Every time I go over to art/friend/neighbor Sam's house, I find something else to poach that I want to paint. This time it was three zinnia flowers in a vase. She was nervous about lending them to me, because they were sentimental, having been given to her by someone else. Of course I assured her nothing would happen to them. Brought them over to my studio, painted them late last night, finished at 2:30 am (that's pretty normal for me; I'm a total night owl).
Went back into the studio today to take a photo of this painting to post...and gasped as I saw that one of the zinnias--of course, the biggest and most vividly colored one--appeared to have a broken neck! It looked awful. Strangely, the whole stem (neck) of it seemed to be thin and collapsed...like a zinnia-hungry chupacabra had been at it in the wee hours.
I felt so bad, I gave her the painting, so she could have some more "zinnias" to look at.
That's Miss Lemon on the left, and my girly-girl, black Cleo on the right. She's developed a really strange habit this summer. She brings these big green pods into the house (see bottom photo). I don't know what tree they're from, but what weirds me out is what must go through her mind. She drags them in from somewhere outside our property (because we don't have any trees like that), all the way back to our house, then through the little cat door, then she drags them up the stairs and leaves them for me, one at a time, next to my bedroom door. It started out several weeks ago as maybe twice a week, and has increased to the point where it's about four times a day.
God, cats crack me up.
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