A couple of months ago the mailbox that our house came with was halfway knocked off its post. One of our neighbor’s was knocked off as well. At first I thought a: Drunk Driver or b: Teenagers With Too Much Time On Their Hands. But then Chris saw the deep scrape marks in the asphalt and decided it might have been the city lawnmower guy when he was mowing the ROW area. No matter, we wanted a new mailbox anyway and it took us forever to decide on one. I don’t like generic mailboxes. I don’t mind the ones bricked in but our house isn’t brick so it would look…

Now that we have been in our house for six months I feel like I can have a clear head again. The unpacking, updating, painting, this-and-that of moving into a house is time consuming and we’ll be doing it for awhile. However, my studio is basically complete. All I need to paint is a baseboard on the wall that I did not paint white and the painting is complete. The general organization is done and I just need to buy some frames to hang some art. Hopefully I’ll be acquiring more art and creating more art to hang on the walls in the future. Since that is done, I have…

My word for 2012 was Prolific. I’d say the first half of the year was pretty good word wise but the last half went downhill, unless you count endless work on the house and yard as being prolific! I definitely find that the first half of any year is better word-wise but some years are better than others. The year I turned 28 I had a list of 28 things I wanted to do. I made my way through the list pretty well but didn’t manage to get them all done. Oh well, but the point was having something tangible, writing actual goals down instead of something general. Picking a…

The habit of writing here definitely begets more writing. My head was cluttered and the urge to just be away from writing in this space overtook me. Spending time working on photos, writing, thinking of something to say, to share—all of it went away. It still isn’t back, but I will force myself to spend a little time writing here again and maybe I will be creative again. There are times that I just miss walking in the woods. The only thing I had to do was to walk and in the evenings I could read books. Sometimes it is just nice to live life and now worry about documenting…

November? What? +I’ve been eating a lot of massaged kale salads lately which led me to start some kale seeds in the garden. I have mustard and collards doing well but the swiss chard bit the dust thanks to the deer. I’m going to try my luck with kale in the garden and hope we don’t have the issue of aphids we had last year at the community garden. My kale salads are just a bit of olive oil, some tarragon vinegar (oh, this stuff is so good!) and sea salt (or any salt will work). Sometimes it is just kale and those items, but lately I’ve been adding in…

….or working in the last bits of light. Either one. That’s what happened this evening as dusk settled in and despite the grey throughout the entire day the sun decided to peek through and throw some red, orange and yellow into the evening sky. Only for a bit. Then it faded off into other countries for the night. I’m thankful that I am able to come home for lunch if I choose to. This is a complete difference from my job in Florida where my commute was anywhere from 30 minutes when I lived in western Miami-Dade county or an hour to an hour and ten minutes when I lived…

I went looking on my Flickr account for something pretty to post from years past taken on this date. I found this photo from 2008, four years ago, when I was at my parent’s house for two weeks for my ten year high school reunion, and one of my best friend’s weddings. The tree in the photo is a pecan in my parent’s backyard, but the atmosphere of the photo then versus this weekend was completely different. Sunny in the photo, chilly in the 50s and overcast this weekend. It’s a little strange that the photo happens to be from a weekend home because I think it was somewhere around…

I risked getting peed on just to get a shot of this cute toad. It was hopping around as we planted azaleas this weekend. Finally, fall is here. Well, for now, it is Texas after all. We’ll have another bout of warmth before Halloween and then hit the first real cold weather after that. I’m just enjoying the crisp mornings and warm but not overly sweaty afternoons for now. So, October is going to be about showing up. I plan on showing up this month for: +Daily sketches, no matter how awful and rushed they might be. Something on paper to practice, that’s the goal. +Showing up to write 10,000…