- The geography of broken hearts

As promised, today was a two-fer patch day ...

Yesterday's make-up Patch #54 and today's Patch #55 (Revised 2/28/2016)

and therein lies a story. I went out on a picture walk a few days ago. "Picture walk" is a term from my elementary school librarian days. I used to talk through the pictures in a book with early readers as a way to help them understand the storyline before trying to decode the words on the page. These days I use the term with my three year old grandsons when presented with a text-heavy book ... we talk through the pictures instead.

Anyway, as I headed out Don called after me, "It's raining."

"I know," was my reply. After all, it was just spritzing. Nothing to worry about.

So, there I was picture walking through the floodplain, trying to get a sense of story. And among the pictures I took was this one of the soil cracking for want of water ...

"I'll have to come back to this spot after it rains some more," I thought.

The next day, Nancy Erisman at Pomegranate Trail posted a picture of a heart-shape captured in her parking lot at work ... you can go take a look here if you missed it. Anyway, it reminded me of the cracked earth ... so much so that I went back to my picture looking for a cracked heart. Do you see it?

The original picture has been cropped and rotated ... the heart is middle right

Even though I didn't have the right color linen with me in Austin today, the idea took hold in my mind and insisted on coming out of my fingers, thinking all the while how cool it is that someone's words in California triggered this ...

I still have to add bits of leafy green and tiny blue star flowers a la Cindy Monte at Handstories (and no, that's not the name of the flowers ... it's just what they look like to me). But the sun is slowly sinking down, so I'll save the finish for tomorrow when the colors will be easier to pick out.

One other thing got done today: another blue jean patch for G, this time in University of Texas longhorn orange ...

This is actually burnt orange, believe it or not

Which reminds me of a story. Since G had already learned the Star Spangled Banner, I asked him if he had also learned the Texas pledge of allegiance. He pondered for a moment, then broke out in song, "The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the livelong day ...  

Look out longhorns, he's getting ready to join the team ...