My Weekend Project

I saw a very nice photograph on The Depp Effect which caught my eye, because, as usual, it is part of an English Village scene.  I say as usual, because I visit a lot of English blogs just because of their village and countryside scenes.  Although I love where I live now, I miss the English countryside and you can't have our weather and English scenery.

(Double Click for better effect)

The scan has brought out the ink lines too much, but I don't want to fiddle with it because then if I do it doesn't feel like my painting any more. It is 5 x 7" water color on Bristol card. I substituted a girl with a shopping bag, for the "girl with the brolly", replaced the Butcher's Shop sign and put in the dog which should have been a greyhound if I thought enough about it . To know why visit The Depp Effect. 

This piece was fun to do.  Now I have two more to do as well as catch up with a lot of visiting and leaving comments. Either everybody decided this was a good weekend to blog or the Dashboard is having a hard time keeping up with the new blogs. I'm sure there weren't as many new blogs posted when I looked yesterday.

In addition to my helping out at the shelter, I am now cat-sitting my son's two cats for a couple of weeks.  That means driving 20 minutes there and back every couple of days.  But I really don't mind because Josie gives me long naps and loud purrs on my lap.

This is Josie.

I have no idea where Cleo is. In the many years I have looked after these two cats, I have never seen Cleo.  She hides and I have given up trying to find her.

WEDNESDAY'S WORDS ON THURSDAY

And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy.  Luke  24:52

Who did?  The disciples.
When?  After they had just seen Jesus leave them and rise up into heaven.
But He was leaving them,  --their closest friend   He was leaving them.  How could they return with great joy?
Because all the time He had been on earth with them and especially during these past 40 days after He rose from the dead.  He had been teaching them and explaining to them how all the events of the Old Testament, -- all the things they couldn't understand -- were all meant to happen this way, and why.  Jesus taught them the Old Testament Scriptures in a way they had never understood before.

Now that He was truly gone, they knew why.  They knew why He had to die and why He rose from the dead.  It all made sense to them now. Not only that, they now knew what they had to do.  Jesus had left them with a promise and a task.  The promise was that the Holy Spirit would come upon them and they would be given the power to do the task that He had set for them.  They were to spread the good news that through Jesus we can have our sins forgiven and go to be with Him in Heaven.  They knew this as a certainty. No wonder they were rejoicing!

B is for ...

`...well BEES of course.  But this post is about Killer Bees or the Africanized Honey Bee (AHB) as opposed to the European Honey Bee (EHB).Many years a go when I was still teaching we had a book for Junior High readers called "Disasters".  Each chapter was a true story about some disaster or coming disaster in America.  The kids loved it!  One chapter was called "The Killer Bees are Coming", and that's when I first heard about them.  Well they have come and have been in Southern California since 1995. I took this map off the USDA web and it shows a pretty up to date view of the population of Killer Bees in the USA.

You will have to click twice on it to see it enlarged.

Why did I choose this scary topic for the letter B?  Because the AHB is moving into more populated areas -- or rather we are moving into the areas populated by AHB.  One authority I read says that all the bees in Southern California are to some extent Africanized. You cannot tell the difference by looking at them, but they are much more easily aggravated and much more aggressive and persistent when it comes to guarding their colonies.

Mostly I used to read about attacks in Texas and Arizona, but just this past week, we had a news article telling of the death of two horses, and one man (separate incidents) killed by the bees and two people stung 40 -60 times who had to be hospitalized. All this took place about a half hour down the road from where I live. I won't bore you with a lot of information about how they came to BE, because you can easily look it up on the web and there's plenty of information.  However, there was one page I read that pooh-poohs the whole idea, but don't be mistaken, they are real, and sensible precautions should be taken.  

However, I liken it somewhat to living with rattle snakes.  They're there, but the average person doesn't see much of them.  Just be wise when you are in their habitat.

I started putting out grape jelly to attract the orioles in our area, but now I'm thinking maybe that wasn't such a good idea.  There are always two or three bees on it or near it -- but then they also like our water fountain. The bees are mainly dangerous when they are swarming, so stay inside or in your car when you see bees swarming. 

