Two tulips. This is, unfortunately, the beginning and end of my tulips this year, I’m afraid. I am so sad, this cold snap has just turned them into drooping beauties. I look at them and I can feel the sadness creeping in, like The Nothing is slowly taking over my perennials.

I did get a glimpse of majesty yesterday, though. Right in my own backyard. Hubby spotted her and I was called to duty – it went a little like this:

“Honey! Camera! Hurry! Hawk!”She was beautiful, and I was only mildly creeped out by the size of her blood tinged talons. A girl’s gotta eat though, huh?

I’m working on a monochromatic cat painting today, three beautiful cats – I’ll show you the sketch when I finish it up.

Happy Good Friday to you!

I just finished up another new custom WordPress design, this one for Robin at The Road Less Unraveled. This one was a lot of fun. She wanted a retro feel and a certain color palette – and a girl. I had fun with the play on words and turned it into a play on graphics, giving her a swirly bridged road that actually (if you look at it from the art deco perspective) says RLU. I think I spent more time creating the graphics than anything else- even though there really aren’t too many of them.

I also totally dig her menu. That was a lot of fun to create, and it’s based on the menu by Suckerfish in a previous theme she had active and really loved. I restyled the whole thing, but it’s based on the same initial framework (and credits were left in the stylesheet!). (Techno lingo stuff may confuse some readers. My aplogies!)

So – go on and say hi and have a look around at Robin‘s new digs for me, would you?

“Essence of Narcissi essence helps the body to process and release
the energy from the emotional-mental trauma, thus
avoiding the need for the body to store this energy as
body-embedded trauma energy. ”

~Source : New Millenium Flower Essences

It’s no wonder when I run across things like this that spring has always been my favorite time of year. It really brings me a sense of peace and quiet and calm, when stress just kind of drifts away and I go crazy with the planting of more perennials and buying things to draw more nature into my yard. Yesterday afternoon I ordered two vines, a wisteria (wow look at this one, and this one too) and a trumpet vine. Then we had to run to the store for some things and wouldn’t you know – they had some in stock, as well as a some really healthy clematis.

Today I’ll be getting some garden fencing to attach to our new privacy fence and putting these vines in the ground, and then I’ll hover over them every morning with my coffee and camera, waiting and hoping that they flourish.

(P.S. I totally snagged the watermark idea from Mrs. Fun.)

I’ve uploaded a slew of photos that I’ve taken over the last several days. Birds, buds and squirrels (oh my) – go have a flip through my photoblog.

Phew – these blog designs are coming at me fast and furious, I’m trying to get them done as fast but these aren’t just a bunch of code, you know. I customized all of these graphics last spring for MommaK, but she asked for some tweaks to spruce things up for the season. I upgraded WordPress for her (and yeah, there’s another release due out next week, go figure – but heck, there’s a major release due in another month or so, too.) – there were a few plugins and graphics that needed updating and upgrading, code to rewrite, and now she’s all ready for flip flops, flowers and painted toenails. Go help her usher in spring with a BBQ recipe or two – looks like she’s ready to break out the grill!

There’s just nothing better, is there? I had to share. I have over 200 bulbs that I put in the ground last fall peeking through and I couldn’t be happier. I’d sit beside them all day and just watch them grow, if I could. This is a Chionodoxa, I think – I have about 30 of them. I’m trying to figure out what they are based on a photo of the packages in the approximate locations where I planted them.

What’s coming up in your yard?

(I’ve added a cute little Chipping Sparrow to my photoblog, too. He’s a cutie pie.)

YellowRose has been patiently waiting for me to finish up my painting projects so that I could begin her blog makeover. She wanted something a little more organized, fresh, something that matches her lovely and sweet personality. She also wanted to maximize her use of the best platform on the planet, WordPress. She’s a big fan of yellow roses, so I came up with her tag line, “a rose is just a rose, unless it’s yellow.” It’s true – if it’s not a YellowRose, it’s just not as sweet.

Go on over to the Garden and see how pretty she is!

I have alot of monochromatic paintings in my portfolio – but only one of them is an animal. After I finished that last series of monochromatic rainbow kids, I decided I wanted to offer up some custom 10″ x 10″ gallery wrapped monochromatics for $100 each.

My kids each want one of their own in their favorite colors to hang in their bedroom. I think it’s a cool idea, because it’s something they can hang onto when they get their own place. (I’m such a forward thinker, huh? lol)

I’d love to add a few pet monochromatics to that section of my portfolio, so I’ll leave this pricing open to either people or animal/pet portraits. It’s a pretty simple process, really – you pick the color, send me a photo (single subject), and I paint a cool custom portrait in oils and send it to you ready to hang on a gallery wrapped canvas.

I’ll keep this offer open until the end of March, so if you’d like to order a custom monochromatic by then just contact me and let me know. (or just go ahead & place your order.)

I got to work on the climby squirrel yesterday, Robin and Lesley knew exactly what I had in mind for this climby squirrel. He’s SO COOL. I finished up this wicked neat graphic design using his photo and I think you have to have one of these t-shirts. Go here to see my broad selection of Climby Squirrel Shirts in my new CafePress store.

Of course I need a caption, or two or three, so this is where you come in. Got any good ones? (I know you do. Spill it.)