TWO MORE

..."The remains of the day..." I think Jimmy Stewart's character, Elwood P. Dowd, in the movie, Harvey, commented on those being such beautiful words. It was early evening when I took these two beautiful art postcards and wedged them in the honeysuckle vine to photograph them in the dimming light. They arrived today from Washington and Colorado. Thanks, Anna and Dana!

I love the movie, Harvey. It has two of my favorite things - eccentricity and imaginary friends. I had a LOT of imaginary friends as a child. 'Fess up! Did you????

TREASURES

Zachary and Mathieu have been visiting almost every day since school has been out. This photo was taken after Mat had been outside collecting some treasures - a couple of bird feathers, some yellow leaves, a snail shell and of course, sticks - lots of sticks. He had some of them arranged artfully on the table when he called me over to admire them.

I've been receiving some treasures of my own lately - art arriving in the mail! Here are my first four art postcards from the summer swap hosted by HulaSeventy. I also received an artist trading card from a group I belong to. The keychains were made by an Amish man who joined the local Volunteer Fire Department recently. He gave one with every meal purchased from the VFD barbecue plate sale. Thanks, Catie, Amanda, Angela, Cindy, Judy and Ezra!

FATHER'S DAY

Garrett bought Shabree a new bike yesterday - one to stay here at this house instead of over at the cottage. He has been bike-riding quite a bit in a large, hilly park near Waco, and wanted to be able to ride bikes with Shabree when he is home. They rode around town after this photo was taken and then on to the cottage, where they helped Chuck do some mowing.

Garrett also took Shabree and I out to eat at Chili's at noon, and to Walmart where he and I went halves on a Playstation2, and Sims Pets game.

Chuck and I and Shabree, Zach and Mat went to Mass Saturday evening. I had been feeling bad since I woke up that morning, and it got worse as the day went on. Right after Mass, where I realized how bad I really felt, I came home and after feeding the dogs and cats, went straight to bed until about 3am, when I got up to drink lots of water and write these last two blog entries. I do feel better now, but plan to go back to bed again in a minute and hopefully sleep until a decent hour. At Mass all the fathers were honored and received flowers and a small gift.

No real plans here, for Father's Day... Chuck and Garrett will be leaving to return to Waco around 2pm, I think. I may make an apple-cucumber salad that a friend told me about....and throw out the Tomato Crunch Casserole that I got the recipe for off of the internet. I made it Friday night, and it wasn't good at all! Blech!

DOLLY THE GOAT, TOMATOES, ART POSTCARDS

Zachary is the proud new papa of a baby goat. Some of their 4-H friends gave him this goat, who he named, "Dolly" earlier this week. If I remember correctly, she was the smallest of triplets, and had just been nursed through pneumonia. Since she was used to being in the house where she was, Zach is absolutely thrilled to have her live in his room. He has to feed her every few hours, and he is the only one she will take the bottle from. As you can see, when Shabree and I went to meet her, we took Coconut along too, so she could also meet her new goat-cousin. Now that Dolly is a little older, she has been staying outside in the small, fenced front yard and only coming in to sleep in her crate overnight.

This is Mat with one of my BIG Mr. Stripey heirloom tomatoes. Mat and Zach have been coming over every day this week to play, and Mat has really enjoyed picking tomatoes. As for the Mr. Stripeys - they are not that stripey. The gold and red stripes are not that clear, unlike how they were in the photo on the plant marker. But they are HUGE. The one in the photo is not the largest one that we have gotten so far. They are roughly the size of two stacked mini-pumpkins. The herb garden, which is way overgrown, is so fragrant. You can see the cinnamon basil to Mat's right.

Since getting back into painting, I have found that I can't get necks right any more. Note the strange E.T. type necks on my two postcards, "Macky and Little John Head on down the Beach" and "Nakeesha's Possibilities". The third postcard is one that Shabree painted. No title for it yet.

YIKES!

This is what I found in my bathroom sink late the other night. It was a really big one. Sorry for the blurry quality of the photo, but I only took one, before getting rid of it before it got away from me. Previously, the last one I had seen was about a year and a half ago, when Coconut found a medium sized one that apparently came out of the computer room closet. Everyone has been talking about how prevelant they are this year. That was a big part of the pre-parish council meeting talk last week, where over half of the people there had encountered quite a few of them recently.

Note that scorpions have 8 legs, making them arachnids. I hadn't thought of or realized that before. Not that they look exactly like the one on my lotto card shower curtain... I had thought that was just artistic license.

COCONUT, KIDS AND REALITY TV

It doesn't show in the photo, but Coconut developed a huge swollen jaw this afternoon. In the photo, it is where the darker part is, above and below the corner of her mouth. It came up suddenly and then went down again over the course of a very few hours. I looked inside and at her teeth to see if something was lodged there or if there were any marks on the insides of her lips, but there was nothing that I could see. Nothing on the outside either. Whatever it was, I hope all is well now.

Shabree is here. She called last night and wanted me to come pick her up, so I did. It made for a late night, getting home from Corpus Christi and then spending time together. We got up early today to go to morning Mass. Zach and Mat had gone with me Saturday evening. Then this afternoon, Zach came over and he and Shabree had a good time playing video games, being on the computer and just being silly in general.

Tonight I watched the latest episode of The Next Food Network Star. Nikki was eliminated. She seemed very 'stiff' and totally lacking in spontaneity. I don't have a favorite contestant yet. I guess I like Colombe, JAG, Paul, Rory and Michael best. Colombe's type of food focus - fresh, organic - seems interesting to me, but she is pretty bad as far as confidence and control on TV go. JAG does well in that area, but his focus - Latino-Caribe - is not something I would watch a TV show about. Paul is nice and funny and interesting. I really like him, but I have no idea what his focus is. And he gets so nervous and rattled at times everything just falls apart. Rory (where the heck is Vega, TX?) seems fairly interesting but has some spectacular failures. Michael has TV presence, is interesting and seems to have things pretty together. So I guess I favor Michael right now.

TOMATOES!

Look at all these tomatoes in my sink! Yum! I have been eating a lot of them lately cut up, with mayonnaise and corn chips. I think the large tomato in the top corner is the heirloom 'Mr. Stripey'. It's not so stripey though, but you can see some striping, at least. It is HUGE. You can't really tell that from the photo, but it is the largest tomato I think I have ever seen.

A lot of my tomatoes have been lost to the bugs - stink bugs and leaf-footed something or others and one more kind. I have been doing hand to hand combat with them (squishing - ugh!) and also spraying the tomatoes and bugs with a bottle of soapy water when I feel like it. I don't know if it is doing much good or not. It was supposed to be a bar of Castille Soap, cut up into a spray bottle of water, but I had to use a bar of Ivory instead.
There is a new cooperative blog that I was directed to today, that is going to be wonderful! It is http://www.simpleactsofgreen.blogspot.com/ . Go check it out. It is all about being 'greener'. It will be a daily stop for me.

POSTCARDS IN PROGRESS

I joined an art postcard exchange recently, so late last night I finally started on mine. Do you know how long it's been since I painted?! Or 'arted' in any manner?! Months! Anyway, the exchange theme is 'Summer' and the mailing date is June 21 - the first official day of summer. There are 15 people in my group, so that's how many postcards I am making. Today I will paint the boys on the last four and then hopefully paint the faces and finish the tiniest details on all 15. The title is "Macky and Little John Head Down the Beach". Who are Macky and Little John? Beats me. But their names jumped out at me as soon as I started painting them.