I don't have any new pictures. Usually, I take several a week but lately I haven't been in the mood. Right now, both my camera batteries are charging or I'd go out and take a snap of the newly-seeded grass on the bank outside our dining room.

We are being hounded by biting flies. The bear was here the other night, pulled down all the hummingbird feeders and sugar water went everywhere. That attracted the flies and they are everywhere even after we hosed everything down. There are hundreds of what look like baby houseflies, but they might be a different species that only reaches that size.

Because of the bear, we have been taking the feeders in at night. This morning I put them out at 5:15, and there was a half-eaten dog biscuit outside the back door. I went back to bed to read for a bit, and later we discovered that some animal had come and pulled down one of the feeders and taken that dog biscuit. We can't imagine who would have pulled down just that one feeder.

The other day I took a pastels class, supposedly in the impressionistic style. According to the instructor, this meant using colors with the same value (relative darkness or lightness) next to each other, and we spent 15 minutes experimenting with one color next to another and looking at the result through red plastic to cancel out the color so we could see just the value of it.

Next, we were supposed to apply dabs of those colors on the paper, being sure to put unexpected colors in a given area so that when we stepped back, a red dab next to a blue dab would appear to blend into a purple dab.

It was fun putting out colors, but I can't draw, so my picture ending up coming from my imagination instead of the photograph I was supposed to be drawing from.

Mostly, it was fun to get out of the house for a few hours for something not related to flood recovery, and after the class, Mr. Troutbend treated me to the steak nicest dinner in years. Mind you, it was nothing fancy, but compared to the usual no-so-great Chinese buffet that he usually chooses, it was special.