I am still under the weather a bit, so I am moving from one sunny window to the next, trying to enjoy the beautiful weather here. One thing has become very obvious today......my yard is overrun with invasive species. Bittersweet, honeysuckle, and wysteria are climbing to the tops of all the trees here. I can blame the highway department for a few of these monsters, such as the autumn olive in every hedgerow, but I am the idiot who thought wysteria would look good on an arbor beside my Bartlet Pear tree. Now that all the leaves have fallen, I can see wysteria in the very top of the pear tree, choking it to death.
I can also dismiss the bittersweet a bit, since the songbirds love the seeds and scatter them freely, but there is nothing that will touch an autumn olive berry, except maybe Satan. I can only hope that one day science will discover those berries will cure some horrible disease.....well, I am gonna tell myself that for a bit longer.
I received an Honorable Mention Award yesterday at the Miniature Painters, Sculptors, & Gravers Society of Washington DC. The awards ceremony was held at the Strathmore Mansion in Bethesda MD. Along with a sumptuous buffet luncheon in the ballroom, the show was officially opened to collectors only and the artists. In this photo, people have just started to arrive and you can see the huge pipe organ above the dinning area and great fireplace. This room reminds me of the Biltmore Mansion in Asheville NC, but is about one third the size of the hall at Biltmore. All in all, it was elegant and the food fantastic. OH, and guess who forgot to have her picture taken when she received her award? I really need a personal assistant. 
