Summer Hiatus

Last night I slept for 14 hours. From 4:00 pm, when I laid down for a quick nap, until 7:00 am this morning. Smoke and heat and a long week at work must have done me in!
And naturally, it being summer in this, our downtown desert, and me being to old to force things any more, I've been spending more time on my patio than on my blog.

Not to mention that whenever I say I'm going to do a few posts on this subject or that topic, I end up wandering off in a completely different direction. So my last post says "over the next few days..." and then I drop down the rabbit hole.

This time the rabbit hole has been potted annuals and perennials, citronella candles, birdsong and binoculars, and long, quiet evenings listening to crickets. It's been heaven! It had gotten suddenly hot around here, but a couple of weeks ago, it cooled down to New Mexico normal -- heat stroke days and cool, breezy evenings. The ceiling fan we installed a couple of summers ago keeps the covered patio tolerable almost all day long.

To give a sense of scale, the bird bath near the lower right, behind the irises and below the birdhouses,
is not quite waist high. The wormwood toward the lower left is about five feet tall.

So, in the mornings, it's outside for coffee and prayers and birdsong. After work, it's watering the plants and blowing the dust off the furniture with the MOTH's leaf blower. In the evenings, the MOTH has been reading aloud while I doodle flowers into my sketchbook. We've got our bird books and binoculars at the ready, bottles of icy cold water for rehydration.

Not to worry, dear blog friends -- and there seem to be more followers every week so I don't want to disappoint -- I've got more bead surface finish photos and a quick tutorial, not to mention the new studio diary at the ready. It's a question of when I'll wander back this way from my summer perch on the patio.

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