29 July 2015

Lots of Rain and Not Much Art


Hello Readers!

The muse hasn't totally returned yet. She's here for a bit and gone for a bit longer! Things are progressing but I really do not have a lot of art to show you all. Most of this post will consist of me rambling on about the milo field, the rain, my critters, the neighbors' critters and wild critters (lots of critters apparently) and whatever happens to pop into my mind while this post is being written.
Better settle in with a cuppa something cause it's going to be a rambling post, there is no doubt!

We will start with the art. 
 Back side of the altered envelope I sent to my partner this month. EAU is hosted at AFA (there's a link up there on the top right hand column).  As soon as I had painted "JUNE" on the edge of the envie I realized June had been done and over with for more than a week! There was no fixing it without mucking things up so when I mailed the envelope off to Canada, I had the mail clerk put one of the many stickers it needed over that boo boo.
 This started out as a plain brown bubble 9x6 envelope. I painted the big fish directly on the envelope in acrylics. The smaller green fish on the front of the envelope was painted on cereal box chipboard and then glued to the envelope. My partner said it took some blows on its journey through the postal system but all in all she liked it fine. I'm glad she liked the goodies that were inside also!
 These are the fishes I decided to send in to the 3D fish swap. I made a bunch of fishes ad had a devil of a time deciding which would be best for the swap. If you read this blog regularly you seen all those fishes before. 21 were paper mache. 7 were fabric. 4 were made from TP tubes. And 7 were made from cardstock and glitter.
I have a ton of fish to trade!
 I played with my newest white pen a bit. It's a Permapaque opaque pigment marker. It has two different sized tips, one at each end. It's not the best white marker I have ever used. I got it on clearance for less than $2 at Hobby Lobby back in May. This is an ATC. The drawing was free handed on black paper that was then adhered to cardstock.
 I crocheted another bag.
 Same bag. It's made from cotton yarn and plastic poly rope. I call it the creel bag cause it really reminds me of wicker creel for holding fish while out on the river. I don't think it is quite done yet. I think it needs some fishes on the outside of it. This bag will probably show up on the blog again in the future.
The 5 minute challenge. Goofy looking cat drawn and colored in 5 minutes time. ATC size. Done in markers on cardstock.

And that ends the art show and tell for today. There are a couple projects sitting on the kitchen tale that will be done before the next post appears.  If you came just for the art, thanks so much for stopping by!
I am sorry the muse neglected to inspire a masterpiece this time around. Perhaps next post will hold something truly special from the muse. 

Now I'm going to ramble on about the milo field. Mostly for my own amusement but feel free to join in .
 13 July 2015
Check out that long squarish cloud on the horizon! And also notice the field is completely green. On the 13th, I still wasn't certain this was milo growing. It  could have been silage or some such stuff.
 Ten days later on the 23rd, the field is turning yellowish. And it was raining that morning as well. I braved the elements to take a picture of the milo. There is no doubt, it is milo!

Two mornings later, on the 25th, I again braved the elements to take a picture of the milo. It's growing heads now and has lost some of the yellowish color from a few days before.

It rained for three days straight earlier this week. End of last week actually. Today's only Wednesday. I got lucky and caught a bolt of lightning in this picture of the milo field from the 25th. Must of been my lucky day that I didn't get struck by said lightning! 


Considering I walked out the milo field to show you all the baby heads of milo. 
I'll make regular updates with upclose pictures of the milo from time to time. I believe it will be around November when the milo is harvested. If memory serves me correctly, milo has to go through a cold spell before they cut it. And bonus is that they will more than likely put cows on this field come winter when the milo is cut.

 If you look closely in the center of this photo you will see the front porch spider. It rained on the night of the 23rd and FP decided to get out of the wet by building a nice web across the doorjamb of the front  door. I almost walked through that web when I opened the door that morning.  I took probably a dozen pictures of FP and could not get the camera to focus on him and not the background.
 Using the flash produced a nice image of the web, but did little good to the spider. FP is still living on the front porch. The pictures make him look a lot bigger than he really is. If his legs span half an inch he's doing good. I destroyed his web with one of my paint brushes after I deposited him on the wicker chair on the front porch. He can stay because he earns his keep. Each fly he catches doesn't come in the house and bother me. I hate flies!
I took a walk around the yard one morning a few days ago...on the 24th I think. Of course the kitties followed me.
 Murray was sitting on the porch of the bachelor's pad, yawning like she hadn't had enough sleep.
 She jumped up on the railing, still yawning.
 She sat on the railing a few minutes, yelling at me as I took her picture time after time.
 She tired of me pestering her and jumped up on the roof of the bachelors pad and then to the roof of the burnt house. As I made my way back to the house from the milo field, I spied her sitting on the edge of the roof, watching me. It is usually Tippy I see on the roofs.
 One of the gourd plants along the trench to the north of the house. It's growing wonderfully! Wild gourd. The gourds are tiny, smooth things about the size of a mandarin orange....between a golf ball and a tennis ball. It covers a lot of ground! Growing with it are marijuana (wild) and a mystery plant. No clue what kind of plant that is.
 A wider view.
 A gourd blossom.  This gourd is a perennial. It comes back year after year, bigger each than the last. We have a few of these gourd plants growing on the property. This one just happens to be the one closest to my back door.
 This is trouble. Bindweed. Bad stuff! Bindweed is like a miniature morning glory. It has tiny white trumpet shaped flowers that open in the morning. It's invasive and if someone doesn't do something about this stand, it will take over the whole yard eventually. Brother mows the flowers off so it doesn't go to seed as readily. But that will not stop it entirely.
 The poultry from next door came for a visit. This is Max and Daisy being watched by Tippy cat. She was WAY TOO interested in those ducks than I was comfortable with. This was their first introduction outside of their pen that I know of.  Brother has been letting them out of the pen for a few weeks now but they were slow in discovering my yard. They always went west when they were let out. Took them this long to realize they could go east too.
I was sitting on the back porch steps when I took the pictures of Tippy and the ducks. Those things hanging down from the top of the picture are deer antlers that hang on the hand rail of the porch. They're shed antlers, not harvested.

