Really Ripe

They started to spoil before I could finish the painting so I made tomato sauce and finished the painting from photos. Here's one of the photos:



These heirloom tomatoes nearly became antiques.

A Perfect Day

Sitting in the sun on the sandy shore of Ediz Hook, watching a harlequin duck family dive and skim for food--such beauty, such bliss! (This photo is from Photobucket, I was without camera on this outing.)

This morning I drove 60-some miles to meet up with Susan from Sequim in search of the perfect red dahlia. At "Jan's Country Garden" near Port Angeles, we walked the rows of dahlias of every size, color and petal shape and I did, in fact, find the perfect red dahlia or three, and some all white ones, and a red and white one, and then a pale pink one just for variety. These bulbs, or tubers, will be ready in mid-April, so that is plenty of time to figure out where to put them. And get Buff Guy to dig some more holes. Also got a bag of red, ripe tomatoes for an unbelievable $1/lb.!

After enjoying an Oyster Po' Boy overlooking the harbor, we gallery hopped and saw amazing woodwork and photographs. How can there be so many super-talented artists wherever one goes? Heading over to the Hook for some quality birding, with binos and Sibley in hand, we studied various gulls and seals sunning themselves on floating logs, then came upon the harlequin duck family, mom, pop and three young ones. They swam back and forth along the shore, filling their bellies and fluffing their feathers, diving and splashing and showing their colors and patterns to our total delight.

SfS sent me home with a huge bouquet of dahlia blossoms from her own garden and tomorrow I'll try to do them justice with my little Canon.

Seeing Things?

Does anyone besides me see a group of sentient beings? Doesn't that big squash look maternal? I'm looking forward to painting these guys.

I love this song!

Watched a really good movie on Netflix on my laptop tonight and as the final credits roll, this song plays. I've stayed up way too late now tracking it down to see what CD it might be found on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwcZrdwQvcw

Dis quand reviendras-tu by Jean Louis Aubert

Can someone please translate?

New Beginnings

Passed a little group of wet-haired, towel-wrapped kids hiking up the road from the swimming beach late this afternoon. They'll be back in school soon, days of freedom come to an end. Surely a few might be actually looking forward to all the possibilities that lie ahead. In September even though I haven't been in school for eons I always feel like it's the start of something new. It's the cooling off, the shorter days, the conditioning from childhood that create this excitement about taking on a new challenge. For me this year it's the chair position of the Gallery that's got me excited. The web site, our online banner ad, better signs . . . lots of ideas for drawing in more visitors and building on the success of the newly famous slug hunt.

Closing in on a year since I started this blog and I'm happy to have a record of how things were back then, as things have changed, like my ability to do hard and heavy landscaping, since my back is messed up to a great extent. Aside from that, it's the most conscientious journal I've ever done and probably a good tool for keeping the brain cells alive.