Rainy Easter--and there are still good Samaritans out there...

I finally got outside to sketch...after it had started to rain, so sitting on the ground to paint the wildflowers I missed yesterday wasn't an option. The Jeep was my portable studio, and for the most part I stayed dry enough, though with the window down to see the colors accurately I did get some rain on my journal!

I pulled as far off the road as I could to sketch the interesting shapes of these farm buildings, and not one, but FIVE motorists stopped to make sure I was okay. Two of them got out of their vehicles and walked toward me in the rain before I was able to convince them I was just sketching! One was a huge moving van...good Samaritans are NOT extinct!

This is the first page in a brand new, hand-bound journal with Fabriano hot press paper; I didn't see many wildflowers, virtually no mammals out in the rain except cows and horses, but the birds were still there in abundance. A huge white gull on the lake harassed something even bigger that I couldn't ID without binoculars; there were some sort of tiny birds diving on the waves of the windy lake; I saw robins, bluebirds, starlings, a redtail hawk, turkey vultures, wild turkeys, flickers, red-headed woodpeckers, titmice, and juncoes, as well as rather a lot of Canada geese. A good day to be out...