set painting

Yesterday, I helped paint the set for the upcoming show - Bus Stop. The painting was really easy - just slapping paint on sections of what will be the walls. We put on gray paint, then dripped and splattered yellow and brown in it to look like years of grease splatters. It was fun and not really tiring, although when I got home, I was ready to just relax for the rest of the afternoon.

Later, however, Patty and I went for a walk. It was still far too hot, but we walked slowly for almost an hour. Patty was taking photos of places in the common areas where there is erosion or just no grass. Lots of places! Patty is on the Landscape Committee, which recommends what areas should be fixed up each year. What they really need is to use ground cover, rather than grass on the slopes or just let nature take its course, by NOT mowing the slopes. Some people are very insistent that all common areas, unless part of a woods, should have grass that is mowed every week, whether it needs it or not. Here is Maryland, with our often dry summers, that is a sure way to kill off the grass. They cut it really short, too - again very bad for grass. I don't know if Patty will get anywhere with the idea of substituting ground cover for grass. Sure hope so. Behind our homes, where the erosion is really bad, we persuaded the yard maintenance company not to mow at all. We have grass and crown vetch and some other weeds growing back there and hopefully, the grass will reseed and cover all the bare spots. It may take a few years.

I got a lovely package in the mail yesterday. It's the quilt sent to me in the Little Art Quilt exchange. This is a gorgeous quilt - in my favorite colors - brown and green. Here's a not-very-good photo of it. I didn't want to take it down to shoot it, so there is some distracting stuff in the background. The woman who made it lives in Canada. It took over 3 weeks for it to get here. I send and receive packages to and from England in less time than that. However, she sent it surface mail, rather than air mail. I guess the Canadian postal service doesn't use air mail as much as the USPS does.

Today, I'm skipping church. There is a huge concert or festival going on in Columbia and roads in and out will be jammed up all day long. I thought it was a good excuse to stay home. The only time I don't attend church regularly is in the summer when there is no choir. The rest of the year, if I'm not traveling, I go to church and sing joyously.