two projects

Big black dive bomber mosquitoes are out in force. Takes them a nanosecond to start swarming any hapless creature foolish enough to venture outside. I took my life in my hands just now to go out and take this picture.

There are minnows in the old turtle pond and the rainwater tub but I think I’ll get some mosquito dunks anyway. The only other standing water is in the birdbaths but that gets changed out regularly.

Pam’s house across the street is a manufactured home with typical sort of tan walls with one very brown accent wall in the living room. Before she even moved in she didn’t care for that wall (me either) and I suggested we paint it but she hates to paint and even though I was willing to do it she shrugged it off. Well, Pam is gone two and a half years now, the walls are empty of all her stuff and Robin and I have decided to start painting that house. Robin wanted to start with the smallest bedroom which she’s going to use as a bedroom/playroom for Paisleigh and Harrison since she takes care of them while Mikey works. Now that the kids are in Arkansas with their mother we got started on Sunday. 

The first thing Robin did was to take the thin narrow slats off the wall that cover the joins between the wall panels. The walls are thin sheetrock with a vinyl (?) covering so not taped and floated to make seamless walls. Sunday, I caulked all those seams. Let me tell you, those slats covered a multitude of sins. I did my best but some of those panels were not flush with each other. I suggested we texture the walls first to help hide the inconsistencies but Robin prefers smooth walls to textured and she’s the one who lives there. All the nail holes, because there was not a square inch of wall that my sister didn’t have something hanging, still need to be filled before Robin paints but we bought the paint yesterday. She picked out two versions of a kind of sage green, one a little darker than the other. We had previously gotten samples of the two colors. 

I liked the darker version but Robin chose the other lighter one. Once again, she lives there so her choice. We’ll see how it looks after the room gets painted, not the color but the caulking of the uneven seams. I may suggest we leave the slats on when we do the next area.

The other thing I did Monday was to start on my new art project, a kind of 3 D scene in a shadowbox. The elements will be done in watercolor so I painted two leaves and tried two different methods of gluing the leaves on foam core to give them some substance/thickness. The first one I glued to foam core before cutting it out but while I was doing that an easier way occurred to me which was to cut the leaf shape out of the foam core a little smaller than the water color and then glue them together.

Now that I’ve got that figured out I can start on the actual elements for the piece, the first step is to make the drawing.

Today’s agenda…feed store for mosquito dunks, library, weekly food shop.

Two more day lilies. I didn’t notice the little green spider on the yellow ones when I was taking the picture while fending off blood suckers.