Have I got a story for you

It all starts with me painting blackberries hanging over the stone wall in my backyard. I found this really nice branch of blackberry bush propped up on the other spiky plant that grows on the wall and the black blackberries and the red blackberries and all the different greens in front of the wall looked so nice that I really wanted to paint it. So I packed up my paints and my turpentine and a little canvass and pallet and sat down and started painting the blackberries and it wasn't long before I discovered the serious flaw in my plan. Painting in the garden on a hot summer evening in not enough clothes sounds glamorous until you factor in the mosquitoes. And those mosquitoes were all about my upper thighs. I don't know why, but I ended up with nine mosquito bites on the outside of my left upper thigh and three on the inside. The right had two on the inside and seven on the outside. I look diseased. And they hurt like the dickens. I smashed a bunch of mosquitoes but I kept on forgetting that I was holding paintbrushes and my hands were all painty and all the attempted mosquito killing ended up getting a lot of paint on me and my clothes. One dead mosquito dropped onto my pallet, and without really thinking what I was doing I mushed it up and mixed its blood onto my paint, and then I thought oh god I just KILLED AN ANIMAL and now I am PAINTING WITH ITS BLOOD. And I creeped myself out a little. I seriously do not know what compelled me to do that. But ANYWAY I didn't want to take a picture of the blackberries and paint from the picture since I like painting from life much more, but I have kind of a race against time in this painting since the red blackberries will ripen and I really like the red.

So I went back inside and I got out my camera to document the blackberries. I hope to get out there again tomorrow afternoon and paint more from life but if time and tide end up doing what they do it is nice to know that I have the picture. After I took the picture of the blackberries I took a picture of the sky behind my house since I had been watching it while I painted. My issue with pictures is that I can never get them to look as good as things look in real life. I know people who are good at taking pictures can get things to look better in the pictures than in real life but I always end up disappointed with mine. So I took a few more pictures of wildflowers that I were disappointed in and then moved on to eating blueberries. I started out reaching through the net that Mother put around the blueberries this morning to keep out the birds and picking the good ones and eating them and having a great time, and then I noticed a bit of commotion back behind the bushes. So I looked over closer and found two birds tangled in the net flapping to try to get free.


I don't know what the proper protocol is for saving trapped birds. I know what to do when a baby bird falls out of its nest but I had never before heard of this issue. I was singing sort of quietly to them to try to calm them down and I told them I was helping but I'm not sure they understood. When I saw how badly tangled they were I ran inside and got Father and Grandfather to come help.



Grandfather ended up holding the birds still while I cut away the net with scissors. The first bird died in Grandfather's hands but the second one flew away after I cut it free. It was all pretty intense. But now I have this memory of Grandfather and I working together to try to save birds. I like all my memories of Grandfather, but I feel like this one will really stick. He's so great.

That's my story.