Doodle Evil

As Doodle Week continues, I finally decided to contribute something brand new and current...especially since today's theme, Doodle Evil, coincided so nicely with my Quit Date for cigarettes. So I sat down and sketched this out this afternoon whilst waiting for an appointment that never materialized.I must offer my thanks to Tornwordo for modeling good quitting behavior these past two weeks and also for encouraging me at this latest attempt of my own, and so the Nicodemon doodle is for him, but also for me (it's good to be able to see the enemy) and for all of you.

If you see this thing, crush him under your heel, run him over with your car, hand him a sizzling stick of TNT, drop an anvil on him...something. Do not listen to him. He IS Evil.

Right now, he's encouraging me to tell you all how much I hate you or to complain about the garden or the traffic or the inconsiderate people at work...and how all those unpleasant feeling could go away real easy if I were to just have a cigarette. But I'm not gonna do it this time...because I know I don't hate you all, or feel inconvenienced by the garden, or the traffic...though I was a little annoyed at the folks at work.

Actually, it's been a relatively good day...and I did get to see The Dark Knight late this afternoon! It's really fantastic, if a bit long-ish. Heath Ledger did a most excellent job in his role here as the Joker (and if you try to say otherwise, I'll cut you...oops, nope, that's the Nicodemon again) and I have to say, Christian Bale is like the perfect Batman/Bruce Wayne...there would be a lot to say if I tried to really review it though, and except for the movie, today I have the attention span of a flea...so go here and read this review instead.

Thursday

I saw my young bunny friend this morning as I gave the garden the morning review.

I'd seen one of the medium-sized buns of the bunch last evening and had wondered if it was this little guy, growing fast...but no, he's still a small one, for now.


Oh, and yah, it looks like he's a little transfixed by that snake slithering by in front of him, and I was too when I spotted it in the photo this evening.

And then I walked out to the driveway and by moonlight, could see that it was actually a stick.

The morning glories were putting on a nice show today.
Here's that white cleome again. It's taller than the others, which are all (so far) purple. They all came from one packet of "Purple Queen" seeds, so I guess this is the "accent" cleome, meant to show off the deep colors of the others.

The hens n chicks' flower stem is continuing to grow.

What an odd little alien like plant these guys are. I don't think you really get that image clearly until you see them starting to flower. I'm a little afraid it's going to suddenly open up a mouth and eat me. Or I would be, if I didn't know that the flowers will be pretty lovely when they finally open.

I am becoming very fond of these sassafras trees that mark the western border of our little property. I like the bright greens of their mitten-shaped leaves, especially against that blue sky!

When I got to work, I parked under the shade of the pear tree outside my office and was sort of drawn to this little patch of sun and moss. I don't know why...just a very tranquil little spot in the world, I guess.

It was nice to know where I could find that spot as the day progressed.

After work, I stopped by Rock Harbor for a few photos of the full moon and Jupiter. I'll let those speak for themselves.





It's still Doodle Week, and now that I've started looking at my old journals, I'm finding all kinds of little floral fiddlybits I worked in here and there. Thought I'd share a few more of those to wrap things up this evening.

Anyone who'd like to see more of my old doodlings, I've put together a short post on today's theme of Doodle Vacation, over at the Other Blog.

Hope your Thursday was kind to you!

I'm having another go at Finishing With Cigarettes starting tomorrow. I'll try to keep posting but I may take a day or two off just to get through the first screams of the Nicodemon.

Also, there's a possibility I'll be getting to see The Dark Knight tomorrow. : )

Doodle Garden

T'was another lovely summer day here on the Cape, temper atures in the mid-70s, not especially humid, not too windy...you know, just about right.

Today's surprise in the garden came when I discovered that this particular daylily plant appears to be a double-flowered variety, with all manner of extra petals. Pretty fancy, eh?

I couldn't resist another chance to show off the verbena bonariensis today, too, as it continue to flower quietly down by the Three Sisters Garden. In fact, it grows right beside today's daylily of note.

An interesting thing about the verbena B: it just continues to flower and the tiny purple flowers just drop off when they're through and flutter their way elsewhere into the garden below. As a result, I have, on a few occasions, thought that my eyes were detecting some new plant with minute blu-ish flowers...only to discover they were the "discards" from the towering verbena.
And now, as they say across The Pond, for something completely different.

Claire, of A Little Piece of Me, and her pal, Laura, have declared this to be Doodle Week. A whole week dedicated to celebrating the little bits of random art we make and discard all the time. When I heard that Wednesday was to be Doodle Garden day, how could I not participate?

Sadly, it only occurs to me now that I ought to have photographed some pages from my daily log and datebook at work, as I am forever drawing daisies and other flowers whilst talking on the phone to people. However, that didn't occur to me while I was actually at work today, so this will have to wait for the next go round.

However, way back when I used to be good about keeping a daily journal (we're talking the 90s here, kids), I used to do little drawings/ doodles/ random designs all the time... sometimes to seperate entries, or to initiate a new notebook ...or of course, just to procrastinate from writing about things I wasn't quite prepared to face.

Sometimes, it was a little celebration of the world around me, though. I think, if I were to look back, I'd find that my best botanicals actually happened in the winter, when I wasn't out in the thick of the garden by day and exhausted by all that at night.

So today, I thought I'd grab a few random volumes of my old journals (there are about 70) and flip through for a few bits of old Doodle (there's no rule for Doodle Week saying they have to be current, tho perhaps I'll have replaced my old dried out Crayola markers by next time!) which I might share with you to celebrate the occasion.



My "media" of choice, to get all pretentious about it, were the Crayola magic markers I mentioned before...as many different colors as I could manage. And I also had a cool little tool that allowed me to blend those markers a bit, which created the watercolor sort of effect you see in the flowers above.

Still, they were just silly little doodles and I'm happy to finally share a few of them here, where someone besides me might actually see and be amused/entertained by them.

The sunflower below is a good example of one of those winter drawings. It was done on January 27 of 2006 and the accompanying journal entry talks of a heavy snowfall that night while I was sketching.

I haven't had success with sunflowers really before this season, so this was really just one born of my wishful imagination and not based on anything I'd actually grown. But as it turns out, it's especially appropriate to include here today...


...because, while I was at work today, my tallest sunflower (about an even six feet now) opened with no fanfare or warning, to greet me with its smiling green and yellow face when I got home this evening!

This bumblebee was apparently drunk with happiness at having this whole massive flower to himself, as he didn't even think about flying away as I moved in for some pictures. He was just crawling, sort of sleepily, around the perimeter of the great flowerhead.

There's still a couple days left of Doodle Week--if you like to draw or sketch or scratch, you should check out the themes for the days remaining and get to posting!