Mud Season

 Hi everyone. Hope everyone is having a nice weekend.

There is a saying that goes "as exciting as watching paint dry" or sometimes "as exciting as watching paint peel".   That slow and tedious process is how I describe waiting for spring to arrive at this time of year. We had a warm week last week, and even though  a lot of snow melted, it didn't all disappear. When it did melt, because the deeper ground hasn't thawed yet,  we've had puddles. And mud.

Now we're back to cold for a couple of days. March is so fickle, isn't it?

It's mud season, the 5th season of the year.

This was my driveway on Tuesday afternoon.

And then the backyard and driveway on Wednesday.

Then we had a couple of beautiful warm days. Thursday we even hit 64 degrees (just about 18 degrees C).

My road is a mess. And you should see the outside of my car.

Slowly, slowly it melts.

Too slow for my impatience for spring.  Watching the snow melt is like watching paint dry. 

BUT I do know that there won't be spring until it does all melt. 

There are some signs of spring.

Look at how much more snow is gone in just a few days. And there are rings around the bottoms of the trees in the woods, where the snow has melted closest to the trunk. That means those trees are starting to take up water so the leaf buds can grow bigger.  

New Hampshire Fish and Game sent out an email the other day saying it is time to take in bird feeders. Bears are coming out of hibernation. I won't stop feeding, but I do bring the feeders in at night and put them back at during the day. I hate giving up seeing the birds at the feeders, even though I know bears can be out in the daytime.

Seeds are out in stores, the first thing we see here in New Hampshire. I picked up some packets when I was in Home Depot getting paint. (I'm in the slow process of painting my living room.)

Thursday it was even warm enough to set up a beach chair on my back deck. I brought out a book and enjoyed several hours of reading in the sun. It was too nice to do anything else.

Pete soaked up some sun too. 

Hopefully NO more snow, but I have a feeling it is a little too early to wish for that to come true. March is, after all, torn between winter and spring, at least here in New Hampshire.

Have a great rest of your weekend. I may do some living room painting, but I'm not sure yet what I might end up doing.

And thanks so much for visiting.

Friday Challenge Art

Hello everyone. Hope your week has gone well.  Mine flew by as most weeks seem to do.  Luckily this week we've had early spring weather and lots of snow melt.

Today I have  some challenge art to wrap up the workweek. First of all, I have another page for Sheila's single flower challenge at Art Journal Journey

Above is a 2 page spread from my spring inspired Secret Garden Journal. I showed you the cover of this project the other day. It's part of a watercolor book I recently made, 5x7 inches in size.  I originally stitched the spine to make the book, but as I worked in it the pages started to rip apart, so I added colorful tape to keep them together. 

While stitching the original spine, I added some fancy stitching on some pages, and that it what you see on the left hand side. 

Both of the stamped images on the right are stamped on acetate and then glued down. I tried stamping the big flower directly on the page, but since getting the book to lay flat is what broke its spine, I found working on acetate was a better route to go. I did stamp the little bunny silhouette, and also I used some white foiled paper trim, the metallic bow and also a few little gemstones.  All the quotes are TH except for the one with gold print which is a small piece of washi tape.

I also noticed over on Jo's Let's Art Journal blog that the latest challenge at Country View Challenge is silhouettes, so I am linking up my page since that little bunny fits the challenge.

I also have a tag for Pinky's  Wings challenge at Tag Tuesday today.

I started with the crocus printed paper in the middle. I covered the edges with 2 shades of purple paint. I did some inking and stamping in brown and black ink. I also used a gelli roll pen to add the bright yellow to the bees. I finished off the tag with some gemstones, a piece of vintage ric-rac trim, as well as the quote.

Wishing you all a great start to your weekend.

And as always, thanks for visiting.

 

A Big Flower

Hi everyone. Hope your week is going well.  I am really enjoying the nice weather we are having, even if it means my road is knee deep (not literally but close-smile) in mud.

I'm back with another page for Sheila's  (online known as Orange Esmeralda) Single Flower challenge at Art Journal Journey.

The idea of a single flower lead me to draw flowers on several pages of my drawing journal. For this page, I went big.

The only non-drawn part is the stamped word Bloom I stamped below the flower.

There's not much to say except I used my Faber-Castell markers to both draw and color this page. I'm happy with my flower, but the one thing about my drawing that I am really amazed with is the black circle in the center. It surprisingly came out like a perfect circle. It pops in this photo too, although it is drawn on the page. Small things for small minds (I'm being my sarcastic self-ha-ha) as the cliche goes.

