Morning glory days...

You know it's the end of summer when these sky colored flowers bloom! Morning Glories have fascinated me since I was very young... I haven't had much luck growing them for a few years because of certain little bunnies seem to love eating the seedlings (but not the purple ones of which I have plenty!) or the seeds themselves have been duds (and some times they bloom the smaller purple.) These I rescued from the wee hungry bunny and kept them out of reach on the porch table until they became a less tempting size, now they're growing in an enamel bowl, climbing on a trellis made from old lath from one of our deconstruction projects in the house... I've been going through the photos that I've taken over the last two three weeks, and these were the prettiest, and seem to speak of a time of year that is winding down... lilacs are spring, morning glories are fall...


My garden is a wreck ever since that big blow we had when the last tropical storm ripped through here, today we have residual wind and clouds from Earl, it feels fall-like, in the 60's... yesterday was 90.


These two cluttered together during the early morning bloom...


This photo was taken just yesterday morning... I was shuffling around like an old woman and had a tough time keeping the camera steady... I've been having a great deal of trouble with my FMS lately, been over-doing things again, but that's my own fault, I just can't sit and let others do the work, and since I do my best to maintain my flexibility I have a false sense of "I can do it" and bang, my body is on fire by 3PM and my head is spinning, ears ringing, my stomach queasy, and all I want to do is immerse myself in a hot bath and go to bed... so I'm hoping to get lots of rest this long weekend to combat the aches and fatigue...

My new novel, The Fractured Hues of White Light, received its first bad review, a two star at Goodreads.com from one of the winners of the giveaway that I did there... it's unfortunate that giveaways tend to be random selection, so there's no telling who will be reviewing the book, and they don't necessarily attempt to match the book with an appropriate reader who would like it (or the people who sign up for the giveaway don't make the effort to research the book first before committing to the giveaway... I don't know, I'm a fussy enough reader that I would do my homework by checking the 'Look Inside' feature at Amazon to read a sample of the book to see if the writing interests me.) ...Anyway... the book wasn't the reader's cup o' tea and she said so in so many words...that's okay, it's part of the business, I can deal with that...you can't please everybody. This sort of review can either be good because it will warn off readers who share her book biases... or it will be bad because it will warn off readers who might be pleasantly surprised to read a book outside their comfort zone. Who knows. I'm running a second giveaway at Goodreads that ends on September 30th, and again, I'll hope for the best that I will get readers who will enjoy the book for what it is...

Even tho' this one is just a tad blurry, I still love the shapes in it, the movement...makes me think of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting...

A busy time...

A dried out burdock leaf made an interesting pattern I couldn't resist...

This little guy was in my garden feasting...


I've been out and about the acre on and off today (and yesterday)... taking a few pictures (if you can say 86 photos to be a few!)

A rose in my garden...taken yesterday...

Marks on asphalt...

I found a box of nails that were left out... I love the "wash" at the bottom of the box...

August flowers...

I finished preparations for my next art exhibition at a local restaurant (Gentile's), matting, framing, making labels, and figuring out prices, 20 pieces total, paintings, drawings and photographs...a nice mix of things for people to look at... I hope the patron's and the staff enjoy my work...I believe the installation is happening on August 6th. I'm looking forward to going there for dinner (OMG that's a belly full of yummy food!)

I just Googled Syracuse.com earlier today and found that the notice for my book signing on Saturday, August 7th 1-4 at The Gallery at Healing Art Passages in Liverpool NY has been posted, so hopefully that will bring in some new peeps to see what I've been up to... I'm pretty happy to do this little gig, and I hope to expand to other places in town or the region...

I'm proofreading chapter 3 of my next manuscript Drinking from the Fishbowl...tinkering with this and that, it's moved along too easy, I'm suspicious when that happens, so I'll revisit it again later, maybe I'm too tired to really think about it today.

At the end of our walk...with distant thunder rumbling over Syracuse in the north, my faithful dog, Max, once again proves that he does not like his picture taken... believe me, just seconds before I took the picture, he was looking up at me with perky ears and happy brown eyes...

(He's the best of good boys!)

It's been a 'real' week...

Admiral with wings closed...his bright pretty stuff is on the inside, but I think love the subtle patterns on the outside of the wings more...

Two Tiger Swallowtails...

It's so hard to "catch" one flutterbye holding still, but two within inches of each other, tougher, man, I'm tellin' you, I was clicking the button faster than the little Fuji could keep up, I knew I'd get at least one photo of the moment worth saving...

So here is my cluttered old drafting table where I work...yup, that is paint stains on the table top from paintings made long ago...


