Only five left!! Hummingbirds at the red fountain!

Splash Splash!

Whoooo Hooooo…. over halfway through the second round of chemo! Five left. I did the Rip Van Winkle/Sleeping Beauty imitation from Wednesday until Saturday Afternoon. You would think I would be rested by now, LOL.

More Splish Splash

The Arizona weather is amazing right now. We can open up the windows, watch all the birds and butterflies, and just enjoy life

outdoors.I caught a hummingbird playing in the red fountain this morning. Only had my IPAD, so the photos are a little blurry, but you can see why we enjoy sitting out so much. This is making me tired, think I had better go join the kitties for a nap!

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Halfway…..Caterpillars and Butterflies

Queen Caterpillar getting big!

Whoooo Hoooooo! Halfway! Only six more treatments to go! The CEA count is down to 52 from 75, so great progress this month! I have been feeling a lot better this last treatment. Little nausea and pain levels are WAY down. Just fighting the chemo burn, but can live with it when the tumor marker count drops like this.” It is working, it is working” is my mantra! Thanks again to all of you for your support, prayers, positive thoughts and good wishes!

Queen Caterpillar – about 1″

It is finally cooling off in the desert! We have had water falling from the sky, my friends tell me it is rain….even some hail. The windows are open, it is 75 degrees and fabulous! So the monarch and queens are appearing on our desert milkweed! We have had three monarchs go full cycle and four or five queens, with four queen caterpillars and one monarch chrysalis still on the bush. It is our best year ever. Saving the Monarchs one butterfly at a time. Hopefully I catch one of the butterflies and post photos, but they are skittish and tend to fly when I open the door. It is awesome to see them fly away, since there are tons of flowers for them to feast on.

I have a new guardian hummingbird who sits in the Arizona Orange Bells just outside the door. He flies away everytime we open the door, will keep trying to get a photo! It is really hard to sneak up on these guys, I am going to have to practice stealth! I am trying to get lessons from the kitties. However, the cats are very unhappy because we are keeping them inside, except for supervised visits in the backyard. I do not want to encourage them to become bird murderers. They are very vocal about the rules at times, but the parrots just scream louder to cover up the noise, LOL. Note to self….buy earplugs. Wishing you a happy fall!

Cardinal WIP and charcoal.

Here is the promised photo of “Working Man’s Hands”. Very exciting that it won Honorable Mention at the Glendale Arts Council, ” Sahuaro Ranch Show”!!  Speaking of awards….Congratulations to my daughter, Claudine, who won a trip to Chicago with her awesome work on hair (color, cut,and style) and makeup. My granddaughter, Taure,was her model and looked absolutely gorgeous after the transformational magic was completed. She is beautiful anyway, but looked like a model, with yours truly being the OFFICIAL photographer. Oh, You would like to see, well, think I might be able to arrange that!

Oh, yes, we had company over the weekend, and have a visitor with us now. Ripley, the African grey, spent the weekend with us, regaling us with his extensive vocabulary. His latest saying is “What’s up with that?” We also have Willie the Mili-gold Macaw staying with us for a few weeks while her best friends recovers. She has a pretty good vocabulary for a macaw, loves women……..men, not so much. It was pretty funny when she cornered hubby and the two cats in the laundry room…….It definitely sounds like a zoo around here with a flock of seven, LOL. Luckily, during this visit, Ripley was unable to convince any of the other parrots they needed a lawyer. So no birdie modeling strikes in the immediate future.

Meanwhile, back at the Cardinal………………here is the progress to date. Mostly a lot of little detail and the black feathers are in, yeeeesssss, it looks like a ghost eyed cardinal. But have patience, this is a Work-in-Progress after all.