Whatcha Doin?

 

A couple of weeks ago we watched the movie, Oz, the Great and Powerful. I enjoyed this movie as much as  The Wizard of Oz which is  one of my favorite horror movies, but I have never read any of the books by L. Frank Baum. So I have decided to read the series starting with the first book.

The other books in the series are:

The Marvelous Land of Oz

Ozma of Oz

Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz

The Road to Oz

The Emerald City of Oz

The Patchwork Girl of Oz

Tik-Tok of Oz

The Scarecrow of Oz

Rinkitink in Oz

The Lost Princess of Oz

The Tin Woodman of Oz

The Magic of Oz

Glinda of Oz.

Have you read the Oz books? Whatcha doin?

T Stands for First Lobster Roll of the Season

 Early this month, we were out running errands as lunch time rolled around. We decided to stop at our favorite 99 Restaurant as the seasonal menu featured  the Hot Buttered. Colossal Lobster Roll.  It was one of the first really nice days of the month. A Goldilocks kind of day. Too nice to sit inside the restaurant. The restaurant did try to make an outdoor space.  A few picnic tables and plants outside in the parking lot. The only problem is the parking lot is ripe with the heavy tang of asphalt. Not a smell conducive to eating.

We decided to get take-out because the sun room was the perfect place for lunch. A lovely view of the yard even if the lawn guy was over due to mow the lawn.

We ordered a new appetizer called a Seafood Stuffie, scallops and shrimp stuffed and served on a on a scallop shell. So pretty.

Hot Buttered Colossal Lobster Roll on a Brioche Bun (their fancy term for a toasted hot dog bun 😺). The entrée was beautifully plated on the finest paper plates served with French fries (chips) and a side of Cole slaw all washed down with iced tea.

Drop by hosts, Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to find out what the rest of the T Stands For gang is up to. If you want to play, include in your Tuesday post a beverage or container for a beverage. Don't forget to link your blog to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's page.

For The Hitchhikers

 

How Does Your Garden Grow?

 

At the Solstice, the tree graphic changed from a pink blooming tree to green leaves.

Green things growing. Broccoli and lettuce.

Who will get to the tomato first? Timex, the chipmunk or Himself.

A lone bee enjoys the milkweed blossoms

A bejeweled web sparkles in the sunlight. The picture doesn't do it justice

Either the remains of a snack or someone left an acorn gift.

Amazing sunset

Some thing is nibbling all the morning glories leaves. Himself has been spraying the plants with Neem oil.

I found these fun plant buddies in a catalog and gave them to Himself for Father's Day. A potato relaxes in the tomato.

Happy eggplant

Smiling cucumber.

Pensive carrot among the green things

and a pumpkin peeks through the lettuce.

How does your garden grow?

Saturday Morning at the Library

 

When I was 5 years old, I was forced to take dancing lessons while the Brother was forced to take accordion lessons. I hated dancing class. The Knights of Columbus Hall where the classes were given had no heat or it wasn't turned on. I hated wearing the pink beginner tights. I liked clacking around in the tap shoes, but Ma wouldn't let me practice inside the house on the wood floors. I spent most of my time in class being miserable and crying. Eventually, I was taken out of class.

While the Brother still had to endure accordion lessons, Dad took me to the library. He would leave me upstairs in the children's library where I could look at the books and choose to take some books home with my own library card. As I got older, I would go downstairs to the adult library and wander among the stacks enjoying the scent of the books before going to find Dad in the reference area consulting the law books and catching up on his work.

So for the next several weeks, a list of my favorite books, some I have read as a child, others as an adult and some  I have read more than once.

This week, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

You can find a preview of the book here.  If you haven't read this book, you can find them at your public library or favorite bookstore.

The Friday Five Good Things

 

Five good things that happened this week.

1. Saw the first fireflies of the season.

2. On the first day of Summer, the female cardinal came to visit while I was in the sun room having my afternoon cup of tea. Hi, Ma! She loved this room almost as much as I do.

3. The male cardinal was singing all day and came to visit while I was having my afternoon cup of tea. Hi Dad! My dad loved to sing and had a beautiful voice. After he retired, he was a soloist with his church choir and the director for his senior center's singing group.

