When satellite goes bad

We’ve been having trouble this week with our satellite connection. The connection speed has slowed down to SLOWER THAN DIAL-UP! So frustrating, so no blogging. Isn’t it funny how fast luxuries become necessities? I’m so spoiled. It’s an amazing thing to be able to have access to the world wide web at any speed, actually, when you think about it. So I shouldn’t complain. But I was really happily surprised when this photo uploaded without timing out on me!

Earlier in the week weather.com predicted a couple of nights in the 20’s for us, and I knew these pretty little flowers might be all brown the next morning, so I went out in the yard and the pasture in the drizzling rain and cut bunches of them to bring in and put in vases so we could enjoy them longer. The little white ones, the paperwhites, are unbelievably fragrant. I’m very grateful for the way they mask almost completely the smell of wet dog when Henry, Trixie and I come in from a rainy walk.

Tomorrow I’ll try to post some more painting pictures for you, even if it takes all afternoon for them to upload!

Walk Into Spring - Episode I

Pear Trees on Ockley - The Adventure Begins


I started on the pear trees painting today. One of the things I read somewhere recently that has helped me most: in almost all paintings from life, the first thing you see should be the last thing you paint! Keeping this in the front of my mind helps me from getting caught up in painting details too early.


On this painting, though, I decided to get the treetops mostly finished before starting on the shadowy part in the foreground, because painting the trees is what I’m most apprehensive about in this painting. I just looked up “apprehensive” – it means “anxious or fearful that something bad or unpleasant will happen.” Yep, that’s the feeling I have about trying to get the trees right. So if I tackle that first, the rest of the painting should be a breeze, right?