Another July Come and Gone

Holy Cannoli! It’s the end of July already? Really? My favorite month of the year and it’s gone by whiz-bang.

Emily Henry. I LOVED this story.

I am middle-deep into a bundle of projects, mostly art-related. Not pretty much getting anything finished, but having a good time making progress on all of them. I am also reading from a pile of books - now that the library has opened, I am a kid in a candy store - and I must tell you about the surprise I found last weekend. Read it in a couple of days because I was so loving it. Witty, characters you’d like to know, a pleasant little love story that doesn’t seem like one at all.

A few sneak peeks:

The 2022 calendar, a mixed media collection of landscapes, called Road Trip: (work in progress!)

Carla Sonheim’s all year class where, right now, we’re making imaginary plants and people as fodder for another piece. Right up my alley.

Combine parts of different plants from botanical illustrations to make a new plant.

Silly little things .

Learning how to create digital “flat lay” compositions:

You can see where this is going. I do love the shoes.

Immersed in learning more about photography, Photoshop, and Lightroom in Kim Klassen’s Inner Circle group. One project resulted in the Alphabetical 5 Things I Love, which I showed off here.

I am also working on a redesign of the website, one of the reasons am have been absent from here. It’s a challenge. You’ll know if I succeed if you open the link and voila! something new!

Meanwhile, in this month…

the beloved hydrangeas are showing up

the petunias have died but are blooming a second life…

the black-eyed susans and enchinaceas are bright and cheery; this is definitely their time!…

Yeah, I photoshopped these three. Got a problem with that? (wink)

and the hollyhocks are standing straight and tall, pink and yellow buttons on a lovely green stalk (How do they stand up straight without help?)

The daisies came and went but give so much tall frolic to the garden.

The calla lilies are in bloom. (Sounds so much better when Hepburn says it.)

Oh, and the raspberry bush gave us the most it has ever had, but is relinquishing not one more berry, thank you.

I hope you are finding the summer as pleasing and negotiable as we are. We’ve had a short stretch of Really Hot but for the most part, enjoy our blue skies (no smoke this year!) and 70s temperatures. I so do love summer the mostest, always have, always will.

And now excuse me while I weep some tears for my dear Cubbies, who just traded away their infield and all my personal favorites. Oh it’s so hard to fall in love.