Hodgepodge

This is one of those posts where I don't have enough photos about one topic so I toss in three or four things together that don't necessarily go together and didn't even happen on the same day.

First up:  Flamingos.  Last week I went to the zoo to see the new flamingo chicks.  I didn't try sketching them there, as it was a bit chaotic -- they moved around a lot, and so did the people jockeying for a good view.  So I snapped a few photos and did a watercolor at home later.

That was fun -- I have been doing primarily sketching and haven't done a painting in my "studio" for some time.

Next in the hodgepodge, my garden.  Not a lot is blooming right now, but a few things are still making an effort, such as this gladiolus:

And one of my favorite annuals, these Cosmos:

And this lily:

And this sedum:

While taking those photos, I spotted a tiny bug:

Since I am currently proofreading Pacific Northwest Insects, I decided to try figuring out what it was.  I decided perhaps it was a shield-bug nymph, and asked a bug ID site for confirmation.  Wrong!  It's a stink bug nymph -- but those two families are very closely related and their nymphs look a lot alike, so I'm pretty happy that I got as close as I did.

Last in the hodgepodge is the Queen Anne hill  neighborhood.  The monthly Seattle Urban Sketchers get-together was held there this past Sunday.  We met on the commercial street and spread out to draw.  I was attracted to a restaurant in a colorful old house, but my drawing went bad quickly due to the new paper I was trying out -- it absorbed the watercolor too much.  Also, it was too noisy -- a church let out, with screaming, running children all around.

So I ran away from the commercial street and wandered around the neighborhood until I found a house I wanted to draw:

With only 30 minutes left until the "meet up and share" time, I chose not to start another drawing but to take a long walk instead.  Along the way, I spotted these delightful birdhouses:

And this delightful bird -- a scrub-jay:

Eventually I wound up at Kerry Park, which boasts a view of Puget Sound and downtown Seattle.

That concludes this edition of Field Notes Hodgepodge!