May Flowers

     Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. I hope you are having a  great week so far.

     Today I start my summer job, 2 mornings a week checking boats for invasive weeds at the big lake in my town, weather dependent that is. I have mixed feelings if I want to schedule my time 2 mornings out of the week since I still have so much yard work I want to complete before it gets too hot, but on the other hand, I get to chill by the lake  (and today it will be chilly by the lake too 😕), read in between boats and get a bit of cash for it. Plus I feel like I give back to my community a bit doing it too. I'm sure once I actually start I won't miss the chores at home at all. 😏

    First let me  answer a couple of questions from yesterday's gardening post. First of all, I know dirt is technically soil. I didn't realize using the word dirt  would make so many interesting comments.  👍😀  

   The second question was what kind of snake that was. It was a Northern Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum).  Against certain light it has a red tint to the brown diamonds on it, and it isn't poisonous. I'd say he/she was just under a meter long, and definitely not interested in me. I just don't like to be startled by them, which seemed to happen a lot last summer as I had another garden bed in that area with the wild growth all around it. As I said in my T day Garden post, hopefully now the gravel will make it easier not only to see the snake, but to walk through. And Angie, I don't think the 2 dogs I have now would do anything to the snake except want to smell it, but I know when I was growing up we had a dog who hated snakes. She would grab them and thrash them about. 

     I'm back today with lots of flowers, starting with a page I recently made for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. I am really loving this robin's egg blue lately, so I used a glaze that color to cover my page. When that dried I used some grey paint and a wire fence stencil.

     My Art by Marlene big punch out images book was sitting on the floor next to my work table, so I did a whole lot of flower and leaf punching out.  I really like all the colors and the arrangement I made. I also added a few birds and even a silly bee. I didn't plan on making a beautiful garden arrangement when I started this page, but since it makes me smile, I'm going with it. I hope it makes you smile too.

    The flower word is also a punch out from this book, and I stamped the Happily Ever After quote below it. Finally I used a bit of white splatter (white gouache paint) to finish my page.

    Last week my local botanical gardens opened.  A friend and I went one morning, so let  me share a few photos starting with the Japanese maple trees that caught my attention.

     And here's a few early spring flowers (or about to be flowers)  as well as other views too.

Thanks for stopping by, and  have a wonderful day.