And can you guess what  visitor I had from these horrible photos? It was exciting!

This bard owl was sitting  and watching for prey that came up under the bird feeder at about 7:30 the other night.  The dogs were barking like crazy, but the owl didn't seem to care.  I tried getting a good photo, but between the distance, the darkness and the fact that I couldn't open the door for risk that the dogs ,who were extremely wound up , wouldn't stay,  none of my photos came out. 

I think Mr/Mrs Owl  must  be coming around frequently as of late because often Pete wakes up  during the night and starts barking. When he starts to bark, Maddie rolls out of bed (she sleeps with us) and starts barking too. I never let them out during a bark fest because who knows what could be out there. My bet is there is good owl food under the feeders at night since so much seed falls onto the ground. and that must attract hungry mice and other small animals.

Thanks for visiting.

 

Waiting for Spring

Hi everyone. Today I want to share another page for Sheila's single flower challenge at Art Journal Journey.

My page today is the cover of another water colored journal I made. This one is 5x7  inches and big enough to meet the Art Journal Journey  requirements.  I also added stitching on some of the pages in this journal.

Spring is still calling me so you can guess the theme.

The cover has one flower that works for AJJ, but here's a 2 page spread from this journal that has more than 1 flower. Not for AJJ, but just to show.

 We're having a typical late winter/early spring March.

We still have enough snow on the ground that I went snowshoeing this past Sunday. 

It was chilly as you can tell with me all bundled up.

Thank goodness for ice grippers on the snowshoes. We've had just enough melt and freeze the the top of the snow was slick in a few places.

The dogs enjoyed a walk too. 

And I saw these tracks.  They aren't fresh, but I don't see any claw marks which say cat to me. House cat? Bobcat? Or are they melted rabbit tracks. I did see some definite rabbit tracks nearby, but these looked different.  Does anyone see something I don't or know what these are? 

Luckily this week we are having some really warm temperatures.  Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Thanks for visiting.

 

T Stands for Happy and Sad

 Hi everyone.  

Another week of T has rolled around. My post today is both happy and sad. And also (warning you), pretty long.

You may know the sad news already.  A few weeks back on T Day,  Eileen  of The Artful Crafter told us  she was going in for open heart surgery.  Sadly, she passed from complications due to that surgery. I'll miss her art desk photos with her glass of wine or other drinks that she almost always included in her T Day posts. I will also miss her photos of Mexico where she was living.   Eileen  participated  over  at Art Journal Journey as well as T day. I know she expected to be back to join more challenges. 

I received this ATC from Eileen back in 2018 for T day's anniversary party. I thought I would share it again in her memory.

RIP Eileen.

I had some celebration baking scheduled for this week, but it seemed a bit too fun after writing about a loss. I thought about whether I should end this post here, or whether I should include something else. 

I am a happy person by nature, and when I get sad,  I am just one of those people who plows onward.

This week for T I will share photos from another road trip. Hope you don't mind as I've done that a lot lately.

Last week was my birthday. Since I was going to have the day to myself   (the hubby had to work), I decided I would  go do something . Right now New Hampshire is in the early spring  mud, icy patches  and still  snow covered state  called called mud season. That meant I needed to find something to do that was not outside. 

I like to visit the King Arthur Baking Company Store in Norwich, Vermont, but with covid and the 2 hour trip each way, I hadn't been there since the summer of 2019. Even though visiting would mean a bit of driving, the change of scenery would be great, and Vermont is pretty covid strict. 

In fact, I was a little worried that the store wouldn't even be open. (Looking on the internet proved it was in fact open with some strict protocols.) 

 I decided to head out early, so I set the alarm. I got up just as the hubby was getting ready to leave for work. It was a bit strange  that he looked a little too casual, but in my morning grogginess I didn't think too much about it.

"Do you want your first birthday present now?" He asked me right after I had rolled out of bed.

I know I looked at him utterly confused. He's a jokester, and I was expecting a silly comment. Plus I wasn't quite 100% with it yet.

"I'm coming with you today. I've taken the day off so I can spend your birthday with you."

That was a really nice surprise and birthday gift. Let me take you on our adventure.

