1. Brussels Sprouts on the grill. Seriously. If you hate them, this might change your mind. If you like them, you will be in heaven.

2. Tilda Swinton’s new movie I Am Love. She is fearless and fabulous.

3. Enough rainfall that I didn’t have to stand outside for the past few mornings with a garden hose attempting to keep my garden alive.

4. Having my kid come home from visiting his auxiliary family in Wahoo, Nebraska thrilled beyond belief about getting to do the sort of summer vacation things that we used to take for granted, like riding his bike with his friends to get ice cream all on their own, and watching a 4th of July parade and fireworks at the Wahoo Municipal Ball Field.

5. Packing for a vacation in Paradise.

6. This summer in particular.

You are looking at 50% of this year’s tomato crop. Somewhere on this property is a very full chipmunk with a price on his head. Enjoy your last days, fuzz head. I slipped an envelope with your picture in it to a hawk who has a knack for making guys like you disappear…

The fact that you will taste like home grown vine ripened tomato is a bonus for him.

Perhaps he will have a nice plate of pasta and a glass of Chianti to wash you down.

Sleep with one eye open you tomato thieving rodent.

This bee, or one who looks very much like him, hangs out in my garden all the time. He is either the world’s mellowest bee, or not quite bright. I seriously had the lens poked right up in his face. and he hardly moved, just waved a leg at me sort like a drunk at a party raising his umpteenth drink in salute right before he passes out and you draw on his face with a Sharpie.

A Beautiful Combination.

Yesterday morning was foggy and somewhat cooler. The dogs were prancing and excited to go for their morning walk, and I took my camera along. Most of the shots were blurry because I had a furry assistant who insisted on sticking his nose in the viewfinder every time I knelt down to try and get a shot. Occasionally my self appointed assistant would hear something in the woods that needed to be investigated, so I managed to get a few that were focused.

Not as much tranquility out here in the woods as I had hoped. I took these pictures during a little summer downpour this afternoon. Rain drops on blossoms, how novel of me. Really breaking some new ground. I took photos of the clouds too. Out on the edge, people, out on the edge.

I was standing out in the rain taking pictures beside the carport because my friend’s son was goofing around in her car and locked the keys inside. The keys…and the dogs. I made him feel suitably guilty for endangering his dog’s lives without pointing out to him that the cloud cover and rain had dropped the temperature by nearly 20 degrees and they really weren’t in danger at all, just happily hanging out in the car because they thought they were going for a ride. I perhaps also led him to believe that AAA lockout service is a few hundred dollars and that he will be doing chores to pay that back.  If it had been above 80 degrees he’d be working off AAA window replacement service instead, because I had a brick and I wasn’t afraid to use it.

Either one you pick will give you a 50% chance of guessing why I haven’t posted in a while. And there is more of the same in the immediate future.

This weekend I am attempting to do both. House sitting for a friend in a lovely hilltop place out of town with a pool and calm dogs, and setting up my laptop and a traveling art studio and continuing to work. Don’t know how much work I will get done, since there are distractions like a wide porch with a hammock and stacks of magazines and the ingredients for pitchers of icy drinks.

If there weren’t a deadline looming over my head like something out an Edgar Allen Poe story this would be paradise.

Last night I was watching a movie called The Dying Gaul. It was a really interesting story about a man who has written a screenplay about his lover’s death. A studio wants to buy the film rights, but they want him to make the characters straight instead of gay, and maybe a tad less AIDSy.  It was a good movie. But the thing that got me was this, there is a scene where the writer is looking at his laptop screen, and types in the word to change, Malcom, and the word it is to be changed to. He hesitates, then types an M and pauses. I know absolutely what he is going to type next. And he does.

Maggie.

What the hell is up with the film industry and their love of the name Maggie? Movies and tv shows are lousy with characters named Maggie.  If your knowledge of American culture was derived solely from tv and movies, you’d draw the conclusion that Maggie must be one of the most popular names in this country. Don’t believe me? Got to IMDB and search the character list for the name. But the thing is, never in real life have I met a Maggie. Not one. Margarets right and left, a few Megs, several Megans, an easy dozen Maddies, a couple of Matties, two Maisies and a Mazzy! Mazzy for the love of God. But not one Maggie.

I don’t dislike the name Maggie. Far from it. I just find it odd that it is used so often and that I have never personally encountered it. I wonder is there is some old superstition that goes back to silent movies where some big shot producer had a daughter named Maggie and he’d approve a script in a heartbeat if there was a character named after her. Is it considered lucky? Or maybe it’s a screenwriter tradition like stage actors refusing to say Macbeth and only calling it the “Scottish Play”. Things like this fascinate me.

Perhaps I should let it go and get back to work.

It was quite grisly looking outside for a few minutes. Threatening enough to make me go in and turn on the weather channel to see if I was being all stupid and staring up into the face of imminent doom. But now it has lightened up a bit and started to give us one of those hateful little summer rains that pretends it is going to haul off and drench everything. Great big drops start hitting the ground, thunder rumbles, and then it gets distracted by something shiny and forgets why it was here for in the first place.

Anyway…the clouds are looking at me again.

In case you can’t see it, I have take the liberty of outlining. And then there is the

menacing Eye of Zeus looking bit just to the left of the placid face. Looks sort of like

Obi Wan peering out from his cowl.

Not that I am reading too much into anything.

You’re being watched?

Rather unnerving cloud formation this afternoon just before the bottom fell out.

Yes, we were being watched by Frylock. Or maybe the ghost of Rasputin.

And no, I wasn’t driving.

Now that I have said it out loud, I can say I am working on this book as much as I possibly can. Making good use of summer and the complete lack of a schedule around here. I feel like I shouldn’t waste a minute of this time, since before you know it, we will be leaving on our vacation and then school will start, and I’ll be left staring at the calendar and wondering how two and a half months slipped by without me accomplishing anything.

So if things get dusty around here, that is why, and if they don’t get dusty, perhaps remind me that I have other projects that I should be working on…ahem…

In the meantime, here is another experimental watercolor. I really love this one, and if she wasn’t a complete accident, then I would gladly create a whole book around this one. Maybe when this is all done and dusted, I’ll go back to her and practice until I can paint her with one eye closed.