A few weeks ago a BEE came down our chimney into the living room. It was probably a scout looking for a place to colonize.  Fortunately we were home and swiftly lit the gas log fire to send them away (and killed the one that had wandered down the chimney).  We have seen no signs of colonizing in our yard. 

BEES are a good and necessary  creature but let caution be the better part of valor.

There is So much more to read about these bees, so if you are affected, do look them up on GOOGLE.

PLEASE VISIT ABC WEDNESDAY FOR MORE ENTRIES

WANDA'S ART CHALLENGE #2

Blueberries

A beautiful photograph set for us by Wanda this week.  Not as easy as it may look.  Hard to get the bloom on the berries.  I used water color paper  this time and that was OK until I decided to add a couple of colored  pencil parts here and there and there the texture of the paper showed through.  Actually it doesn't show up as much on the original as it does on the scan of the picture.  

Again, this is an ATC sized card 3 1/2 x 2 1/2 ".

You can see that I tend to be a literalist when copying a photo.  That is, I don't deviate much from the picture and I don't use my imagination.  My visual memory is not too good, but would be much better if I had taken painting seriously from perhaps my teenage years!

Please visit Wanda's Art Blog to see the others that are still being entered.

HOORAY the SUN'S OUT ! -- and MORE ART

... at least it was!  It came out for about two minutes.  We haven't seen the sun for nearly two months!  Just cool gloomy weather.  They are beginning to call this the year of no summer, but as I said to Cherdecor, by August and September we will probably be sizzling.

This is my latest painting:

I just seem to have a thing about sheep and single trees in an open landscape.  I don't think this is necessarily my best work, but it is my favorite because of the scene.

Now you have a task to do.  A week or so ago I posted this watercolor painting of a farmhouse:

But many people have been telling me that they like my paintings done with pen and ink.  So I decided to do the same painting in pen and ink to compare the two.  Here is the 2nd painting:

I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, because the pen and ink does come out so much more clearly  when it is scanned.  But though I perhaps like the looks of the second one better, the first one gave me more satisfaction to do -- and incidentally took much longer.  But even in the second one you see my urge to put in more and more detail.  I had to stop myself.

I'd be interested to hear any comments or suggestions. I want to learn.

WANDA'S ART CHALLENGE AND WEDNESDAY'S WORDS

Wanda set us an Art Challenge this week.  It was a photograph taken by our good friend and very talented gentleman, Abe Lincoln.  The photograph is of a goldfinch between two sunflowers. This is my rendition:

I did this as an ATC (3and 1/2 x 2and 1/2 inches.)

I purchased a packet of these cards pre-cut.  They are bristol board.  Sadly I am finding that most of them have some kind of pressure marks on them as though someone wrote on a piece of paper on top of the card, leaving an imprint. So where I wanted to leave a soft purplish grey in the background, the imprint has shown through.  I used prisma colors, but I think if I had used water colors I could have smoothed out the background.

Visit Wanda's blog My Laundry Room Studio to see others' contributions

MORE ART TOMORROW

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WEDNESDAY'S WORDS ON THURSDAY

Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against You   Psalm 119:11

This was one of the first verses I memorized when I was a teenager and hadn't been a Christian very long.  Now more than 50 years later I realize how important this verse is for a Christian.  We teach our children from a young age what is right and what is wrong.  How do we know what God thinks is right or wrong?  He is not standing there saying "No, No " all day long .  To know what are God's standards of right and wrong we have to read and study the Bible because it is there that we find the consistent truths of right and wrong that God wants us to learn.  This verse comes from Psalm 119 which is the longest Psalm in the Bible.  Interestingly enough it is written in couplets, that is every two lines hold a complete thought.  Yet even more interesting than that is the fact that every couplet tells us something about the Word of God.  The Psalmist may use the words law, commandments, statutes, precepts, judgments, or testimonies but they all refer to the Word of God.  

If we want to know how important God's Word is, we can try reading these couplets and see what David 's thoughts were -- all 176 of them!

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7

Join us today in the NEW ROUND SEVEN of ABC WEDNESDAY

It's so easy even I can do it.  Learn something new every week about the world,  vocabulary, some obscure little known but interesting fact,  or your blogging friends.

CLICK ON THE LINK HERE

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