We had watched a show about donuts a couple of weeks earlier. At that time I had said how I hadn't had a donut in well over a year. Our first stop was at a local grocery chain that makes donuts we like, and he ran in (he's all vaccinated plus done his 2 weeks) and got us some donuts. He got way more than we needed, but smart man that he is,  figured I would want a choice.

It was a beautiful day as you can see. Then we arrived at King Arthur, which is actually only about 2-3 miles over the New Hampshire border into Vermont.

Those feet on the right are the women's who took your temperature to let you inside.  There was a 30 person limit inside. It felt OK.

I managed to pick up some baking supplies I needed. I have occasionally ordered from them in the past 2 years, but it seemed whenever I did order, there was always something I wanted that was out of stock. No problems with that in the store.

After I finished shopping, we decided to take a little drive and check out a few of the covered bridges in the area. One I had never seen but wanted to was the Cornish-Windsor Bridge. It spans the Connecticut River which divides New Hampshire and Vermont. It wasn't much of a drive to get there from King Arthur either.

We entered on the Vermont side and drove back to New Hampshire through the bridge.

The hubby took the photos since I was driving. 

The Cornish-Windsor Bridge is the longest covered bridge in the US and the longest 2 span covered bridge in the world. 

It is also still in use as a way to cross the river.

In this next photo you can see the hubby enjoyed his day off when I stopped to take a photo of the bridge.

We were going to visit one other covered bridge, but the road in to it was fully involved in mud-season. I turned right around and decided I'd check that one out some other time. There were a few others we could have driven to find, but it was now lunch time, and we were hungry. I had decided what I wanted for my birthday lunch, and that included a bit of driving to get there.

We drove part way back home and stopped in Concord, New Hampshire for lunch. One of the local coastal seafood places had opened a restaurant in Concord, and that's where I wanted to eat. We ordered over the phone, and they brought our lunch out to us in the car. 

I ordered one of my favorite sandwiches, even if it wasn't yet summer. Some of you can probably guess what this was without me showing you.

And if you could hear me, I would say this in my local, dry, and  even a little sarcastic tone, "I'm just supporting local seacoast lobstermen." Smile.

Funny it was on a hamburger roll not in a hotdog roll. 

The scenery overlooked the parking lot. Not exciting but the sandwich and chips  tasted yummy.

It might have taken me forever to get here, but finally,  my T day drink.  Don't forget to stop by  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog    for this week's drink related post.

My birthday present to myself to remember my fun birthday. It's filled with some of Trader Joe's Spiced chai tea latte mix.

Thanks so much for visiting and reading all the way through this post. Happy T day.

.

A Big Flower

 Hi everyone. Hope everyone had a nice weekend. It was a little chilly here in New Hampshire, but the good news it  should feel a little warmer this week.  (Let's hope that those weather people are right!) The other good news is that my daughter came home for a Saturday into Sunday overnight visit, and since I hadn't seen her since mid-January it was nice to have her  around.

Today I thought I would share another page for Sheila's single flower challenge at Art Journal Journey

The background might look a bit familiar as it was a page I made for Creative Jumpstart back in January. It was telling me a big white daisy like flower would look fantastic on it, so I listened and added one.

I hand drew the flower. Before I glued it down I first cut up some printed acetate I had (old overheads from school) and glued down some words, and then I attached the flower. In the center I added some dabs of liquid glue and then added some of these little plastic beads to finish it off.

It works for me.

You might also remember I showed you this photo of seaweed last week.

I had said it would make a great stamp, so I carved one .

 I'm happy with results. I think I captured the essence of Rockweed (Fucus vesiculosus)! Also commonly called Bladder wrack. This one is stamped with some acrylic paint.

I used this to make some prints which I will show you another time.

  Happy new week. Thanks for visiting.

The Weekend Post-February Books

 Hi everyone.

 Hope your weekend is going well. It is time for me to write my latest book post, so for those of you who like to read about books, this is my February reading list.

February wasn't a huge actual book reading month for me. With so much cold and grey weather, I spent more time watching old movies (several Alfred Hitchcock films, a few 1960's beach films, as well as a few other assorted films) in the late afternoon which is one of  my big reading times. 

It was a good listening month however, so almost all of these stories were audiobooks that I listened to, usually while making art or out driving.

You might remember I mentioned Don Quixote last month in my book post. After getting through a big chunk of Don Quixote, I needed something a little more modern. I figured it was time to put the giant classic (just under 40 hours of listening) aside and wrap up the third book in this memoir series by Ruth  Reichl.  

