To Blog or to Paint? That is the Question....

I haven't written a blog for a couple of weeks and that was because I was using all my spare time painting. Not painting walls and rooms. Painting pictures of cats. I have always painted intermittently, usually when the creative urge struck. I go through different themes and for a while it was paintings of landscapes and especially places I had visited. So I have pictures of Yellowstone Park, New Mexico, Burlington, Oregon and Canada piling up in the room I call loosely my studio.

My paintings are done purely for my own enjoyment. I like the feel of putting down paint and getting a certain effect. My drawing skills are limited but I have developed a specific style of easy painting and it has become a form of relaxation.

I started a blog at the beginning of this year and found that too was for my own enjoyment and also a form of relaxation. I planned to write a blog about once a week but life tends to get in the way of plans, don't you think. I also found a lot of people liked to read my random thoughts as well so I kept going. I looked at other peoples blogs and saw that a lot of blogs were not written at all but were photos, paintings, recipes , music, videos etc. etc. so clearly the blog as a format is in a state of transformation. I guess it started from a daily log and progressed from there. Blog isn't a very nice word. Too much like slog or clog and I don't think I much like being called a Blogger.

So to get back to my original question. To blog or to paint? Just as my blog was really for me and my paintings are for me, I then got a challenge from a friend. Would I please paint pictures of her cats? She has seen the paintings I had done of my son's cats and wanted the same thing done. I was a bit nervous about doing that. My son would be gracious enough to say ,”Great job Mum “when I painted his cats however the paintings came out but could I do this just as well for someone else. I thought about it and decided I would give it a try. Well strangely enough. once I got into the swing of things and started painting away, I really enjoyed doing it and even with my style coming out in the paintings , the cats look almost like they should. I shall just have to wait to see if their owner recognizes them from the paintings to see if I got the likeness right. I think I did.

So now I am torn between blogging or painting. Hey, maybe I can combine the two and do a plog or a blainting. Better check first and see if anyone else is doing that. So I've added the paintings to this blog so is this a plog or a blainting or even a paint blog. Now I'm confusing myself.

Mrs Crazybird

Tree & high window

So one day in early March I'm sitting at my computer in the living room, when I hear this noise “Bonk, bonk, bonk.”

I yell at poor Mocha , the chocolate lab, who I can't see but guess its her tail wagging as she dreams her life away. The noise continues and gets very irritating so I get up to see just what the dog is doing. Well, she isn't doing anything but the noise has stopped.

The next day the same thing happens , “Bonk, bonk, bonk”. Crazy dog , I think. It's not until this event happens a few times, I realize it isn't the dog as she is sitting right beside me and it isn't her tail making the noise.

The next time I hear the bonk, bonk, I get up and think its coming from the chimney. We have a large brick chimney that goes from ceiling to floor. I get a flashlight and peer up the chimney, getting rather dirty as I do so. Nothing up there. Maybe it's something outside on the roof. So I go outside and peer at the roof. I can't see any tree branch or anything falling on the roof but I also can't hear the noise from outside either.

I go inside, glance up at the high window at the side of the chimney and just in time see a crazy bird flinging itself at the window. Puzzle solved.

Mrs Crazybird.

I watch carefully. The crazy bird continues to do this for 30 minutes or so at a time. “Bonk, bash, bonk ,bash”. It didn't make a mistake by flying into the window. It is actually meaning to bang into the window. I think it must be trying to commit bird suicide. It's a brown and red female cardinal, so it's a midsized bird and the noise and the thud are quite pronounced. I remembered when we lived at our other house we had a male cardinal that did the same thing on the side mirror of one our cars. It would sit and peck and chat away to the mysterious bird that kept appearing. That got to be quite a pain with all the white bird droppings on the side door of the car.

So I thought about it and realized that my female cardinal, Mrs Crazybird was obviously seeing her reflection in the northerly facing window and must be thinking this is a rival bird out to steal her admirers so she was determined to get rid of it. She obviously hadn't made much progress because each time she flew up to that tree there in the window was the rival bird. Throwing her whole body at it made a lot of noise and it scared the bird  away for a moment but was back as quick as a wink.

So a solution had to be found before Mrs Crazybird broke her beak or wing or something worse and before I went insane with the bonking sound. I remembered with the car bird. I mostly solved that by just putting a cloth over the side mirror of the car and also putting another mirror on a tree in the side bushes so then Mr Cardinal could chat away to his heart' s content. However in his case he seemed to be enjoying the experience whereas Mrs Crazybird was definitely peeved.

Covering up the window was not a practical solution as the window is mighty high up, right by the roof line and you need an extension ladder to reach it .Besides which we need all the light coming into our room as we can get. Neither was cutting down the tree the bird perches on before making her swoops at the window as it takes a long while to grow trees in Texas and anyhow I like that crepe myrtle.

I did go and find an old mirror and managed to suspend it in the cleft of a side tree right by the side of the house where I know the bird sits but Mrs Crazybird wasn't interested in that mirror or in that other bird. She totally ignored it and continued to attack her rival.

Maybe if I get rid of the reflection I thought. That should work. So first I found the “hidden” flash light. The one we can never find especially when we need it. That didn't work as the beam of light hardly reached the window ledge. It might have worked in the evening but by then Mrs Crazybird has gone home and all is quiet.

So we found an old long standard lamp, the kind which shines directly up. Then we had to balance that on a side table and then put both table and lamp on the side of the brick fireplace surround. Very surrealistic interior design. The bird stopped for all of one afternoon only to resume bright and early the following morning so that didn't work.

A distraction had to be found. I set too and made this cute little mobile out of used shiny CDs. Lots of reflections to confuse the bird and with it swinging in the wind, that should do it. It was quite a game getting it to hook up outside on the ledge above the window using a long long stick and lots of “Winnie the Pooh's Oh Bothers!!”. It was quite an attraction for a few days. Lots of the other birds came to look at it and even peck at the shiny disks. But Mrs Crazybird saw through the ploy and continued to attack her rival who had cunningly hidden behind the swinging disks.

Well , I have almost given up on it and the bird hasn't killed or hurt itself. I have now become so used to the bonking noise that it hardly registers. I'm hoping that soon the Mrs Crazybird will realize that Spring is here and she should be sitting on her nest and looking after the babies... However if anyone has a solution please let me know.