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Summer Puttering

Borrowing a friend’s river view. The river is still high and loud, particularly unusual for early August.

In the months of July and August, I don’t give weekly drawing lessons. This gives me an out-of-proportion sense of being on vacation. My schedule is freer, so I putter at multiple things, some work, some personal.

  • A former drawing student (from about 2000-2004) will be having a baby in September, so I am knitting like a crazed machine.
  • It is time to begin designing the 2020 calendar.
  • An odd job appeared: someone has a torn painting and asked me to repair it. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t, but a mediocre patch job might be better than a ragged hole. The customer doesn’t want the original artist to know that it got torn, so you only get to see a corner. I’ll show you Wednesday.
  • My neighbors are relandscaping their yard and asked me to help. It is very absorbing work, and we keep coming up with ideas. I really enjoy figuring out what might grow, and digging extras from my yard, along with starting new ones from cuttings. (We think of ourselves as “The Frugal Gardeners”.)
  • I’ve been reading a lot, and my Want-To-Read list on GoodReads is down to about 160 now. (If you want to follow me on GoodReads, try it – I don’t know how to instruct you other than to say I am under my real name, nothing cute or clever). 1. “The Blue Shoe” is a meandering novel of very little plot about people you could imagine knowing by Anne Lamott whose writing captures my attention whether fiction or non-fiction. 2. “An Innocent, a Broad” by Ann Leary is a memoir by a writer I’ve discovered recently. 3. I loved “The Good House”, also by Leary, a first person novel about an alcoholic in total denial. 4. “House Rules” is my 2nd Jodi Picoult novel and it was a page turner written in multiple voices; the main one was an autistic teenager.

Since I’m not ready to show you the calendar, and the torn painting is a slow process, have a look at the baby blanket in progress, our old friend Reading Rabbit, and some of the yardening.

100% cotton, machine washable, recommended for baby blankets, ordered from Webs online, stitch pattern from a book called The Stitchionary.
Salt & Light, or Reading Rabbit, oil on board, 11×14″, not for sale
There will be flagstone on the path, and we are trying to find something to plant around the stones. Moss? Grass that doesn’t require mowing? Low-growing thyme that can live in relentless summer heat?
I’m particularly enamored with the blue wheelbarrow.
Having a picnic on the friends’ deck by the river adds to the sense of being on vacation.

2 Comments

  1. If there is space in your neighbor’s yard, it’s a great idea to add plants that are pollinator-friendly. The Xerces Society has suggestions for plants that will do well in your area. We need to help the bees, butterflies, and other insects that are essential to growing food.

    • Marjie, that is a great suggestion. Mostly we just try to find things that the deer won’t eat, things that will survive in our nasty summers.

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