model making, watermelons, foxes, and other miscellania

Too hot to be outside. I go out in the morning and in the evening to water and check on things and admire and enjoy, take pictures. I walk the dog end of day 6:30ish, both of us satisfied with the short walk which includes a visit with her doggie friends if they are out. If I go out in between it's because I'm going somewhere. I've been going over to the studio after breakfast and working on the box til lunch.

The inlay in place on the front of the box. The side edges will get adjusted after it's cast in glass.

I think I'm done with the inlay now and ready to move on to the top sculpture and the feet of which an image is starting to form in my head.

To that end I made a cursory search in the big unairconditioned shop Saturday for a few specific reproduction molds. I found the one of the coral but not the little crab so I'll have to look again. I do have a wax of the little crab but it has a smushed claw arm that I can reconstruct if need be. I was in that part of the shop for about 10 minutes and it had me dripping sweat. Edit:  I found the mold for the little crab and poured waxes of those and some small rock molds to start building up on.

This is how my days go...lazy morning, work in the studio for a couple of hours, lunch, streaming Stranger Things in the afternoon though we caught up on Season 4 yesterday and must wait til July for the next chapter.

The Sahara dust storm arrived Saturday making the sky look whitely overcast but it was really just dust. It's still here yesterday but hasn't quite whited out the sky. I could still see some very very pale blue around the clouds, same today.

Thursday was a food delivery day at SHARE from the food bank in Victoria. Jan places an order once a month from a list they provide and sometimes we get everything ordered, sometimes not, and sometimes they just send something like a gigantic carton of watermelons which we received. We were busy but it just wasn't possible to give them all away. This is what we had left at the end.

I told them I would take four...one for us, one for my sister, and two for my neighbor. When I got home, I saw that they had sneaked in a fifth which I gave to another neighbor.

I had a little excitement yesterday around 6 PM. Went out to the big backyard with the dog, rounded the corner of the garage and looked up to see a fox and a kit crossing the far back end, were about halfway across when they saw me and turned and ran back into the wild space. I walked to the edge of our property and another fox came dashing out from behind the container on the Wicked Bitch Of The West's property. It ran across the field and paused at the edge of the wild space on the other side and we stared at each other until it walked into the tangle. I posted on the local chat group and lots of people responded that they too have seen foxes. I had no idea we had foxes here! These aren't my pictures but ones a local posted on my thread, definitely what I saw, grey foxes.

More miscellaneous pictures. A better picture of my haircut.

Minnie crashed out for the day snuggled next to me and her bunny.

A little calico cat wearing a collar that has been hanging out around here for about a week and a half. She won't let me get closer than about 5' before she runs off and she drives Minnie nuts. Apparently the dog doesn't concern her that much even though Minnie has chased her up a tree at least twice as she is still here, always somewhere on the property. I put some water out for her though she seems healthy as near as I can tell. I wonder if she was abandoned.

A toad hanging out on the edge of container of the sword leaf I grow in water for turtle food.

The plumerias are blooming.