I had the dreaded Blue Screen of Death visit my laptop last week Wednesday, and now it's back, fixed and has gained two little brothers, a Dell Mini (that I bought immediately with the little bit of money I've saved for a new computer) and a 500GB portable hard drive (thank goodness I had just gotten paid)...it could've been a virus or an error in the mechanism that tripped up the gadget...whatever, the good news is none of my writing or photos were lost (most everything was backed up), tho' my email and address book is gone, bookmarks missing, which is very annoying, all necessary software is reloaded...I'm heading back toward normal operations. Tho' I'm still cringing every time I turn it on now...if I happen to be not listening for it and miss the Windows start-up chime, I become concerned...that will wear off eventually...

Live and learn...always...

Writing a book and putting it out for people to read is one of those major 'live and learn' lessons...I updated my Q&A at Goodreads this morning, and added another excerpt from The Fractured Hues of White Light for readers to browse...after I pasted the piece into place, I noticed the word 'mediations' on page 66 ...dang, darn, drat and damn! Did I use the wrong word? I think I meant to say "meditations", but suddenly I'm not sure. I'll tell you now, it's been that way for years, as soon as I found it, I dug into the archives and found it consistently written as 'mediations' all along! ARRRGH! But in my mind, today, I read it as 'meditations' and now I'm second guessing myself. How does one miss that? Easy, the mind fills in what isn't there while you're reading along, no matter how careful. I'm not going to make myself nuts about it (tho' I know I will because that's how I am, I am totally obsessing about it that's why I'm writing about it.) Just in case I'm wrong about what I meant to say, I've marked it for changes later with a post-it note tucked in my proof copy, I'm sure I'll find more changes to make and it will be better to do it all at once rather than piece meal changes that wind up costing money and time. No matter how careful I am, I still miss stuff...and this was proofread by another pair of eyes too, so she could've caught it way back during that early draft. Good grief. I suppose in some in context, it works, Sylvester could be 'mediating' within himself (relaxing mediations) while he was fly-fishing in the stream and thinking about the stuff bugging him, but no, I think I meant 'relaxing meditations' because he was trying to find a zone of comfort within himself. Ah, well, nobody's perfect. Well, I'm in good company, there are books published by the best and biggest publishing houses with grammatical slip-ups and wrong words and they have paid editors working on it (usually very overworked and also very human), so I shouldn't be kicking myself for being sloppy... but I tend to hold the bar for myself higher than most...it's just the way I am (If my name's on it, I want it to be right!) I know toward the end of the process I was becoming a bit cross-eyed from looking at it for so long. I'm not overly anxious to proofread it again right away...but I know I will be picking it up sooner rather than later...

I heard about this website called I Write Like (http://iwl.me/) in which you paste a sample of your writing and it compares your writing to samples of the famous in their database (tho' I'm sure it's limited)...so for the heck of it, I tucked in a small sample from chapter 1 of Dusty Waters (it was a dark and stormy night last night, so it was a fun thing to do) and it came up that I write like Nabokov... I'm not sure what to think of that...it's good, but a little intimidating...I can see this being a time wasting sort of thing...probably addicting...so I stopped at that and probably won't go back...it might say I write like Stephen King next...not that there's anything wrong with that...

I'm glad to have my laptop back, and I'm glad to be working on my blogs again...last weekend I was so out of sorts...

My day in the garden...

Yesterday was a lovely day to spend outside, it was that just right warm, the just right breeze, the sky was bright overcast, the color of platinum...the flowers and weeds are out of control, but I'm enjoying them rather than fretting, it's been the summer of my herniated disc, I'm trying to just go with the flow while it heals, so, I briefly sat amongst the pretty things below their tops...

After I set up all of my studio stuff on the porch, put the cushions on my chair, made my coffee, and brought the laptop outside, I let Crouching Tigger-Hidden Pooh and the Fatty Woo outside to enjoy the day...and of course, Max too...(this is Tiggy-Pooh showing me how the door worked, just in case I forgot what to do...if only he had thumbs!)
It was a good day...I met a grasshopper...he paused his munching to give me a look...

And I met a Giant Swallowtail who I've never met in my garden before, I feel good about that...he didn't sit still for his close up, but he wasn't shy around me, just being a flutter-bye...



I almost forgot...every garden has to have one of these little guys slithering around...
(I saw him again this morning while I pulled my daily allotment of a few weeds, and touched his back as he shyly snaked away...)

Later in the day, Fatty Woo became tired and tipped over onto the driveway...too much catnip...too much fun...it' s nap time...

I alternated between laptop and artwork...juggling my passions...I'm creatively doubled damned...I'm a writer and a painter...not that it's a bad thing...I think it's wonderful that I have found a balance between the two (finally.)

However, it's funny how people react to my creativity in different ways...

