This morning we dug up potatoes, washed them with the garden hose, and used up some bubble soap that was standing nearby in a scrub bucket.

Twice a day, each time I work at Maria’s gallery, I make a point of looking at this lovely creek that I have painted once in fall and will paint again. This is a view at sunset in late summer.

These red-blooming vines twining so vigorously around the birdhouse post invite me once again to get out my drawing materials, make a sketch, make a watercolor, illustrate a poem, do something lovely with this high-summer happiness….

I found one more porch post taking up space in the garage.  Since the core is hollow, the post is easily supported on a stake driven into the garden. So far, three former porch posts have taken on an elegant new role as birdhouse stands. This one is completely covered with a wild morning glory vine.

We went blackberry picking in the back woods, ate them on quinoa.

Early in the morning, my arrangement of poppies against the sunshine.

This morning I will be sewing heads for soft-sculpt dolls to present at the Cumberland Craft Fair in mid-August. This afternoon I have a voice lesson. I have memorized Hugo Wolf’s Begegnung. After that, Nadia wants to paint.

This morning I completed this painting of sailboats at anchor in Boothbay Harbor.

Next I want to paint one of the windjammers that  I photographed by walking out to the end of the pier off the footbridge.

An image of the reflection in the water at high tide was worth the walk around the cove, past the little shack hung with lobster buoys, past the clumps of ripening rose hips. I want to paint this view, reminiscent of a castle and a moat.

Although this summer we find most of the blackberries ripening close to the ground, several canes have climbed into trees, making picking much easier, and this spray has charmingly draped itself over my sign, inviting me to make a watercolor.

This morning I stewed blackberries, wild black currants, black raspberries, and a few red raspberries with sugar to make the well-remembered grütze dessert of my childhood, although my version will be black instead of red.

Every once in a while something magical happens and I create a doll that speaks to me, like this mermaid I have named Ghislaine. I keep a doll like her for myself as proof that this magic can happen, and as a model and inspiration for future creations.

Today I am working with bags full of fleece, “three bags full” and more, and a perspiry task it is, stuffing the bulky bags back on the top shelf, after choosing a handful to wash and pull apart gently sideways to see what kind of doll wig it might make.

This morning I spent time out in the gardens, pulling out overgrown borage to make room for what I think may be pumpkin vines that need more space. In the back woods, hidden under jewelweed, large juicy blackberries are ready to eat.  I picked a bouquet of poppies, queen anne’s lace, radish blossoms, and mint.

I’m watching the tides, waiting for a high tide so that I can  photograph Fort Popham reflected in a pool. Maybe tomorrow morning around eight o-clock I will take a trip to the coast with my camera.

I wonder how the President and his family liked Acadia National Park this past weekend.  What a wonderful move my family  made, deciding to live in Maine, a short distance away from the coast.

Now I return to a bevy of mermaids who are  awaiting net veils and shells and other bits of glamour.