I went out for dinner again on Friday night, both dinners were for Christelle's birthday and both included someone else that was paying for her dinner. I'm happy she included me and happy to have somewhat of a life today, but two nights out is busy for me.
Cruiser is warring with the neighbors cats and it is getting really old. The neighbor's cats sit safely in their own yard and Cruiser is having a fit on the other side of the fence as if he is fighting for his life. I finally went out and bought some stones and barricaded both of his tunnels. When I was done, he would not go out, just laid on the kitchen floor like he didn't care. How do they know?
Down and across the street from me is this house,
This is their side yard,
Even the windowsills are full of junk and all the drapes are always closed. They were cleaning up in front and hauled away half of the falling fence and a falling apart picnic table. Turns out, they were making room for the trailer. A truck hauled the trailer in and a man and a woman both gave directions on how to back the thing in. I couldn't hear the guy, but the woman loudly barked instructions non-stop. She wasn't much help, since it seemed to take forever. The trailer is on blocks and I figure someone is living in it.
Across the street at the end of my walk is this amazing piece of ingenuity,
The Harley-rider behind me owns his store, his house next to the store, and the house next to him where his son lives with his family. Next to the son's house is a tiny lot that was for sale by owner since I moved in, now it has a realtor sign. A few weeks after the realtor sign, he put up two no trespassing, no parking signs. Problem is, the son has five cars parked most of the time on his lot anyway. Here are some weeds in my alley with the lot (parked cars out of view) in the background,
Nice looking weeds. I have some right next to my garage that I was going to pull up, until I noticed the blue flowers that are only there in the morning.
Here is that stream part the graveyard that I cross on my walk,
How big does a stream have to be before it becomes a river?
In the graveyard are these trees that smell like jasmine,
The flowers don't look like much, but smell great. I think they are elm trees, but I can't find anything about elm trees having flowers.
Did you know that California poppies are native to Idaho? Several people on my walk have them filling up their median, although they are fading now. Here is a flower tour from my walk,
I am most impressed with the lilies, since you can't grow them in So Cal, not including the daylilies, and I always like sweat peas, the flower, those are growing across the street almost on their own. The tree growing those weird looking pink fuzzy branches is about 12 feet tall. I think it is really unusual looking, but I would not want one in my yard, and they would be impossible to paint. I was surprised to see so much lavender here, but this weekend was the 7th Annual Lakeside Lavender You Cut Festival. I didn't go, I started another painting instead.
My friend reminded me that last weekend's studies are a breakthrough. I paint water colors in layers and I have trouble with dark darks. This is fine when painting people, I layer up the skin tones, which gives great luminous color, but it takes confidence to get darks in watercolor, they have to be put down dark in the first place. I can layer over darks maybe twice, three times, and then they get muddy and the pigment starts coming up and they won't get darker. I also think I am cheap with paint, hey, I'm poor. In last weekend's studies I tried for some drama and contrast and put those darks down dark in the first place. That comes from some confidence from painting all the time.
The landlord sent in something for me to renew my lease for a year, which was due back by July 1. I sent it in and renewed my lease and it felt weird to commit myself to another year even though I love it here.
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