It was a beautiful morning for late July, a gift really, so I decided to spend some time outside in the garden to do some weeding and trimming.  It’s the time of year when I usually get tired of the maintenance, and it’s too hot to enjoy being outside, but this week has been a treat.  I know we’ll still have hot, sticky days in August, but they are easier to tolerate when we have some cooler weather sprinkled in. Here are my four things for this week: A novel I enjoyed, Murder 101, fresh-cut flowers, and interviews, photoshoots & painting.   what I’m reading I haven’t read any books this week that blew my hair back, but I finished A Girl Called Samson a couple of weeks ago, and it’s still hanging with me.  It’s beautifully written, and I fell in love with Deborah, John, and others in the

The weather has turned hot again, which is expected since we’re halfway through July and in the thick of summer.  Hot, humid weather means I skip my morning walk, don’t stay on top of the weeds in the garden beds quite as well, and generally stay inside except in the morning and evening.  I’ve already been looking ahead to appointments, deadlines, and things that are just around the corner, and it reminds me that each season is short-lived.  In just a few weeks, the mornings will be more pleasant for walking, the afternoons won’t be as sticky, and our electric bill won’t be staggeringly high from running our AC.  So, as much as I dislike the summer heat and melt in it, I’m trying to savor and enjoy it. I hope you are, too. Here are my four things for this week: Twatchman, Top Chef, don’t settle, and the usual.

I hope all of my American friends had a nice July 4th!  We kept the day very low-key, but it was nice to have a long, slow weekend, and I enjoyed watching some of the festivities in clips online.  I have spent years in the past going to see fireworks displays, but I find I don’t really want to sit in traffic and fight the crowds on a hot summer night.  I’d rather stay at home and listen to the pops and whizzes.  Both in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, we knew of overlooks where we could watch the local fireworks free from on-street parking and queues.  We haven’t found that place in Maryland, yet, and the boys aren’t at the age where they really care. I worked at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom when I was a teenager, and the fireworks I got to see nightly sort of ruined all other fireworks

Oh my word, it is hot as the blazes this week.  I often joke that I was made for Norway. (Although I have never been there, and the ancestry information I’ve found so far has all led back to England.)  I certainly wasn’t made for anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.  I’m fair-skinned, have a sun allergy, turn beet red in the heat, and feel nauseous if I can’t cool off.  So, I’m getting my gardening and pool chores done in the morning, making sure everything has enough water, and then I’m spending the rest of the day inside.  The upside is we can enjoy the pool in the evening when the sun isn’t so intense.  I’m already dreading the utility bill, though.  Happy July. I hope you’re staying cool and enjoying the slower pace of summer wherever you are. Here are my four things for this week: Garden Potraits,

I realized once I started working on this post that I was chattier than I expected!  I only posted twice on the blog this week and twice last week, and I think I’m feeling that!  Writing and posting on this blog have been part of my creative process for over 15 years, and when I take that away, I miss the outlet.  It’s like when you haven’t called your mom or a friend you usually speak to regularly, and then have all sorts of catching up to do.  I’ve just had a lot of work to do behind the scenes, and have had to let my usual posting pattern slack a bit.  In a way, that’s a good thing, because I used to be unforgiving about missing a blog post, even when I was sick or on vacation.  On full, tiring, busy days, I would stay up just a little

This week started with the loss of power from a storm.  It wasn’t really the storm that knocked out the power, but the wall of wind that came right before the rain.  It took out trees, limbs, power poles, and made a general mess of our yard and pool.  Jeff had just finished cleaning up the curb, only to have it littered with leaves and branches again.  Such is life with six mature maple trees!  We put our generator to work to power the fridge (mostly for Calvin’s insulin) and to charge our electronics.  Thankfully, it wasn’t super hot or humid, so it ended up being a tolerable 24 hours or so.  We were all thankful when the lights flickered back on, though. It was a reminder of how easy it is to take modern conveniences for granted.   Here are my four things for this week:  More Van Gogh,

It’s been a full, exciting week.  I’ve been walking each morning, caring for the garden beds, working on commissioned paintings, packing prints, and recording some test audiobook samples for Move Slow and Make Things.  I’ve also been arranging some fun giveaways as we get closer to the launch, and this afternoon (Friday), I received my first advanced copy of the book!  As an author, there are few things as thrilling as receiving the first copy of a book, holding in your hands the work of over two years. The book is so beautiful.  I’ll take lots of pictures of it and overshare them like it’s a newborn baby. Here are my four things for this week:  Pigment Stories, bird watching, Wordsworth, and floundering.   what I’m reading I am making a final push to finish the Van Gogh Biography I’ve been working through for weeks.  Even after listening to it

I had an original art sale yesterday, so I spent the bulk of the day babysitting the sale (answering questions, managing presales, etc.) and packing paintings that sold.  I am always bubbling with nervous energy before a sale, so I channeled it into cleaning the house and doing small, mindless tasks, like sprinkling some of the shells I collected over Spring Break around the garden and patio.  I was thinking about nervous energy before an event like this as I flitted about, and it reminded me of my days in theatre.  Nerves weren’t something to be conquered; they weren’t discouraged.  They were embraced and redirected.  I learned that the performance often felt flat if I wasn’t a little jittery beforehand.  Obviously, an art sale isn’t a live performance, but the line of thinking led me to embrace the nervous energy as excitement and evidence that I’m doing work I really