Dog days

My Sammy girl, pretty as ever, will be 13 soon.  She loves the warm weather for her arthritis but not so much for how hot she can get.  Her favorite place is the cold tile floor in our kitchen this time of year.

Her allergies have been mild so far this summer, maybe because I switched her food to Wellness Senior which she loves.

Miss P. enjoys laying under the ceiling fans doing kitty yoga's version of the 'Corpse Pose', but is still camera shy.

In between gardening and house chores....Almost done with another bag- I think I'll keep this one since it's about birds; another of my favorite subjects. It's big enough to hold sketch books and pens.
Dyed corduroy, with blue feather fabric inside, machine quilted with a favorite quote on the back: "It is good to love the Unknown"- Charles Lamb

Enjoy the lovely birdsongs and flowers everywhere.  Namaste!

My very own moat

We woke up to this Saturday, after an all-night steady rain.  I was up before 5am, mucking around in my waders  and trying to scrape the leaves away from a drain somewhere in the "pond".  A futile effort, because the storm sewer was clogged up somewhere down the line.  The water was about mid-calf, so all my landscaping was under water or floating away.  Creepy!!  I hate being in water in the dark, and it was still raining!   It finally started to recede around 9am, after the town utility service got the sewer moving again.   They are going to re-build the damn dam that a neighbor messed up a couple years ago and then things should be better.

It's the second time this week that our yard & crawl space have been flooded, but we fared much better than so many people in this area.  

Since it rained all day, it was a good time to clean my studio, and work some new projects.  I've started working in a new medium, paper beads, to make into jewelry.  I wanted to go in a different direction for awhile, but also do something more green.  It's a great way to use up junk mail, catalogs, magazines.  I still love my art quilts, but my pieces seem to be too expensive for most folks.
I've been feeling burnt out working on them lately, so even if the beads are a short diversion, I hope it will get me back in the creative groove again.

Don't forget to wear your clean undies when you go out today, kiddies!     Namaste´