The Amazing Duckling Rescue and May Flowers Day 22

I had the most amazing little adventure with a bunch of little ducklings this afternoon!

I was pulling out of my neighborhood, and noticed some tiny little ducklings walking along the center divider. I pulled over and noticed that mama and 2 of the siblings were up on the divider in the bushes, and the remaining 6 babies were trying to jump up, and just couldn’t do it. I watched as two more made it, but the last 4 were struggling.

I figured that they needed something to jump up onto to make it up, and drove home to get a piece of wood (and my camera!) I got back just in time to watch another one make it up.

The last three tried and tried, but just couldn’t make it. So I slowly slipped the wood up to the curb, hoping they would figure out what to do.

Mama came over and quacked softly at them. I like to think she was telling them what to do and encouraging them…

Finally they figured it out, and the first one jumped up.

Then there were two…

And finally the last one!

Woohoo! Success! I had hot lava pouring out of my heart!

Never could figure out where they came from (there’s no water close by) or where she thought she was going. By the time I returned home, they were gone. But it did my heart good that I was able to help them.

My flower offering for Day 22 is the Bellflower. It is a campanula, like the little mini flower I showed early on, but this is the big brother, and one of my favorites. They are so hard to find! They are supposed to be perennial, but again, some times they come back and sometimes they don’t. When they don’t I always fret about whether or not I’ll be able to find them. I went two seasons without, and I’m very happy to have them back!

Is There Such Thing As Balance? …and May Flowers Day 21

I mentioned to some friends a few days ago that the only balance in my life is a cookie in each hand. They contended it would take something a little stronger to make them feel balanced, so I amended it to a Long Island Iced Tea, which everyone agreed, under the circumstances, was more appropriate.

The truth of the matter is, I struggle with finding balance in my life. But as I think about it, I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t.

Somehow we, as a society,  have come up with the idea that life CAN be balanced. That we can have it all in somewhat equal measure all the time. And that if we want to be good spouses and good parents, and good employees, we need to find it. But I’m not sure that is the case, particularly if you are a passionate person involved in a passionate pursuit, such as art.

When passion is your guide, there is no balance, at least not as a matter of daily routine. It consumes you, requires that you put all other lesser pursuits aside until it is spent for the moment. Then and only then can you take care of the more mundane aspects of life. If you try to contain it, to parcel it out a bit at a time, you are left frustrated, and whatever the pursuit is, suffers for it.

Mr. Tattered refers to my passion as my “obsessive nature.” He says I tackle whatever it is with a single-mindedness that leaves a swath of debris for everyone else to clean up. I don’t think I’m THAT bad, although I do know that once I’m “in the zone” it’s hard to get me out. I admit I leave a swath…but everyone else clean it up? NO way. It’s always there waiting for me when I come up for breath! And I do come up. And then it is often weeks or months before I am consumed once again.

That leaves me to believe we creatives need to take a more global look at our lives. To find balance, not in the sense of a daily, or even weekly time frame, but in larger chunks of time. Do we take vacations? Do we keep the house well enough that the health inspectors won’t shut us down on a weekly basis (or even monthly) then clean real well once in awhile (or better yet, have someone else do it for us?) Do we make time for our kids amidst the chaos? Do we keep up on our books and paying the bills on time? If we can say yes to those things, then our lives are in a balance of sorts, even if to look at it on a daily basis it might not seem so.

So guess I answered my own question. There IS such a thing as balance. You just can’t have it all in one day, or even a week or a month. But over time, you can balance a passionate career, a job, and a family. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself right now. Do you disagree?

And pivoting now to Day 21 of May Flowers…

Next up in my daily tour of the flowers in my garden is my raspberry verbena. I have to confess, this is a new plant. The one I planted last year came back looking pretty sickly. Verbena is an odd flower. It is supposed to be perennial here, but sometimes the second year is pretty pathetic. Since I found a beautiful specimen, I decide to yank and replace this time, rather than try to nurse it through. I’m getting impatient in my old age!

If you are a flower lover you may want to check in with the others participating in this 31 day challenge and see what they are presenting today!

