What happens when I mix magnetic poetry and t.v.'s Bizarre Foods or...

MAYBE IT WAS THE TARTAR SAUCE

Ready for another one?  Okay...

McCRADY'S PLACE

McCrady's Place is an old farmstead.  The only thing left is the house.  

All the other outbuildings have been torn down to make way for a big field.  

It was a picture just waiting to be painted.

I added a picket fence to balance the composition 

and ended up using some pretty bright colors.  

The brightness kind of took away from the lonely feeling of the place.  

I'm not sure that was the effect I wanted. 

So I painted another one, this time later in the day when the sky 

was going into a pink sunset.  The grasses still turned out too bright 

to say, "Lonely."  I guess my optimistic nature rebels at drabness.  

I put both of them up for sale on my Etsy site.  Which one do YOU prefer?

THE DAHLIES 111109

JUST A BUNCH OF PANSIES

Every year when the temps get down to freezing I bring in a piece of my three geraniums, Phyllis, Florence and Blossom and put them in small flower pots so they can winter in the house and have a head start on blooming next spring.  This time I also had a nice crop of pansies in small planters that I just couldn't leave out in the cold.  I brought in two containers to see how they'd last the winter.

I set the hanging basket in a sunny spot on the floor.  The pansies were so colorful I decided to use them as models to learn a little more about how to work with my new watercolor pencils.

Well...I can see a lot of potential and that there's more learning to be done.

Back in the kitchen Thomas was checking out the new flowers too.

He's a finicky eater but he does like to occasionally add a few greens to his diet.

 If he could do a guilty nonchalant whistle he would. La-la-la-la-laaaaaaa.

Then he dives head first into the flower pot for some stolen salad. 

I decided the pansies could stand a little trimming so I let it go.  Then I noticed the other container of flowers was looking a lot worse for wear.  Beavis photographed what was happening.

I moved those pansies out of Thomas's favorite sunny spot to a  different window.