A Mermaid's Tale

We have just come back from a glorious week beside the ocean in Maine. Two days at home and my head is still back in Maine with the mermaids, sea birds and beach glass.

Mermaids, you ask? Well, the only one I was able to get a photo of was a beautiful sand sculpture made by Emma and her cousin, Erica. But I think there's a possibility that there were other mermaids lingering behind the rocks just beyond my camera's reach.

Emma and Erica's beautifully sculpted mermaid complete with seaweed hair.

We rented a house with my sister's family. We spent many hours walking on the rocky beach in front of where we stayed. Each tide would bring in more sea glass, enough to share with everyone who was there.

My collection of sea glass and pottery. The most amazing find was the glass stopper pictured on the right.

It turns out that Emma has an eagle eye for finding sea glass. Even after the rest of us had combed the beach thinking we had found it all, Emma would find pocketsful of sea glass treasures.

And speaking of eagles, we saw one!  A bald eagle flew by on more than one occasion. Once, it flew within feet of the front porch. I don't have a photo of it that time. We just stood there awestruck. Here's a photo of it a little higher up in the sky on one of its fly-bys.

We also saw loons, herons and seagulls. I took a series of photos of one heron looking for and catching his supper.

I've started a painting of some of my beautiful beach finds. It's a way of me staying in touch with our beautiful Maine vacation while I slowly get used to being back home.

This painting is still in progress. A few more details to go.

Uh oh. It's happening again. There go my thoughts, somewhere back in Maine with the mermaids, beach glass and sea birds.

Feathered Friends

We have a small artificial lake in the park across from our house. We watched from our front window as the City converted a farmer's field into a lake, soccer field and playground about nine years ago now. It's been particularly interesting to watch the lake come alive and become host to many creatures--birds, fish, turtles, frogs. Of the bird residents, the Canada geese can definitely be a little annoying.  There are a lot of them, they are noisy and they can make the shoreline quite unpleasant to walk on (if you know what I mean). But there are goslings currently and they are so cute! There are two families that seem to spend all of their time together.

There is also a mallard family.  Here is the mom with her little ducklings. She didn't make it easy for the photographer. Can you see them just behind her along the rocks? She spent quite a bit of time there with them. It must have been a good lunch spot.  Earlier the same day, the ducklings swam past the goslings, but do you think I had my camera with me then? Of course not.

As I was taking photos of the geese, I guess I disturbed the heron and it took off all of a sudden. Even the goose looks a little startled.  I had the long-range lens on the camera and didn't have a lot of time to react so the photos aren't quite crisp.  I love the heron. He's so majestic.

Meeko is really quite wonderful around the birds. He sees them and is interested but doesn't bark or try to chase them. So for his good behaviour, I thought he deserved a little photo session too.

Birdie Lover - Meeko

On Etsy, they have added a new artist profile section to each shop called 'About'. It's optional to use it but it's quite a nice way to include more information about your work.  I spent quite a lot of time working on mine. You can read it here if you are interested.  I'm sure I'll tweak it a bit in the days and weeks ahead but I'm pretty happy with it as a start.  Maybe you'll learn something about me you didn't know. :)