August 26, 2009
Funny how much a cactus (and a kid) can grow in 20-some-years. Here's a photo taken of Deena, Dusty The Dog and me on our back porch:

The year is 1988 so Deena would be eight. Now, here's the amazing part. See that small cactus cutting we had just planted to the right of us? Well, here it is in a photo taken this morning:

Oh, and by the way, the photo was taken by Olive Mondello (a very attractive woman out of my past). And here's another angle:

This cactus has flowers that bloom at night. I got up early to go feed the chickens and kind of did a Whoa! Went and got the camera and snapped off a couple images.

Finished another dozen sketches last night and I'm now at 9,947 sketches with 53 to go. Speaking of which, I have carted my sketchbook to many a foreign place, including Nicaragua, Guatamala, Peru and Utah. Here's one of my pages from Leon, Nicaragua:

The humidity was really oppressive in Leon and just looking at the drawings of the street makes me sweat. Here's a page of sketches of Lake Suchitlan in El Salvador:

And, these (below) were done in the highlands of Peru last summer:

And finally, as promised, here is a sketch of Utah:

Gus Walker wonders: "What will the 10,001 sketch look like?" Well, we're about to find out. I must admit that I have improved over the course of the experiment, but it's not as dramatic as I hoped it would be. Gee, I wonder what Carol Burnett has to say about this?

"I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don't work out, that's when I've really learned."
—Carol Burnett