House Finches and May Flowers Day 20

Several years ago I added a little treat to my garden…a ball of special cotton for the birds to use for nesting.

At least two seasons went by with none of the birds having any interest in it – then all of a sudden this year we’ve found it laying in places it shouldn’t have been, and pulled out of shape. Finally last week we actually got a glimpse several glimpses of bird pulling tufts of cotton out and flying away with it. Yesterday we discovered where at least some of it has gone.

On the side of the house there is a little vent box, and a pair of our house finches have set up housekeeping in it.  (Mr. Tattered saw debris coming out of the box and went up to explore and took this picture with his iphone!) She’s laid 5 eggs!

Here’s mom and dad sitting on the fence waiting to feel comfortable enough to visit the feeder with me outside.

When I came around the corner to see the nest, mama took off and flew up onto the neighbor’s roof, the slowly worked her way closer and closer until finally climbing back into the nest.

We looked them up in our bird book and the eggs take 10-14 days to hatch, so we may have babies before we leave on out little trip.

On the May Flower Challenge front, this is day 20. Today I’d like to show you my Fransii. It is a fast growing drought tolerant shrub with a showy pink flower that is VERY common in our area. By mid-summer the shrub will be covered in flowers!

11 more days of the May Flower Challenge! Check out the other participants if you get a chance!

Projects Are Stacking Up! …May Flowers Day 19

Today is the 19th Day of blogging May Flowers with my girlies, and I’d like to show you another of my blooming bushes. I had forgotten the common name so spent some time searching “yellow flowering bush” and found it! It’s an Easter Broom Genista.

It’s a happy little bush full of bright yellow flowers.

I remember having one in our backyard when I was growing up, so I had to have one in what will probably be my last garden…at least if I have my ‘druthers.

My projects are stacking up!

I’ve started my inspiration decks – gesso on one side of one deck. With any luck I’ll get at least 2 sets primed tonight (that’s the plan!)

Then there’s the “For The Love of Creativity” art journal I’m working on (in my mind) with my art group. It sounded like so much fun. But now with 2 gigantic 11 x 13 bare white sheets staring up at me daring me not to make a fool of myself, I’m a little intimidated!

Then today my blank sketchbook for the 2013 Sketchbook Project arrived. The very thought of it touring… well, the world, and then being housed in a the library in Brooklyn has me intimidated, as well. I am in the undecided category as of this moment. Good grief! Again, it sounded like such a good idea at the time, and now I’m skert. Which is pretty dumb, I know. It’s not like there are 5 sketchbooks involved and the whole world will see it. There are thousands, I’m sure. It’ll get lost amidst all of them. Besides, I don’t suck THAT bad. Seriously, I don’t even suck. It’s going to be fine. Really.

Then, as if I don’t have anything better to worry about, I’m on day 1 of 14 towards being able to wear my jeans in Yellowstone without either cutting off the flow of blood to the bottom half of my body, or injuring someone when the metal button flies off with the force of a volcanic eruption. It’s very doable. I just have to do it.

Yes, I have an interesting life.

Inspiration Deck and May Flowers Day 18

I hope you’re not getting too bored by my daily presentations of my garden flowers. I just love photographing them, and I love sharing them. If you’re enjoying them, you might want to run by Lori’s blog and see how others are addressing the challenge of 31 different May Flowers. It’s funny how many ways there are of looking at it!

Today’s offering is my Veronica…I’ve had the purple variety for years, but haven’t had the hot pink since I was living in the mountains. I was so excited to finally find it. Woohoo!

Next Project:

I’m going to start working on the three (yep, count ‘em, three) inspiration decks I signed up for with my art group. If you are unfamiliar with inspiration decks, I wrote about them a few months ago. I participated in a swap with another group and enjoyed it so much, I’m hosting one for my girlies. Anyway, the short story is, everyone who participates does 52 cards with a saying on them, then the hostess divide them all up so that everyone gets a deck of 52 cards, 1 from each artist. Not only is it inspirational, but it’s a cool way of having a little piece of art from a bunch of other people.

These are the ones I did for the last swap.

Here are some of the cards I got in that swap.