4. My cousin sent an obituary about a first cousin once removed. She passed on Valentines Day of this year. I asked him how he found out about her passing as I thought there was no one left from that generation. 

He said he had a dream and he was over (great) Uncle's house visiting and sitting at the table having coffee. He saw the cousin. He woke up and it was 2:30 AM. Just for the heck of it, he did a search on her name and found the obit.

5. Attended a Wellness fair with Master Beef and Grandmaster E.  A fun night visiting with friends.

How was your week?

Society of Scribes Workshop - Tulips with a Wedge Brush

 

Using a wedge-shaped or triangle brush, former head White House calligrapher, Pat Blair, demonstrated how to make tulips and leaves. The technique is similar to one stroke floral watercolors. By manipulating the brush, you can create stylized leaves and flowers. I got better results when I didn't try so hard to control the brush, but let the brush just do its thing.

Have you used a wedge brush?

Whatcha Doin?

 

Himself and I are working on a joint project. He purchased some terra cotta pots and cleaned them so we could go from here.

To here

to here.

Whatcha doin?

T Stands for Summer Solstice at Stonehenge

 Like last year, the English Heritage Site, the group that looks after historical properties in England, was going to broadcast a live feed of the Solstice Eve sunset and the Solstice Sunrise from Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.

Sunset was at 8:27 PM (4:27 PM EDT, my tine zone). I settled in to watch the live feed with my afternoon cup of tea. Just like last year, it was cloudy and overcast. There was meditative music playing as the soundtrack of the live feed. People were commenting in the chat box sending solstice blessings from all over the world. Still cool to see the monument and to know that even though it was cloudy the sun still set. This year there were no birds flying around and perching on the stones. I thought that was odd.

Sunset from my front yard.

A picture of the waxing gibbous moon before I returned to the computer for the Solstice Sunrise live feed.

There were technical difficulties. The host did an interview with an archeologist/historian who gave some interesting facts about Stonehenge. At the Solstice, the sun rises to the left of the heel stone. She said, when the monument was first built there were two heel stones and the sun rose between them. 

When they got the feed up and running, it was raining and the camera was positioned so you couldn't see anything except the tops of the trilithons instead of looking between the columns out across the plain to the heel stone.  Sunrise would have been at 11:31 PM EDT.  The live feed program would run for 90 minutes, but I was too tired to wait up to see if the skies would clear.

This is what the Solstice sunrise would look like from Stonehenge. This was a screen capture from a YouTube video from 2015

I didn't get up at sunrise to take a picture, but this was sunrise from my front yard around 6:30 AM when I went to put the trash out for trash day.

Drop by hosts, Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to find out what the rest of the T Stands For gang is up to. If you want to play, include in your Tuesday post a beverage or container for a beverage. Don't forget to link your blog to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's page.

Workshop Week: How to Draw Any Flower

 

This workshop taught by Shayda Campbell was a lot of fun. She broke down  drawing flowers (daisy, marigold, and lily of the valley) into steps which were very easy to follow. She used simple materials: a pencil for drawing a rough and a thin and thick line permanent marker such as the Micron Pigma pen. The larger or thicker to outline and the thinner or smaller to add detail. I completed this workshop in my Canson Mixed Media journal which is on a 90 lb. paper. She used a size .04 and a .02 Micron. I didn't have a .04 (or couldn't find it) so I used a .03 and a .01.

Shayda also had a larger project to complete illustrating all 12 birth month flowers to be used as the illustration for a wall calendar. She provided free calendar sheets to download. I wasn't interested in this part of the project.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

 

The bucket brigade is doing well

A blossom on the tomato plant

This tomato plant and the pepper plant aren't looking so good.

The flowers in the mailbox planter love their location

The morning glories at the post lantern have started to climb their trellis

The little flowers in this rail box are probably not getting enough sun

The flowers on the opposite side like their location

Himself swapped the morning glories so the smaller ones would have the sunnier location.

The morning glories in the hanging baskets are doing well

I found a tiny morning glory bud in a pot. I thought the bud was too small to transplant so I just put the pot next to the trellis.

Ink's garden finally got weeded. 

Happy Solstice!

How does your garden grow?