A couple of little finished things.

A song for a new home triptych. 18x12 inches total, acrylic on board.

Fluff. 5x7 inches, acrylic on board.

A song for a new home.

6x12 inches, acrylic on board. Part 1 out of 3.

What May Come

"What May Come. (On 1919 Watchfire demonstrations.)
12x27 inches, acrylic on board.

Holy cow, a piece got finished. Now let us go start a dozen more and peck on them for the rest of the year.

Update on Starlings.

Still need to do the shiny overlay on the tree, some pecking on the bird's wings, and the text on the strips of paper.
Otherwise, am surprisingly pleased with it.

Starlings are back!

Building Home. My Home."
8x24 inches
Acrylic on board.

Sister piece to last years' Aliens (http://onecrazycleric.deviantart.com/art/Aliens-280494317)

Both the starling and the sky in Home have this wonderful iridescence that is bloody impossible to capture on camera...

Aliens finished

Acrylic on board, 23x24"
 
The starlings are still out back, doing their 'roll-over' feeding thing, where the back of the group constantly tries to get in front of the front. Result? A perpetual motion machine with a lot of squabbling.

Currently am stuck on -3 pages for the children's book; ran out of watercolor paper and waiting for the next batch to come in. It is very frustrating.

The day of blurry photos.

Hiking

This past Saturday, Mina, myself, and two other girls from M’s gardening class went out to Biltmore estate. To anyone who’s in the area and haven’t been there… … go. Go now, or forever hold your peace.

The Biltmore house was built at the turn of the previous century. It, along with a large number of other structures on the property (which spans more than 8000 acres) was created with self-sufficiency in mind. It has a farm, a dairy-turned-winery, and something like 70 acres of cultured gardens.

The house itself is magnificent, containing more than 200 rooms and over 40 bathrooms. It’s been a tourist attraction since the 30s, and no wonder. I went through the place in starry-eyed wonder. The oriental rugs, the inlaid wooden cabinets, the overstuffed furniture, trimmed with ribbons or leather, the wall-papers, heavily textured, the paintings, the drapes, the statuary… it makes one realize how deprived of senses life in a little town-house can be. White walls, gray carpet with a senseless, blurred pattern are depressing after that high-grade opulence.

Of course, I forgot the camera. (To my chagrin, so did 2 out of 3 of the other people in our group).

The conservatory, adjacent to the house, was yet another wonder. Some of the plants reached immense size, and many were familiar. Among the familiar ones was a succulent that looked identical to my Russian cactus. Unfortunately, it didn’t have a tag. Neither did a lot of other things on the grounds. That, perhaps, is the only complaint I have about that entire place (and the entrée fees, though we’ve gotten in on a deal with Mina’s ticket).

I did end up getting a seasonal pass, so it’s likely that we’re going to go out there to bike, at some point or another.


Elrin’s project(s)

Here’s the shelf and the flowers that El put in. Urge to hum that “Handy man” song, rising.



Birds

A starling’s been excavating a little hole in a tree in the back yard. Perhaps it was once a woodpecker hole. Whatever the case may be, it’s a hole full of dirt and rotting wood, now. The birdie is persistent, removing crap from it for an hour or so every morning.



There’s been numerous eastern towhee sightings, on the bushes, below the bushes, but never on the feeder.



A pack of dark-eyed juncos intermingled with mourning doves on one occasion. You'll have to imagine the mourning doves off on the left.



A pair of house finches.



A mocking bird, also never seen on the feeder.



And a chipping sparrow! These little buggers used to be common as heck at my folks’ farm in Indiana. They’d hop along the gravel driveway, often in pairs, and bathe vigorously in any bodies of water they could find.



Not sure what this wasp’s called, but it’s got wings, therefore joining bird rather than plant section.




Plants

Hyacinths are getting ready to bloom, with both of the daffodils opening up already. Couldn’t get a good picture of the latter, so I’ll try again when Elrin gets home.



Animals

OtherOtherKitty, also known as OtherKitty’s Evil Nemesis, has shown up on the back porch after several months’ hiatus. As he was nothing but skin and bones, it’d be fair to say that the constant snowfalls of this winter have been hard on him. I’m guessing he’s the father or older sibling of OtherKitty, seeing as they’ve got similar coloration and the same hoarse, slightly squeaky meow. Whatever their relationship is, they’ve never been on very good terms, hissing and warily circling one another when chance threw them together.



And lastly, one of mom's cats, a black one named Kitty (original cat naming, or the lack of, seems to run in the family) succumbed to old age. The new cat (which I disapprove of, since they've already got 2 dogs, 2 more cats, and 1 small child) is nevertheless a very pretty one. We're currently trying to come up with a name for it.

On star-lings.

Rainclouds cling to the mountain sides, hanging over us like a massive, suffocating mess of unprocessed felt. Warmth of the spring isn’t too keen on getting here just yet, but the grass is already reaching up, sending green spears, that summarily turn unsightly tan slopes into unsightly tan slopes with a vague sheen of a more interesting color. The overall effect is a vomit-green with sore orange patches, where the clay-laden soil shows through.

The little speckled bastards don’t mind, and descend upon these same mountain sides in a flurry of black wings and gnashing beaks. White specks on their plumage are surely why they are named ‘star-lings’, European Starlings, to be exact, an invasive specie in the Americas and another sign that spring is, indeed, upon us.

“Skvoretz” is what a starling is called in Russian; “skvortzy” in plural, a name that is fitting to the unholy squawks that pass for starling language. The batch which occasionally frequents our back yard is quite intent on showing the world just how verbal they can be. The chirps and squeaks resemble anything from a dying cat to a very creaky door, slammed over an over by an enthusiastic poltergeist.

On occasion, an uppity male might decide that that isn’t enough, and would impose himself onto one of the surrounding trees, to perform the horrifying solo, punctuated by an ecstatic flapping of wings. Yes, sir. As if we can’t tell where you are by your (rather melodious, truth be told) creaks alone.


Plants

African violets continue to bloom. Not a white one among them.



I’m seriously contemplating on getting a named one from a breeder, probably Lyndon Lyon greenhouses. Maybe, Easter Angel- a standard, though that’s not exactly pure white. Or even Winter Smiles, which is a white Russian variety.. Both of these are going to be rather large plants, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that quantity=/=quality. Might as well get the big, pretty ones that I’d enjoy, rather than three mini-sized ones, which I’d have difficulty keeping watered. (Never did get a hang of the wick-watering trick).


Repotted the non-variegated hoya and the odd oak, which sprouted in a cactus pot from an acorn which I’ve apparently put there and forgotten about. Maybe this means that I should be watering the cactus in question less?