Although I will say the topic of this volume (her becoming the editor of Gourmet magazine) wasn't as interesting to me as her childhood (book 1- Tender at the Bone) or her youthful and  hippie years (Comfort Me with Apples),  Reichl 's writing is  lush  and delicious to listen to.  I still enjoyed this book. Plus it was just over 6 hours, a quick listen.  I'm not a big one for biography, but for someone with such a fascinating life, I enjoyed Reichl's down to earth  views on living. Seeing I also enjoy reading and collecting cookbooks, I love that she knew/knows some of the authors of books I have and included them in the story.

The Outcasts of Time was recommended to me by my beach walker friend. In this book, 2 men dying from the Bubonic Plague in the mid-1300's make a deal with the devil to come back to life for a day every 99 years. It's a really interesting concept and a great way to show the  changes in the world each century I  loved this story. It got me thinking about the history. I also learned a lot about  many of the things we all know and how those items changed  people's lives over time. These "things" included windows, glasses, the spinning wheel, even fireplaces that have gone from being holes in the ceiling to structures we now know.  It was  a well written story, definitely different from my ordinary reads. A highly recommended book!

As February was very wintery this year with cold temperatures and lots of snowy days,  I started dreaming of spring. I also decided I needed to do something productive so one day so I did a bit of book shelf rearranging and cleaning. That is when I came across this book I've had since the 1990's. 

The 365 Days of  Gardening is broken down into seasons and into months. I decided it would be better just to read the early spring chapters, and not plow through the whole book. There are good tips about every kind of gardening: lawns, trees, veggies, flowers, and none of these tips are date or place specific. They're just related to spring.  I'll read more of the different seasons as the year goes on.  

The only actual book I  read and completed was this fascinating book about sheep. 

A Short History of the World According to Sheep is an informative and easily readable book that explains about how people all over the planet have interacted with sheep since early recorded history. It talks about finds at archeological digs. It talks about  wool and why it is what it is. The book also is about knitting and knitted goods, woven wool clothing, and even lanolin (the fatty substance on the wool of sheep that keeps them waterproof) and all the uses it has. I  even learned  about how the Vikings would never have been what they were without sheep. There is much more than these few examples.  I would never have guessed this one group of animals would have been so important to human civilization. It was an eye opener for me. I really enjoyed this book, and if  you like natural history or non-fiction reads, then I highly recommend this book..

The Curse of the Pharaohs is book 2 in the Amelia Peabody mysteries. I shared book one of this series with you last fall where Amelia meets her husband on an archeological dig in 1880's Egypt.  This second story is set in 1892, when Amelia and her husband  head back to Egypt to for another  archeological dig . Of course murder  and mayhem seem to follow them. Amelia is a woman ahead of her time, and she makes this an enjoyable book. I listened to this story, and the narrator, Barbara Rosenblat, does an amazing job with voices. This series is a lot of fun, and I also like how this series is not too heavy but still full of details.  I read many of these mysteries back in the 1990's and early 2000's, and I am glad to have found them again.

The Shadow District is another mystery I listened to. It is set in Iceland (where the author is from) during World War 2 and also during the present time. I have previously read a couple of books from the author's other mystery series  including the book Jar City.  Jar City and Indridason's first detective series are set only in the present time, but I like how in this new series there are 2 time periods connected by murder. 

This book is not  a cozy style mystery and is a little darker in subject matter.  It is a really good story that had some surprises in it,  and  it was not a difficult read (well listen for me).  If you're in the mood for this style of story, I recommend this book also. I really enjoyed it.

Lastly, I am now in the process of rereading this oldie.

You might  possibly remember this book, The Thorn Birds, when it came out in the late 1970's. It's been around ever since, so you might even remember it from a later time if you didn't read it when it was first popular. It was also a TV mini-series in the early 1980's.  I have my original paperback (with this same cover) that I read either in late high school or early college. It's got my name scribbled on the inside cover. 

I haven't quite finished this book as I just started it at the end of February, but I can see why it was a best seller. It is a  good story, with lots of descriptions of  the Australia Outback and life there starting the in parts of the last century and going into the 1960's. It is a pretty easy read also.  I will say the story is really a love story with a twist.   Since it has been so long since I read it, and since I have had a hankering to get into a long  take me away story, I am enjoying the reread. 

That's all for me and books for now. I'm always looking for recommendations, so if you have any, feel free to mention them in your comments. 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.