I'm Late

         

          I’m late.

          I’m very, very late.

          “Late for what?” you ask.

          Late for starting my letter blog—my weekly jibber-jabber. Normally, by this time (Sunday afternoon) I’m putting the finishing touches on it or doing a final edit. It was one of those weeks where it couldn’t be helped.

          I don’t want to start with an update on my handsome mountain man.

          “Why not?” I know you’re wondering.

          Because whatever picture I use first is the one that comes up on the posting on Facebook. I don’t want that to be the first thing anyone sees.

          “It hurts me to look at his eye,” I’ve been told.

          I know, right! It hurts me, too.

          Let’s talk a little about my art.

          Almond, the last dog portrait I painted, went off to his new home and the owner is pleased with it.

          “You painted this?!” Trish asked.

          That comment confused me for a moment. What?Of course I painted it... I thought.

Then she went on. “It looks like a picture!”

I’m not necessarily striving for realism but I do try to make it look like the photo. Maybe it’s the shine? I wondered.

“I waxed it,” I said. Waxing does give it a little shine, brings the colors out, and most importantly, keeps the watercolor paint in place if it happens to get wet. Some professional watercolor artists use something to protect it but many don’t. It’s up to you to get it framed and if it’s framed, it doesn’t necessarily need the added protection.

I’m just really glad she’s happy with it.

I’ve got my next commission, Bentley, drawn out on the paper. It’s at this point where I get a little touch of page fright, brush-tip jitters, palette panic, the watercolor wobbles! Much like an actor has a moment of fear before stepping on stage, I have the same moment of fear before I actually put paint to paper.

“What do you do?” you wanna know.

I remind myself it’s just a sheet of watercolor paper, take a big, deep breath, and jump in with both feet!

I’ve been warming up to jumping in all week by painting some fun stuff in my old book.

Like kissing fish.

A bird in a silly hat.

Sometimes I take a picture of my practice art and share it with Trish. “I like the worm the best,” she said.

There is one page I’ve drawn out and skipped over painting. It took me days to draw this guy out. I’d do a little and get frustrated. I had to go back to it several days in a row before I finished it. And now I’m afraid to paint it! Isn’t that weird?!

Go past this picture really fast if you don’t wanna see Mike’s eye.

It really hurt for the first few days but it gets less every day.

At his checkup, Dr. McClintic was impressed with how much sight Mike has in his eye. “It’s almost back to where you were before this second detachment,” he said.

Mike has oil in his eye this time instead of gas. The gas bubble dissipates on its own but the oil has to be drawn out. That’ll be three months or so down the line.

Our one-week checkup was for Thursday. We were almost half-way there when we get a call.

“I’m about two hours away,” Juan, the delivery driver said.

We’d already put off having Mike’s new (to us) front mower delivered once already and we didn’t want to do that again. We called and rescheduled his checkup for the next day.

Juan arrived when he said he would.

We used chains and the Kubota to unload the two pieces of equipment that came with it. We got a snow blower, brush, and the front mower.

Mike doesn’t have any weight restrictions but he has to wait one more week before he can mow.

Guess what Mike wants to do?

“I can mow with the Gravely,” Mike said. “It doesn’t ride that rough.”

“If you want my permission, you don’t have it. But it’s your eye. If you wanna chance it and go blind in that eye, it’s up to you.” I’m not his mother and he’s too big to spank.

It’s really been bugging him that the grass looks the way it looks. I know how he feels, thought. The dog run was getting tall enough to bale. Between doctor’s appointments, mower deliveries (delivery, there was only the one), a trip to the grocery store, and the rain, I haven’t been able to get out and mow either. It was getting so tall that Bondi was getting lost in the yard!

We were coming back across the bridge on our road, and I said, “Any eagles?” I didn’t really expect to be lucky enough to catch the eagle fishing twice, but that doesn’t stop me from looking.

“He is!” I exclaimed. No one was more surprised than me.

I got out and took some photos. My standing at the side of the bridge didn’t seem to bother the eagle much and he kept on feeding.

Mike had stopped in the middle of the bridge and a truck was coming. Mike pulled over in front of the Kipps’ house and when the guys in the truck drew near, I pointed and said, “There’s an eagle!”

He looked, said, “Yeah,” and moved on.

I guess not everyone gets as excited about seeing an eagle as I do. After I shot off a bunch of pictures, I called the Kipps. “There’s an eagle sitting in the creek eating his catch,” I told Miss Rosie. Mike’s eye was hurting so I didn’t hang around any longer than it took me to make my pictures.

Lamar called a little later. “It was pretty far down the creek. By the time I saw it, all I see are white tail feathers flying off. Then another eagle swooped off behind it.”

I didn’t know there were two eagles. One must’ve been in the trees but I had my big lens on so I didn’t get any pictures of the second one. And it wasn’t until I looked at the photos on my computer that I saw it was a deer carcass it was feeding on.

“They’ll be back for more,” Miss Rosie said.

 

Speaking of birds, this Rose-breasted Grosbeak landed on my door. I’ve got another, better photo of him but then you’d see my dirty windowpanes.

Sally, my across-the-road neighbor, told me that the store-bought grape jelly isn’t good for the birds.

“I make my own,” she told me.

Since then I’ve been experimenting with things other than store-bought grape jelly and they seem to like it. There are four Baltimore Orioles in this photo.

Three in this one.

“What are you feeding them?” you ask.

You know I make homemade yogurt, right? To help us get our daily serving of fruit, I’ve been mixing in fruit canned in juice or light syrup, if I can’t get just juice. I’ve been dumping off the liquid and putting it out in the cat room for my night-time visitors.

Since Sally told me about the jelly not being good for them, I’ve been putting the juice in ice cube trays and freezing it. They seem to like pecking at the frozen chunks and even if it melts, they drink it. My dish is always empty when I check it.

 

The Dogwood is blooming.

Under this tree, the prettiest little purple flowers grow, the Fringed Polygala. Usually there’s a lot of them but this year I only found three.

Facts from the internet:

Fringed milkwort (also known as "Gaywings" for its brightly colored, winged flowers) is a small native perennial with attractive flowers having fringed petals. The leaves were used externally by the Iroquois as a wash or poultice to treat abscesses, boils and sores. The common name, "milkwort" derives from the genus name ("polys" means "much" and "gala" means "milk" in Greek); it was once thought that cattle eating this plant in their fodder would produce a lot of milk.

This little flower depends on bees for pollination and ants for seed dispersal, and both relationships are essential to its life cycle. Maybe that has something to do with why there aren’t as many flowers this year.

 

I’m going to fill the rest of this week’s letter blog with a few of the road pictures I took and the rest I’ll save for seed.

 Let’s call this one done.

 Done!