End of May Miscellany

I didn’t know what to call this, but she looks like she is in a cage and is not happy with that, so I will call her “Girl in a Cage”. LOL! I actually started this as a study sketch for an oil painting, but got distracted by my recent obsession with this kind of drawing. This is oil-based colored pencils, alcohol markers, and sharpie on smooth white bristol board.

I have been reading, of course. I have read the first six books in Louis L’amour’s Sacket Series: Sackett’s Land; To The Farm Blue Mountains; The Warrior’s Path; Jubal Sackett; Ride The River; and The Daybreakers. I am taking a break from The Sacketts to read Victoria: The Young Queen. So far, it is fascinating. It starts well before she is born and I am now to the point where she has just become Queen at 18 years old.

So far, this year, I have also read (among many others) The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley, The Mudlark, The Burning Hills, Riders of the Purple Sage, The Anne of Green Gables Series (again), and some Janette Oke books. I am in the process of reading The Sackett Companion, also. It gives some insights into characters and places in the Sackett Series books. Fascinating… Do any of you love Louis L’amour as much as I do? Or have you read any of his books? If not, you must read at least one so that you can know. I recommend Sackett’s Land. It is a wonderful book taking place around the year 1600 in England and with a voyage to the New World. It is a swashbuckling account of sword fighting, intrigue, exploration, greed, love, hate, cities, wilderness, all the good things of an adventure tale. Do it. You know you want to. Oh, and his books are always free of details of things we don’t need to know, if you know what I mean…

How is the cicada situation where you live? They are a little overwhelming here in Alabama. I have never seen so many of them and LOUD! They can be deafening sometimes. This is a photo of our baby maple tree covered in cicadas. They fly in and out of that tree in clouds. It is amazing!

And, OH! The Roses! We have planted four more rose bushes this year in addition to the ones that my beloved planted last year. The new ones are climbers on two beautiful arbors that we put up in the front of the house.

This is a Don Juan climbing rose, which is deep red. We have one on each side of this arbor on the garage window. We have two pink ones, Zephirine Douphin (I think that is how it is spelled) on either side of the arbor on the studio window. There is a small bud on one of the Don Juans right now. I can’t wait until the arbor are covered with roses!

Speaking of roses, here are some photos of the rose bushes which were planted last autumn. The white one is Madame Annisette and the deep purply red one is Ebb Tide. We get all our roses from Heirloom Roses online.

This is the spider plant in my studio, blooming. These photos were a few days ago. It is covered in blooms right now. It likes that window, I guess.

And, finally, a photo of me, taken by Dad, during my last immunotherapy session this past Thursday. It was four weeks between treatments, because I was waiting on the results from another blood test to check for cancer cells. It came back at zero, but we decided to continue with the immunotherapy until we get a cat scan to make doubly (triply?) sure. So, I had a pet scan which showed no cancer; this blood test; and now a cat scan. We are making sure! LOL!

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. — Dale Carnegie