 The ducks have three chickens for company too. Eric the rooster is on the left and his lone hen, who remains nameless. There's another rooster is who is quite young. He was out of shot in this picture. He looks remarkably like the hen, with the exception of his big comb. He doesn't have a name either. Eric is a black rooster. My nephew named the ducks and rooster. I find it hilarious that we have a rooster named Eric. Every time I think of it, I laugh. I used to know a fellow named Eric who have made an excellent rooster!

Tippy stalked the ducks for quite awhile. She never went for them, but she followed them around. Crouching down like cats do when on the prowl. Those silly ducks acted as though they could care less they were being stalked. The rooster, who is supposed to protect his flock, was busy filling his belly with scraps, at the time the ducks were in peril. 
Tippy finally gave up on the ducks when I shooed them back home, as it was almost time for them to penned up for the night.
The ducks are in front of two of the four plum bushes. Between the ducks and Tippy is the mulberry tree planted last spring. The gray line running across the picture is US Highway 24. I shooed these silly fowl out of the ditch the other day. They were out there in the tall grass, chasing grasshoppers. If they get out on the highway, it is very likely they will become dead fowl. One can't stop on a dime doing 65 miles per hour! So far, so good! Hopefully Tippy has given up stalking the poultry! Murray and Lola cats were both out there with the ducks and chickens right along side Tippy. But neither of them seemed near as interested as Tip did!
 The wind blew pretty good on the 24th during the night. It poured about an inch and a half of rain that night too. I was sitting at the kitchen table working on a project when something went crashing outside. I thought it was the plastic chair that sits on the front porch had gone sailing off the porch. I didn't even bother to stop what I was doing and go see what had crashed. It was pouring down rain and blowing like crazy out there. I really thought it was the chair. Next morning Ma came over and says, "Did you know half of the pear tree is on the ground?"
I hadn't a clue! I forgot all about that crashing outside once the rain had stopped. The plastic chair was tipped over, but it was still on the porch. Ma and I went to town that morning and did not see another tree limb down, not one! As you can see from this stack of wood, what came down was not little! Half of the tree fell down! I am so thankful it did not fall on the house! That would have been disastrous!
This next bit is a bit gross if you care nothing about bugs. I like bugs and found this really interesting. 
I throw scraps out in the yard and wild animals dispose of them for me. If I had a compost heap, I'd be throwing the scraps in there. I just use the entire yard for a compost heap and spread the goodness around while it's being made rather than make it all in one spot. At any rate, I threw two big chunks of watermelon rind out for the butterflies (cause butterflies LOVE watermelon!) early last week.
 The watermelon rind had been in this spot for several days and had been rained on twice. First day the butterflies were in abundance. As the rind started to dry up, beetles arrived. Little black beetles. No picture of them. On my walk about the yard, I was astonished to find the watermelon rinds covered in big green japanese beeltes.
 There were a total of 23 big green beetles on the two rinds.
 I've been an avid bug explorer my entire life and I have never seen that many japanese beetles congregated in one spot, till now.
In the picture below, don't let those dead looking bugs fool you. There are both quite alive and well! I don't think japanese beetles bite. I know they are pests, though I'm not sure what they are pests of. They don't seem to be eating anything other than old watermelon at the moment.
 The elm tree has eyes. It used to have a nose and mouth as well, but they blew away in a storm and I never found them. The eyes are plastic and held to the tree with two nails.
 I don't know what happened for the elm tree to have gotten such a big scar, but I like how it looks. Probably a big storm did some damage years ago to this tree.  I just like this picture and who  better to show it off to you than you all?
 The mystery vegetable is growing nicely. I'm not too worried that the gray beetle will feast upon my mystery squash. These gray beetles are all over the yard. I'm thinking the mystery plant is an acorn squash. I'm really not sure though. It has three blossoms on it right now so if any of them turn into squash we will find out what kind they are.
I leave you with Murray and Tippy deciding what kind of mischief they can get into.
Thanks for hanging in there to the end!

Remember....
be good to one another!
It matters....
Peace
831

1 comment:

A Mynah Production said...

My muse is wonky too. :)
I would love to see a tutorial on your fish...if you are still making them. I hope I get one through the swap. I dropped a hint on the thread...so my chances are pretty good. :D

Your yawning cat is awesome. That is a freak'in big yawn for such a lil peep! Overall, you crack me up! I love to read your random thoughts.

Oh!...do you dry out your gourds?

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