I wanted to stick at home today because this morning I started new medicine and wondered how it would kick in. That was the right move but this afternoon was so nice I had to sit outside awhile so I did and I painted my yard tableau. (nice word, eh? Tableau?) Here’s a couple in-progress photos and a final scanned version.
My advice to you all – stay out of the poison ivy!
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light. — Albert Schweitzer
Woke up, made an appointment with my primary care provider who happened to be covering the office’s version of “no appointment? we got you an appointment” side of things. Came home with many drugs which will hopefully squash down all the itchiness in a day or two. Distracted myself with a few hours of enjoyable news cycle and then decided to fill in the last hour before next benadryl with a little paint. Oh, and I cleaned up the palettes just to make them less sticky. That’s always good.
Fun trivia: if you can see the tape on the edges of these pictures, it generally means the painting is WAY too wet to take off the board. I prefer scanned images but in the interest of getting it here, I’m ok with handheld for the moment.
Also, I decided going to my haiku group was too much so I stayed home with the haiku I’d written, on the asked for topic of bees.
Full of bird song
The morning flutters along
So many drunk beesSolitary stone
Bending over to admire
The dandelionsGarlic mustard
Invasive and despised
But not by beesBy the still birdbath
A dandelion bends down
Under one bee’s weight
When I woke up this morning I was an itchy mess. Or at least my neck and chin were an itchy mess. I was going to take some benadryl, but I guess this doesn’t happen often enough (thank goodness) so the first order of business for the day was to drive to Nassau and get some Benadryl to replace what I had with an expiration of 2017. It had reduced a lot of the puffiness and some of the itchiness. Not a lot of itchiness but some. (my guess is that I finally reacted to some poison ivy after all these years) I didn’t want to drive around with Benadryl on board so I did a little this and that and some painting.
First I did this of some of my plants waiting for planting.
Today was the second lesson by Mind of Watercolor YouTuber Steve Mitchell – spontaneous watercolor landscapes. He’s so calming and reassuring. Full of reminders that this is about learning a process and not every one of these will turn out good. It’s about the experimentation and practice. I posted my four sample pieces from last week here and here and truthfully today I was only supposed to play around with the two wet on wet pieces but oh well. I have more paint and more paper!
Got a text that V-safe check in will be ending June thirtieth. Signed up for that with my first COVID-19 vax and it’s made me feel like a tiny part of the solution for something.
PS – Yesterday I found out – oops zero hashtags have been arriving here at masto, so wtf is up with that? No doubt something like my theme got updated and overwrote the changes I’d made… ratz. hate that when that happens! Will now attempt to fix.
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