"Wow, when do you find the time?" (I don't watch a lot of television.)
"What don't you do?" (This is usually said with a roll of the eyes or hands on hips, sometimes both.) (Why do you say it like that, are you jealous?)

Occasionally the attitude is a smiling one without the sarcasm, "You paint and you write books? Wow..." (so we're back to the "when do you find the time" thing.)

"There's no money in doing that!" (Why is everything we "do" have to be about money?)

There are some positive reinforcement...

"Well, that's great!"
"How awesome is that!"
"Cool."
"Good for you."
"You go, girl."

(Not to sound too harsh, I don't mean to be critical, but it's rare to see some of these people at gallery openings and I sincerely doubt they'd show up to readings or book signings...I've gotten used to this kind of surface enthusiasm.)

Sometimes I'm just startled by how some people just don't have a clue about creativity...they're totally lost at sea when they talk to me...I've always felt like an alien, that odd puzzle piece that never fits in, the square peg being jammed into the round hole...thankfully, I'm comfortable in my own skin, I love what I do. I feel like they're missing out on something special when they don't attempt to explore their creativity because they fear not being good at it. (That's why you have to make the time to practice.)

Today is another day, more editing, more painting...the sky is gray and the air is heavy with humidity...I'm hoping for at least a platinum later, but blue would be nice too...Max is waiting at the door...

Close up to a colangela...

A hardly little flower, very prolific, low maintenance (reseeds itself quite well, and easy enough to harvest seeds to dry for next season), a bright personality...apparently edible, and used in herbal remedies and teas...(I haven't gotten into the whole eating flowers gig...I'm still a picky eater even tho' I've become enlightened since I was in that "picky eater" stage between the ages of 5 and 19...

...imagine a field full of them...someday I'll try an exclusive colangela garden patch...I love them...

This year, I'm taller than the sunflowers...and sadly, I don't have very many of them, it's this crappy cold and rainy summer we're having...

As you can see, Crouching Tigger-Hidden Pooh has found plenty of catnip...
I have so much catnip in the garden it's no wonder I don't have every cat in the county in my yard...
I was chasing flutter-byes yesterday...the Tiger and Admiral settled happily on the Cone Flowers (they're doing just fine in spite of the weather!)
My weedy garden...
This is Love in the Mist...I have no idea how I got it in my garden, probably came in a mixed packet that I sprinkled around once...I really love this little white flower!

Close up of Love in the Mist blooming...

When I wasn't chasing flutter-byes and photographing flowers yesterday (it was a rare, hot summer day yesterday, it was GORGEOUS!) I was painting on my portable studio table (I'll post pictures of that over at Follow Your Bliss) and working on The Fractured Hues of White Light...I'm visiting with chapter 3 (again) and juggled some sentences around (again)...there's a paragraph that I'd like to find a new home for, but it seems happy right where it is this morning...I'll leave it alone for now. I'll read the rest of the chapter today...it's really come together quite nicely...

My Goodreads giveaway of Dusty Waters: A Ghost Story ends midnight tonight! I'm so thrilled with the response that it has gotten...I really don't know what it means yet, but I intend to keep muddling along in search of readers...

Thanks for stopping by!

Looking out the window, it's hard to tell if it's going to rain or not...the prevalent gray has come back, tho' it's warmer (mid-70's already), thunderstorms likely later with another cold front passing through...(psst...we don't need any more rain, I wish it would rain somewhere else, preferably somewhere that needs it!)

My garden so far...

Down in the veggie garden...I was playing with bumble bees...this handsome fellow didn't mind my being there, he loves my chives!


This is the veggie garden...so far...there's some lettuce up that had reseeded from last year (yay!) The little buckets here and there are being filled with whatever stones I find to add to my path (yes, all those stones came from this little patch of ground! I didn't have to have them delivered.)


This is the flower garden by my house...it's filling in nicely...columbine and iris (and more chive) are currently in bloom...and there are a few weeds to be pulled, I'll get to them...eventually...but this weekend, I constructed my annual morning glory twig trellis (or a in this case, a tepee)...this one is made from pieces of the Granny lilac tree that had died off and I had cut away last spring...I was amazed how sturdy the branches still are...by August, it will be covered with heavenly blue! (Those stones are the delivered kind, that's our drainage, not a garden path.)

The Iris after rain...

There are patches of wild flowers here and there...I really love phlox...


This hydrangea is an old bush, she's way over my head...some of her was broken by a heavy early snow last fall, my Fred had to cut her, but she's still loaded with blooms again this year, just like last year...and there are plenty of new shoots to replace what she lost...oh, she's so pretty!

Well, that's what's in my garden so far...

Here's one more picture of my bumble bee friend...what a cutie pie...tho' I wouldn't want to piss him off...but at the moment, he was happy as can be(e)!