any time on it. I just wanted to see what it would create based on our conversation.
I joined an online watercolor art community that offers painting marathons. The tutorials are generally two hours long and I don’t always paint along. This week they offered a series they named City Glow. All six of the paintings use a lot of yellow. I guess that’s why they called it City Glow. The artist lives in Prague and two of her paintings featured the iconic Charles Bridge from two different perspectives.
I only painted along one day and when I’m just painting in my sketchbook, I don’t get hung up on colors. She said what shade of yellow she was using, I just picked a yellow from my palette.
Painting is like losing weight, at least for me. I want to be better, faster — or thinner, in the case of losing weight — but I don’t want to put the work in. I know if I want to get better with watercolor, I need to practice and find my own groove.
I was feeling discouraged.
Looking for something to practice-paint, I came across an old piece I’d done.
I didn’t use a tutorial. I just painted what I saw. It was a different medium, acrylic paint, and it’s a different technique.
Maybe watercolor isn’t my jam? Maybe I should go back to acrylic paints?
Around our mountain home, wildflowers are blooming.
Birdsfoot Trefoil.
Clover.
The double-head on this one says Wild Basil to me.
Bittersweet.
Yarrow.
A Siamese berry on the Asian Honeysuckle. It didn’t quite split in two, did it?
I walked down to the pond to try for dragonfly pictures (I didn’t get any) but I saw these things swarming all over the mud.
“What are they?” you ask.
Green Bottle Flies, one of nature’s cleaners.
The pond’s edge was littered with tons of dead Whirligig Beetles. Why they died, I don’t know. It could be several things. Low oxygen, temperature change, or end of life.
This dainty little white flower is Daisy Fleabane.
With nothing more pressing to do, we went on a golf cart ride out to our neighbor Vernon’s pond. and I found more wildflowers.
The beautiful and fragrant Milkweed.
Black-eyed Susan.
Deptford Pink with Oxeye Daisies.
And a surprising white lily!
“I think I planted those two years ago,” Vernon said.
An old trailer being quietly consumed.
On a different day, a golf cart ride out Paradise Road, I took more pictures.
I missed the picture of wild turkeys in Vernon’s field. They didn’t hang around when they spotted us.
Speaking of critters, I saw a daddy Oriole feeding his youngin.
And check out this beauty I found in my bathroom. A harmless Orb Weaver. I took him outside where he’d be happier.
Mike came in from mowing one day and says, “My mower blade’s sticking out! It’s a wonder it didn’t cut my tire.”
I couldn’t image what had to break for the blade to be sticking out.
.jpg)
Upon further investigation, it’s not the blade. It’s a metal piece on the front of the mower deck. Mike caught it on an old utility pole stabilizer rod.
What do you do after the horse escapes the barn? You shut the door!
We went up on the hill and Mike dug around the bar and set to work with the reciprocal saw. It was taking a long time and Mike stopped to rest. I reached down and was immediately pricked by a piece of wire still attached to the eye. I wiped the blood away, repositioned my hand and pulled on the rod. It was loose.
“Maybe you can pull it out now?” I suggested.
Mike worked at it but couldn’t pull it out. He bent it backwards and it broke at the saw cut. He covered in the hole. Now to get the mower fixed.
Let’s end this week with a sad picture. This is my sister Patti’s Saguaro cactus.
It fell over.
I knew that this kind of cactus doesn’t even start to grow arms until it’s old.
“How old?” you wanna know.
I asked Patti.
“Usually not until 80 unless they've been hurt, like lightning struck or excessive bird burrowing. Also if they start leaning, they'll grow an arm for balance,” she said. “They have a shallow root system.”
Patti’s Saguaro had three arms when she bought the property thirty years ago and when it went over, it had six arms with a seventh one starting. It was 20-25 feet tall, weighed 4-6 tons, and was likely 125-175 years old! Her whole house shook when this big boy fell over!
I could write several pages on this cactus but I won’t.
Let’s call this one done.
