Mind Your P's

Painting and Pigs seem to be at the forefront this week. Yesterday I went the the house deep in the woods and painted out the angel, see the post titled Call of the Wall for background on that. She didn't really want to go and at one point I was thinking of ways to tell the mother of the girl who wanted a sunset not an angel that the wall would have to taken back to white

This is taken in the natural light the shadow is from 

the window sill, but it works OK with the composition

and started all over again. And that would be at my expense. However I did not give in to that temptation, for it is a temptation to give up. With walls there seems to always be a point where doubt and fear creep in and a voice whispers in my ear "You can't do this." With plain walls that have no imagery I expect it somewhere between the second and fourth coats, and I usually hold an internal dialog that questions the difference between Lazure and a bad paint job. To my credit I have only had to paint a job out once and that was because I had other people helping. 

Close-up.

I know that sounds awful and antisocial. For me, Lazuring is series of adjustments to a constantly changing situation,  it's just too hard with other people to keep track of them as well. Anyway it all more or less fell together in the last half hour. It's not like any sunset I've ever seen, yet, but I think with the girl's stereo speakers in place (lower right are the mounts) and her ballet bar installed it will seem OK. The mother  and the sister liked it, though the girl herself was not available for comment, being off at Dance Camp.

I'm hungry, are you my mom? Who cares! 

The milk bar is open for business.

The other P this week was Pigs at Farmer Bob and Farmer Jean's place, see somewhere below . There are 34 piglets at this point from 4 different litters, there are still 4 more sows waiting to birth. I chatted amiably to Farmer Bob for a while and the piglets and slept in the shade of  the Plum tree. Then just as Farmer Bob left to go do some sort of task it was as if the dinner bell 

I think his name is Spot.

had rung. What a grunting and oinking and jostling for udders went on. Piglets running about looking for an open place at the snack bar. Sows flopping down and rolling over, ready for the gang to descend. In order to get and keep milk flowing the piglets butt their heads and snouts repeatedly on the udder of choice, this makes the whole nursing thing a very active sport. I wonder how many piglets there will be next week, it is such a porcine scene!

Close-up.

Tyler and Sydney Present

Tyler and Sydney present Spots of a Different Ilk. 

Spots are quite fashionable on animals and can enhance any  form. For instance we traveled down to Watsonville to visit farmers Jean and Bob last week and found a good example. 

Look closely under the tree, is that you Ty? No, is it you Syd? Those are some cute piglets. Yeah they sure are, and those are some classic momma pig shapes too. 

These pigs are Gloucestershire Old Spots, they are the oldest pedigreed pig. Hey, that's what they say about us! We're not pigs, Sydney, well I'm not. You eat like one. Hush, this is being recorded. We are English Spots and it is written that Spots are the the oldest of breed of Fancy Rabbits. I guess the English have a thing for spotted animals.

 Here's a closer look at the piglets. Why is that one on the left kind of reddish? Oh, that one is showing his grandfather's breeding which is a Red Welsh. I like the black on white better, I don't know why.....OK, so that is our show on Spots. Do you think people liked it, Sydney? I don't know, I feel like maybe they weren't interested. Maybe they don't know what ilk means. What does it mean? It means family, kind or class. Hmmm, well at least it was a correct use of the word.