My studio is much too crowded to spread them out to work on, so I bought a nice red vinyl tablecloth to spread out on the kitchen table, my three decks of cards to use as my bases (plus an extra for the fun of it) a fresh bottle of gesso, and some new brushes. I’m so excited to get started on them!

The sayings I signed up for are:

1. What if you woke up today with only what you thanked God for yesterday?

2. What you do today is important, you are trading a day of your life for it

3. Write your problems in sand carve your blessings in stone

Just realized all the ones I chose have lots of words…won’t be a lot of room for decorating! But, I’m looking forward to doing them nonetheless.

Brain Dump? and May Flowers Day 17

Happy May Flower Day 17!

Today I chose Penstamon…I love the shocking raspberry color, texture and different shapes!

I hope you get a chance to pop by and see some of the other floral offerings from Lori’s little group of flower lovers.

Today was also day 3 of my 3 long hand pages of brain dumps for The Artist’s Way. In an odd sorta way, I’m finding them enjoyable. No big breakthroughs yet (certainly didn’t expect one so soon!) but I like process of just emptying my head each morning…I wonder if I’m imagining that I feel lighter, less bogged down?

Since I started doing it, I’ve done a few sketches of girlie faces, gotten started on some cards for an inspiration deck swap I’m hosting in July, and actually cooked a couple of creative meals (haven’t done THAT in awhile!)

Is it a coincidence? Hmmmmm. I don’t know.

May Flowers Day 16 and I’m Sketching!

I am so enjoying going over my photos to make my daily selections for this challenge. It is one of the highlights of my day!

Today, I’m showing you my Rudbekia, or Brown-eyed Susans. They are yet another of the flowers I didn’t think were going to come up again this year, but here they are!

On the more traditionally artistic front, I had a bit of a breakthrough. Well, that may be too strong of a word…I made progress. I got through a portion of my fear of moving to the next level of my art. I have my backgrounds to a point where I’m happy with them, but I’d like to do a little more traditional painting rather than just using words.

I made a first step by sketching out some faces.

I have a long way to go, but it’s a start. I’m sorta up to my rear end in alligators right now with my internship and getting ready to head out with the girls again, but later this summer I’ll be following up on this beginning and attempting to paint these faces. And, really, I’m so excited!

Is It Whining or Sharing? …and May Flowers Day 15

It’s Day 15 of the May Flower Challenge, and I’m not even close to being out of flowers to show you from my garden!

I sat out on my patio this morning and chatted with my girlie, Kris, back in Minnesota. I get better cell reception out there than I do in the house, so it was a good excuse to just sit and enjoy. Well, I whined, but I enjoyed while I whined. I think on the last day of the challenge I’ll give you the grand overview, so you can get a better idea of how all these flowers fit together.

Today, let me introduce you to my cottage roses, hot pink version. I have some glorious reds, too, but I’ll save them for another day.

I hate to sound all full of myself, but I am REALLY loving the pictures I’ve been taking. But, I guess when flowers are your subject it’s pretty hard to mess up!

So since we’re on the subject of whining, when does sharing become whining? I hate whining. I don’t like it when the girls do it, and I certainly don’t like it when I do it.

I have life sooooooo good. I really don’t have a whole lot to complain about.

But this back pain is REALLY getting me down. The steroids I was on for the swelling of the rattlesnake bite, helped the swelling in my back, so as I was nursing my foot, my back felt pretty darn good. Jeez, I sound like a mess, don’t I? Well, I am. Lord, I hope this is not just what old age looks like. I am so not ready for it.

So, back to the back pain. I am not a sissy. I pride myself on being a tough old bird. Not much gets me down. I work through being sick. I got bit by a rattle snake, got out of the hospital at midnight, and was back caring for the girls at 6:30am. That is pretty typical of how I handle adversity. I just do it. I seriously am not a wimp.

But this constant, unrelenting pain, punctuated by sporadic spasms of increased pain is wearing at me, not only physically, but mentally as well. It is making me less able to cope with the smallest things, and keeping from being as active as I would normally be.

