I've really neglected this blog since we "moved" to Florida for the winter. Our days are filled with activities in the park, getting to know our new neighbors and catching up with old friends. Oh, and gardening!
It's been really cold nights; it was down to 46 last night. We expect that at this time of the year but at least the days are really pleasant. I do think I need to get to Home Depot and get a tarp for the plants. There will be more cold days ahead.
I'm anxiously awaiting for my two classes, Watercolor and Guitar, to start in January. My neighbor is taking the watercolor class with me. She's an accomplished artist, primarily in pastel portraits. Watercolor is a big step out of her safety zone as it is with me who can't even draw.
There are many online instructional videos for beginning so I've started playing with my watercolors. Here is my very first watercolor. (I'm not sure but I think the word "painting" might be redundant so I didn't use it.)
I'm finding the whole subject of watercolors extremely interesting and structured. I also love the colors. I may have found my passion!
I love anything with structure and there is plenty of structure to watercolors if one chooses to accept it. I always do accept the structure when learning something new. There will be plenty of opportunities to get creative after learning the basics. My next subjects to play with will be trees and clouds.
If you think I've abandoned quilting, think again. There's a quilt show here in the park in December so I've been busy finishing off the remainder of my 8 projects for the show. Here's what I finished yesterday:
Hmmmmm....does there seem to be a prominent color theme in my painting and my quilt?
I always like to remind myself how crappy the weather was when we left Tennessee! I know they'll have some very nice days up there and I'll miss working out in my gardens, but.....
.....now that we're down here in St. Petersburg, FL, one of the first things I did was to start my Florida garden. Within two months, we'll have tomatoes (Patio and Better Boy), Armenian cucumbers, basil and lettuce.
I get a lot of comments about my "garden" as people walk by but it will be nothing compared to the comments I expect to get once my lettuce starts growing. I'm a big fan of pinterest and if you've never seen it, by all means, look it up. It's a place where you can see links from other people for all kinds of interests, e.g., home decor, cooking, gardening, crafts, travel, art, etc., etc., etc. I get many of my ideas from pinterest and I saw one where the person took a big, round, metal, galvanized tub and planted two different types of lettuces in a big spiral. I used red and green leaf lettuce for mine and I didn't want the weight of a big galvanized tub so I just bought a plastic pot saucer at Home Depot. I wasn't sure how to plant the spiral, so I made myself some guides with aluminum foil. I can hardly wait to see how it comes out!
Other than my garden and getting reacquainted with all our old friends, and some new ones, we're just settling in slowly.
We've been on the road for the past couple of days. (I just realized there's a bug in blogger so I can't put pictures in here from my iPad.)
We left Tennessee on a cold, dreary day and headed south. We got quite far and stayed the first night in a Walmart parking lot in Troy, Alabama. That really works out great for us. It's free, we don't have to unhook the camper, and we always seem to be within walking distance of a restaurant.
We got on the road early the next morning and went to our second stop, Panama City Beach. I have a favorite quilt shop there and they did not disappoint. I found some things I was looking for and some I wasn't. PCB also has a wonderful fish market, the likes of which we haven't been able to find in St. Pete. I think we'll explore more of the close-by Tampa area this year and see if we can find a good fresh fish market there.
We always spend two days in PCB but it was not as pleasant this trip. The campground was FULL of those nasty, SHARP sand spurs (or sand burs) so Curly would not walk around there at all. Luckily there was a great dog park about 6 miles away so we took him there several times a day. We stayed at the same campground before....don't understand why we didn't have the sand spurs this bad before.
Last night was spent in Lake City, FL. We found a very convenient campground several trips ago called, "In and Out Campground." All the sites are pull-thru's and there is diesel fuel on-site. The sites are level so we don't have to unhook but we can put the slides out. And there's plenty of walking territory for Curly without sand spurs.
We'll be leaving this morning for a 3-1/2 hour ride to our final destination for the next 4 months. It's almost time to begin "our other life."
