After Irene

Thankfully Hurricane Irene turned out to be a lot of hype and not much hurricane.  There was some flooding in the area but nothing very dramatic. 



This was formerly a restaurant terrace, now it's a lake.

A local park met the same fate, now also a lake.  We are grateful that we were spared with minimal damage; and our hearts go out to people up and down the east coast who did not fare so well and lost loved ones.

Good Night Irene

Delaware is prepping for the arrival of Hurricane Irene.  The beaches have been evacuated and here in Dover we are taking precautions as well.  We are several miles from Delaware Bay, but from the forecast models it looks like we will still be in the most intense band of the storm; we are a tiny state.  I'm not sure what the good folks at Verizon expect to accomplish with those sandbags, but at least it looks like their windows will be safe.

Home Depot is ready to serve should we have a hankerin' to purchase plywood at three in the morning.

Staples is gearing up but Safeway doesn't seem quite ready to commit to plywood.  Or maybe its just because they have every available person on register...





because every business that sells water or food looks like this.  This is the bottled water aisle in Target.  As a seasoned former resident of coastal North Carolina, I can smugly report I already had purchased my supplies, I was just scouting for blog photos.

And my final photo, the outside of Target.  I'm not sure if they were suddenly selling plywood, or just waiting for close of business to board up.  Well, we shall see how smug I am tomorrow if Irene clips off part of our roof.  Or maybe in a few days if we lose power.  As of now, 10:20pm Saturday, it's not much of a much.  Maybe if it picks up I can add a video clip of me outside with my windbreaker flapping, because hey, we never tire of those hyped scenes.









The Hike

I have taken up Carolina's challenge to change my daily habits and began with a wondeful 2.6 mile hike around Killan's Pond.

I visited with the locals,

and enjoyed the lovely scenery

I also brought along a rock I had crocheted a cozie for the night before, and I was obsessed with the idea of photographing my rock on a nice bed of moss.  I will spare you the billions of photos I took and just show you a few favorites,

Here are some cool tree roots I saw

Yes, I actually took a few pictures without my rock.  In fact, I ended up leaving my darn rock somewhere and I had to backtrack to find it.  I thought about leaving it for someone else to find but I couldn't do it.  Maybe I will make more to leave as gifts but I just couldn't part with my first one.

I finished my time at the park painting on the terrace of the nature center.  I'm making color mix charts of all my watercolors.

I probably didn't make much progress in the exersize department but it was so much fun I can't wait to go again.  And hey, next time I won't have to stop to take 7000 photos of my rock.

My Sweet Ride

I used to put on my rollerblades and Jim would pull me around behind his bike, but now I have this sweet ride (please tell me I don't have to explain the Napoleon Dynamite references).  Yessiree, I love to feel the wind in my hair and the bugs in my teeth.  She's not a Vespa, but she is retro and beautiful. Come on, I know you want one.  I had a guy (on foot) chase me down the street once, kinda scary but I stopped, and he just said "ya gotta tell me where you got that!"



I love it when Harley riders give me the motorcycle brotherhood handwave.  Mostly they just chuckle.  But hey, she gets a hundred miles to the gallon!  Now if I can just figure out how to get my chicken to ride in a milk crate on the back.  Can't you see Rosie with a scarf blowing back, maybe little goggles? 

Violets on my windowsill



I think I received my love of violets from my grandma.  She had glass shelves in one of her windows and they were always loaded with violets, she even named one of her daughters Violet.  I love that you can always count on them for a splash of color during long, dreary winters.  I have pretty much given up on house plants,  I am so busy the poor things tend to die from neglect.  But I can count on my violets; put them in a self watering pot and they happily produce flower after flower and even I can manage to water them every month or so.  Here is a quick ink sketch of one of my favorites.

Hello Again

The kids gave me a little potted plant for my birthday one year and now it is a big ol' bush in the backyard.  I took a leap a drew it in black pigma pen (gulp! no erasing), but I'm happy with the result.  I started to paint the label in pink but I didn't like it so after a couple of letters I switched to purple, then as I was painting along I thought wow, maybe I'm being very clever because hydrangea blossoms will change color depending on how you amend the soil.

So I've been missing for most of the month.  I found out I have sleep apnea, and I wake up 44 times PER HOUR every night.  That's 44 episodes of non-breathing for ten seconds or more PER HOUR.  I must be brain damaged, it explains a lot!!  I finally had a medical explanation for my exhaustion (I guess 2 jobs, 3 kids and a husband wasn't enough), and I decided to rest a little, only do the essential (which is still a lot!).  I  have had my c-pap machine for 4 nights now.  It's not the miracle cure I had hoped for but I am told to give it time.  Normally I am aware of waking up 8 to 16 times per night, and now I am down to 4 times, so the  44 times per hour must be down as well.  I did feel pretty good today. 

As it is now 9:11pm here, I wish you all a wonderful night of sleep!

Springtime Morel

It's been kind of crazy here lately, lots of end of the school year activties (x3!).  Not to mention the construction of a chicken coop.  We have built (okay, by "we" I mean my husband of course) a nice run and perch addition onto our garden shed, and will continue with a winter proof coop in the fall.  Rosie continues to lay an egg almost every day. 

Emily received a second place trophy today for her entry into the school science project contest, which happened to be an egg drop ( don't worry I'm covering Rosie's ears).  Students were to use their knowledge of acceleration, friction, aerodynamics etc. to come up with a way for an egg to survive a 30 foot drop in the lightest possible "container".  Emily came up with a mylar balloon/ bubble wrap contraption.  I forgot to ask her how many store eggs she went through to arrive at her final design.  Her science teacher, Mr Freud (yes that is his real name, not sure what the implications are), went up on the roof of the tallest building on campus for the drop.   Another student's egg also survived and his delivery system weighed slightly less than Emily's so he won first (even though Emily's balloons said "A+, Number One Teacher":)!

Anyhoo, we found this morel what seems like ages ago now, and it was so beautiful I had to sketch it (before we ate it).   Hopefully you will see some chickens sketches here soon!