Just a Flutter By
colored pencil on hot press

blow down
The tree is more than twice as long what is shown....a long, tall pine
destroyed by the pine beetle infest killing our beautiful trees.
the two dead trees behind it were taken out as well
Our big Cband dish is showing...I loved to watch it slowly turn, scanning the infinite starry skies, looking for......

my soaps...haha
(It searched for aliens, too, in its spare time)

wild and windy today....Very often our weather is like coast weather....many clouds caught in the hills surrounding the town....sun and wind....we're really not far from the coast, if we were allowed to drive straight through the wilderness area instead of looping down through California.
I've been digging in my garden......and every spadeful turns over earthworms and snails. This wasn't always so.......When we first came here the soil had no humus and was hard as a rock....nothing would grow but trees...not even rhododendrons which thrive in the wild here in the NW. But, after years of spading in whatever mulch I used, the earthworms and snails moved in.
They say snails are a good sign and means the soil has plenty of calcium...it helps build their shells.
Yes, I like healthy snails to come out every morning and chomp on my plants. I can't put out snail bait because of the dogs.
But lately the dogs haven't been allowed in the garden because the blown down tree smashed so much of the fence.
We had the tree hauled away, along with 14 other dead pines, but the fence isn't dog proof yet.

pencil sketch

Bekka

checking to see if the grass is ready to be mowed

if you like casual, we're ok

if you like spiffy, let me know when it's done...I'm busy drawing cats and googling on the side.

Why am I drawing cats? I'm just scratching an itch. I've given up thinking I'm going to do anything with my drawing...now I just indulge.

why am I googling? Well, just go look yourself up on Spokeo.com and be surprised at the most tell all "find a person" site yet...yikes....and yes, our house does have central heating no matter what you read.

Your wants subside as you grow older. I was surprised the other day when I made a list of new goals....The only thing I could think of was.

1. Don't fall again.

No more 1. Write a book. 2. illustrate a book. 3. Get skinny. 4. Be a brain surgeon.........Nope, no more of that pie in the sky fluff...just, dearlorddon't let me fall down again ever. I'm living the simple life now....

just trying to keep my toes turned up.

*****************

Who knew that pretty-in-the-fall burning red bush was going to take off growing like crazy in its fourth year, and shadow the yellow rose on one side and the blue veronica on the other.

Bekka knew....she told me not to move the veronica there....

"Don't move it! she yapped. "In exactly four years time that bush is going to take off like a running turkey."

Bekka is the real gardener...she can hear plants.....She cried....long low wimpers when they cut down our tree, and she laid for hours by the iris I stepped on.

But you know how it is when someone talks ALL the time....all the time yapping at me. Shut Up! I told her....go count your freckles and leave me the heck alone,

and I went right ahead and moved the veronica.

Now I have to move it again....oh, you should see the smirk on that retired, know-it-all-dusty old pointer....aaaggghhh

decorating the woods

pencil on hot press watercolor paper

Spring is Bustin' Out All Over!

Garden time! and my writing juices are flowing right along with the waking buds. I bit the bullet and went on a wading foray into my little fishpond. I hate to ever do it because of damage I may cause but it has to be done at least once...maybe twice a year. I built up the rock sides that the nightly raccoon knocks down in his fishing ventures. I fished out a bucket of pine needles, oak leaves and algae. I trimmed the dead spikes of reeds and yanked out hands full of pond greenery to open up more spaces for the fish.

Lots of fish wintered over well...orange...black....and orange and black....love em!

I have a little less than a million snails and their eggs, and yards of frog eggs.

Then I went to the teeny pond and started fishing out the oak leaves when I noticed they were covered with snail eggs....oh drat....I destroyed them in the larger pond...all those poor little babies I threw away.....one can only hope the mamas laid eggs on the rocks, too.
I've been weeding and raking in the beds and was sure I was keeping up with things when all of a sudden, two days of sunshine caused an explosion of greenery.

Spring is like my granddaughter...far ahead of me....has more energy than I do..... younger than I am..... waaay cool....and pretty,too

This is an amazing picture

(not taken by me)

A butterfly, early in the morning,

covered with dew.

Browsing through the library today, I bought a book of animal photography for $2 just to have this picture.

Poppy Dreaming

water color for a note card

shadows are from scanner but I'm pretending I was clever enough to paint in shadows from surrounding flowers

I have two computers and they both crashed within days of each other...this cannot be!

