Books, Bill and Ted

I spent the better part of the afternoon working on a cover for the alleged wtf am I thinking? NaNo book.  I struggled with ideas and fonts and photos until I was finally satisfied with the end result. But now I can't get it off Word or into a different format to post on my NaNo page or the blog.  A quick cut/paste operation that, yeah, you'd think would be simple, wouldn't you?  Instead, nothing's working, another hour wasted--and believe me, at this point I wish I was wasted. Doesn't bode well, does it?

On the NaNo site, they're always giving pep talks and encouraging advice on ways to forge ahead, persevere, never say die.  Today I read that if you have a cover for your book, your chances of success increase by 60%.  That's huge.  And I'm pretty sure I will need every percentage I can get to make it through November.

I don't know what it means that I have a book cover but no one will ever see it.  I'm sure there's a message in there somewhere...

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Remember Bill and Ted, my Darwin sunflowers?

Here they are, just a few weeks after sprouting all by themselves...

Barely a week later and growing like magic beans.  Bill is the smaller one in the back, Ted is smiling for the camera...

This was last week, just before the storms and high winds came.  I wanted the flowers to keep growing for as long as possible so I could use the seeds in the winter for the birds. 

Unfortunately, when I was outside working in the back garden on Monday, I found poor ol' Bill and Ted laying in the dirt, so I dusted them off and set them in the garage out of the damp.  Earlier today I cut the stalks off and brushed most of the dried flowers away to see if there were any seeds under all that golden yellow and was so pleased to find there were.

And here's a funny thing.  Bill was smaller throughout the whole growing period, but look at him now. He ended up the size of a large dinner plate...

Ted, though he might only be equal to a salad plate, made up for his smaller size with bigger, perfectly formed seeds that the birds are gonna love...

Nature.  Mesmerizing, amazing and a thing of beauty.  Symmetry in the spirals of a sunflower...

So now they're hanging in the garage to dry out and sometime around Christmas I'll hang them in the pine trees for the birds.  Maybe by then I'll have figured out how to get my book cover posted. Sigh...