While I was in the hospital I sorta picked my Doctor’s brain about the back injury, and he suspects that since it hasn’t healed by now, I’m probably looking at a herniated disk. So, first up will be physical therapy, and if that doesn’t work, then you go the MRI and steroid injections into the disk. Sounds like fun.

So, when we get back from Yellowstone, if I haven’t made a miraculous recovery, off to the doctor I go. I know. I don’t like doctors. But I can’t do this. Man, my heart goes out to those who have it sooooooo much worse. This is really small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. So, although I feel the need to be authentic and share the bad as well as the good, it feels like whining. Thanks for letting me. I’ll try not to make a habit of it.

The Artist’s Way and May Flowers Day 14

I’m having so much fun taking pictures out in the garden. It seems like every day I’m finding something new in bloom. It’s so crazy, I can walk by the same area over and over without seeing something, then all of a sudden, there it is. I also discovered that a whole patch of something I forgot I had planted last year is about to bloom, and I’m so excited. I was thinking it was something else, and when I realized what it was…well! I’m so jazzed. I can hardly wait to show you. The first bloom has appeared but I’m going to wait until there are more!

So, in the meantime, here is one of several varieties of Calabrocha (or million bells) I have going. They look like little miniature Petunias. This one is a variegated version called “sweet tart.” Makes me laugh because that’s what we used to call our daughter when she was being moody!

Have you had a chance to pop by and see any of the other floral offerings from this challenge?

On the art front, I have just started a book called the Artist’s Way. I hear a lot of my girlies talking about how much it has helped them in their creative endeavors, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I bought it way back on April 27th and it’s taken me this long to actually start reading.

Come to find out, it requires a fair amount of work. The part I’m having the biggest problem with so far is getting up in the morning and doing “morning pages” three handwritten 8 1/2 x 11 pages of “brain dump” – just emptying out everything that is in your brain first thing in the morning, clearing the way for clearer, more creative thought.

I’ve been dragging my feet, primarily because I’m not a morning person and the idea of using my brain (even just emptying it!) before coffee is not appealing. But, I’m ready to go in the morning. Alarm already set a half an hour early. This should be interesting!

May Flowers Day 13 – Happy Mother’s Day!

Welcome to my 13th offering from my garden!

31 days of May Flowers is the brain child of Lori Moon, my friend and extraordinary photographer. I’m so glad she came up with this idea. I love photographing my garden, and enjoy sharing the photos, as well. This is the perfect opportunity!

Today I’d like to show you my wild lilac. This bush is so full of blooms right now! I love the periwinkle blue color – not an easy shade to find!

Today I had one of the best Mother’s Days ever.

Mr. Tattered decided all on his own to fix brunch for the moms (me and my daughter) so of course, that included our son-in-law and granddaughters, as well.

He fresh squeezed orange juice and cracked open a bottle of the pineapple champagne we brought home with us from Maui to make mimosas with just a hint of pineapple taste. They were perfect over a bit of crushed ice! Even the girls had their orange juice in champagne glasses. They felt so grown up!

That was followed by fresh, organic fruit salad he prepared all by himself, and then his world famous blueberry pancakes, warm maple syrup and soy sausage patties! And of course a cup of the best coffee ever (he’s got it down to a science!) Everything was delish, and prepared just like we like it. It was so much nicer than battling the crowds and noise and enduring terrible service for stuff we don’t even like all that much.

On top of that he got us each a lovely card and bouquet of flowers. We felt VERY spoiled!

Next up we grabbed a few photos out back of all the girls.

Finally my daughter and I slipped out for a mani/pedi complete with paraffin foot treatment, and off to the movies to see “The Lucky One,” a great chick flick we enjoyed very much. It’s been awhile since we’ve had any alone time, and it was really nice to just visit and catch up.

The only way it could have been any better would have been if my son and his family could have been there, but they’re just too far away for two weekends in a row, and they were just down for Bea’s birthday.

Anyway, it was a GREAT day, and I wanted to make sure my man got props for a job VERY well done. Only problem is, we’ll be expecting an encore performance next year, and of course he’s raised the bar for Father’s Day! How are we going to top that?