I photographed an iris today, took it into PSP (paint shop pro) and did a little photo manipulation and “stuff”. It was fun.

See?

We’ve seen this Goldfinch a couple of times in the last week, so I picked up a thistle feeder to get him in a little closer. I’m hoping he tells his friends, and they bring their friends, and so on. heh. They’re pretty birds.

This Cardinal mama is a beauty isn’t she?

This was one of those precious moments this morning, baby all floofed up sqwaking at mom for more seed. I say, get it yourself, it’s right there on the ground next to you ya little fuzzball.

I had moved this feeder up on the picnic table right outside my picture-taking window yesterday. The squirrels were loving it, even with me right next to the window. He looks like an addict, huh? I should drop a Nutaholics-anonymous brochure out there for him.

Then Chickeymonkey realized that they couldn’t get her, and they wouldn’t leave, so she stood right next to the window and giggled for a while, pointing and waving at the squirrely.

Are you lookin’ at me? C’mon over here, I’m gonna slap you silly.

😛

For all the mom’s out there, I hope you have a nice warm sqwishy hug day today. 🙂

Yesterday was a busy day. I helped our neighbor with her yard for a while. She’s had a lot of construction going on over there for the last few months, the warm weather and huge mess made her pretty ambitious so I offered to help! We cut down one of her small trees (the dogs were working on digging it up for her), and she wanted to get rid of another one of her trees so she had someone dig it up and we moved it over into our yard. It’s a Red Bud tree, we think. Mark has wanted one since our trip home from Florida when we saw them blooming all the way back.

Today I am stiff and sore. I’d like to run down to the home improvement store for a water feature for all of this landscaping we’ve been doing, as well as some more mature plants so we don’t have to wait for everything to grow! We even built up an area for the girls to have their own garden to maintain. Jay planted carrots. I planted snow peas (eat ’em right out of the pod, yummmy!), and Cait planted big ol watermelons. We split the bed in half so there are veggies on one side and they picked out flowers for the other. Now they can water it and check them and watch them grow! Fun stuff.

I’ve got some painting to do, too! Dang I only have a couple of weeks left to finish everything I’ve got going. Then June is clear so far so I’m starting to think of other things I’d like to paint, non-commissioned. Hey, it’s been a while since I painted something non-commissioned huh? My last piece was the Viola, Antoinette. I finished that one back in Februrary.

So much to do, such warm weather to try to ignore….

I hope you’re having awesome summery weather and playing outside in it, too!!

Here’s a nice photographic portrait of Jayden that I took a little while ago. I tweaked the effects in PSP and left her eyes saturated in her natural dark brown color. I love it. Man she’s a cutie-patootey!

Ok so Sheila gets an A+ on the last assignment, thank you Sheila! Here’s the bird on eNature, an Eastern Towhee. He’s beautiful! He came back, and I have more pics. Wow what a neat bird!

Now we’ve had another one here that is beautiful, and chocolatey colored. Anyone wanna figure out what he is?

UPDATE: He’s a Brown-Headed Cowbird. Man, their profile on eNature doesn’t paint a very pretty picture of this species. Still, a pretty bird.

Here he is:

And here are a couple more GOOD pics of the stunning Eastern Towhee!

I have been trying to get good pics of a few of our birdie visitors without much luck until lastnight! I decided to remove the screen from one of the studio windows (that are super clear ’cause I just washed them), and I sat there at sunset, waiting patiently, and voila! A gadgillion pics later, I had two decent ones I’m not too shy to share. Our cardinal is so camera shy. I could go outside without my camera and he wouldn’t flee. He sees that big black thing pointing at him though and he bolts pretty quickly! I was pretty giddy that I got a pic of him. Even if it is grainy and not nearly as crisp as I’d like it to be. (Shoulda got the 8MP. bah.)

Gotta add one, I just took this one this morning! I’ve been trying to get a pic of this bird for 2 years! I think it’s a finch? It is so pretty, and he sings like he’s been cross bred with a canary!

Ooh-ooh! One more! Boy I have a prime spot to capture & share our backyard buddies now, don’t I? Here’s a chicka-dee-dee-dee:

I updated my gallery today. I added my Lion painting the other day, so if you would like to go leave a comment on him, he’s in there now. I also streamlined my “ordering information” area. I have all steps available and linked through the top menu now. I added my calendar schedule link to my “Artist Info” menu links, and I think that’s it. Still need to add a page for my Catfish project, that will happen when I have another opportunity to pull my hair out without interruptions.
😆

Just for fun, I wanted to show you the progress of cropping my image to view at 100%. Here’s how the zoom progresses on this squirelly who is still out there munchin’ up all the corn. “Read More” for the rest of the zoom!

I can’t remember the species of this lil chimp, but boy was he something special. We walked over to their cage and when he saw us he came over to us right next to his cage and sat down. He seemed to be relating to the Chickeymonkey, she was in her stroller and her hands were tucked into her coat pockets. He tucked his legs up under his chin and wrapped his arms around them, interlocking his fingers in the front of his knees.

He looked so sad, but I don’t know if he was sad because Jay looked sad (freezing), or if he was sad because of what I am seeing here in the reflection of his eye. The full pic of this is really nice and good enough to paint from, but the middle of his face is blackened out by his cage so I cropped it up to his eye.