It's Gonna Be A Hot One!

The weatherman predicted temperatures up to 98 degrees today. Whew! I was outside tying up more tomato plants at 6:30 this morning to beat the heat. Watered the rhubarb and came inside escaping from the flies and mosquitoes. Then it was an omelet for breakfast and on to the computer to check out my email and the blogs I follow. I was planning to go to our local nature park with the grandchildren but rescheduled our visit until tomorrow when the temperature will be more bearable. We don't want Gramma to be hauled away for heat exhaustion do we. Today I'll stay inside and finish up my SAHR with the binding and take a picture of it for my next post.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, so they say, I purchased a fig tree from a local nursery this spring. It's sitting on my front landing and producing figs already. This fall it will go dormant and I'll insulated it well and store it our unheated shed until next spring. At last count I have 7 little figgies on it. LOL

And The Winner Is...

Me! And it was quite a surprise. I don't even win at Bingo! LOL I entered a giveaway at the2spies blog and little Moshe pulled my winning ticket from the pile. And my prize was... well take a look:

A tree planted in my honor in Neot Kedumin, the biblical landscape reserve in Israel

Hadassah  from the 2 spies planting my tree

All these goodies: an Israeli flag, an IDF tee shirt, notecardes with Hebrew art on them, Turkish coffee, Zahatar seasoning, a chocolate bar with hazelnut (a favorite of mine. How did they know?), a CD rom of the Hebrew Scriptures and a bookmark with the 2 spies carrying a giant bunch of grapes from the Promised Land

I think I hit the 'mother load'! Thank you to the2spies.blogspot.com precious friends from Israel.

Hibernating and artwork

I apologizing for not blogging for two months. You know how too much life can get in the way at times. Now that winter is approaching, it's time for indoor activities. And nesting of course. And time to get back to making art and anything else I've put off for the past few weeks. Just to wet your appetite I'm sharing a new-to-me technique. First I gessoed a scrap piece of mat board and collaged it with pieces of newsprint. Then I aged it with diluted acrylic paint. Next an I drew an outline of a shag bark hickory tree that lives in my front yard on the surface. And lastly watercolor pencil filled in the image and was tweeked with a darker application of watercolor.