My laptop's virus protection, (free Avast) downloaded it's latest definitions, rebooted and my laptop expired on the spot....the tech said the OS was destroyed...$120 to fix.

The PC was too slow...almost five minutes to boot up...tech said the hard drive was dying...(seven years old)...

Soooooo....money being paid out for opinions and tech help...and the decision must be made what to do.

You know where all the answers are, my friends...in cherry vanilla ice cream...bet you didn't know that...or maybe you did...

On another subject....continuing from the last post as a movie critic, I went to see Sherlock Holmes and left in the middle. As far as I could tell it was one long, loud bashing fight with a little dialog sprinkled in between bouts....and an implausible plot. On the other hand, my daughter and granddaughter liked it...... go figure. (It's been tested and proven that whatever movie my daughter likes, I don't go see...haha...the movie gene was lost in the crossing)

can't sleep so will blog about Avatar, a science fiction movie set in 2154, which I saw earlier this evening.
I want all of my movies in 3D from now on, thank you. I'm being cheated for accepting less.
An avatar is a personification of an idea...and the people in Avatar, humanoids called the Na'vi, are the embodiment of our higher selves.....and they clash...go to war... with the worst of us...the military who go into foreign countries in real life and bomb the ecology and humanity to smithereens.
I want to be a Na'vi and ride a pteranadon, which they clumsily rename a Banshee.....a giant flying reptile from the dinosaur age. The setting is on Alpha Centauri's moon, Pandora, where the humans want to mine for unobtanium, a precious mineral.
The actors wore skull caps with little cameras in front taking pictures of their facial expressions, which were then digitally transferred to the digitally created characters.
In Avatar, a human's intelligence could be transferred to one of the Na'vi...so a few main characters bounced back and forth between being a human or being a Na'vi. Sigourney Weaver from Aliens played a main role.
I won't tell any more of the plot in case you are going to see the picture....the plot is secondary in a way...the magnificence of the movie is the special effects. Forget the 3D glasses of the 50's.....the audience actually gasped when it began and some things were right in front of your eyes....I thought I might reach out and grasp the little floating jellyfish.
I'm waiting for the industry to make a second screen to fit over the main movie screen so we don't have to wear glasses....and I'm waiting for all movies and tv to be in 3D.....and I'm waiting for humans to evolve into the Na'vi.

If you can dream it, it can be...(or did I just make that up?)

hanging around, getting into mischief

The correct term for a flock is a "rafter" of turkeys

but a gobble of turkeys sound better
I step outside and at the first noise of the door, the wild turkey flock burst into gobbles. It is so instant that it seems automatic. The sound is one sound...every gobble at the same time. I stay quiet for a second and then gobble back. Again the loud gobble from the flock…it interests me how quick the response is so I keep playing the game until I tire of it….easily amused am I.
The only thing I can relate this response to is when you see a flock of birds wheeling in the sky…the turns they make are so together you wonder who the leaders are…the turkey gobble from the whole flock is that quick…..ok….enough I guess…it’s just fascinating how it works.
We are routinely having flocks of 40 to 50 birds gather by the garage door calling for Jack to come out and feed them. He’s really feeding the other birds but the turkeys get their fill too. Sometimes another flock waits on the slope above the driveway, as you see in the picture. There is a hierarchy…a pecking order and woe to the bird who steps out of line, or the flock who wants their share and dares to come too close.
We have far too many turkeys here. They were introduced to this area and have become a nuisance. I think the only enemies they have are the rare wandering dog and the raccoons and they can only hurt the eggs or very young poults.

The flock tear up the ground with their big strong feet…they pick at all the plants even though they don’t want to eat them. They pick my iris blossoms to death before they ever open, and scratch out any sedum I plant.
When we first moved here I liked to see them come around the house because I’d never seen wild turkeys before. I was surprised to see how well they fly, even the babies. At fourteen days the chicks have strong wing and tail feathers and fly up onto the fence around our back yard.

We have two hunting dogs inside the fence and each has caught a wild turkey a couple of times. There is a suspicious amount of large feathers laying out there right now.
Except for their ugly heads, they are beautiful birds…their feathers gleam in bronzes,blues,greens and rust.......shimmering colors like oil on water.

Benjamin Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be the nation’s bird instead of the eagle. In a letter to his daughter he trashed the eagle as a bird of low character while of the turkey he said, “a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."
I can’t imagine a turkey attacking. It’s taken years for me to get within ten feet of them without them running off.
Actually, the gobbler in all his courting glory would make a great patriotic picture because his head is bright red white and blue.

Old Glory