Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Fall Favorites


Fall is the season for mums in the beautiful colors of autumn. I like the way the sunlight on everything has a golden sort of glow. The grasses have lovely purples and reds in them. While I was away a grandpuppy who shall not be named had a field day in part of my garden, destroying about half of it. We just filled it up with lots of mums.


Palisade peaches and Olathe corn are in season. We try to have corn just about every night. I get the peaches from the local farmer's market. The tomatoes I have been growing all summer are just starting to turn red. I hope they make it before the cold sets in.
Last but not least, the US Open started this week so the recorder is working overtime to catch all of the excitement. We traveled to New York with friends to watch the qualifying rounds last Thursday. My husband took all the photographs so will have to get them from him and post later.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Barely Breathing




Not just a great song I downloaded today but also describes my current physical state attributable to allergies. We have had record rainfall this summer which has turned our normally dry mountains into a verdant wonderland. Lots of tall grass, flowers......beautiful but you get the idea. This is a picture of some purple coneflowers in my garden. Purple coneflowers are my second favorite flower after pansies. Speaking of pictures, back up your computers people! I lost five years worth of digital photographs in a computer crash. I thought I would be able to recover them but the media had been wiped off the damaged hard drive. A thousand tears later, I am trying to rebuild my photograph library. Summer has sped by so quickly. I am getting the itch to pick up my knitting even though it has been about 90 degrees the last couple of days. The nights are quite cool. I noticed some trees up in Fort Collins turning yellow already when I moved my daughter up there to go to school.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Catching Up on a Summer's Evening



Long time, no blog. The tennis fever lasted for over two months. We had lots of fun, a winning season.....couldn't ask for more. Second session starts next week but I'm ready to start adding other favorite activities back into my life. Just went on a book reading spree which I haven't done in a long time. Had the good fortune to read three really good books in a row. Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Moonflower Vine, billed as a rediscovered classic, and the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a great story full of little known WWII facts. Summer was long in arriving to our mountain town. After a rainy cool spring and early summer, we are finally having some really hot summer weather. My garden is voluptuous. The white and blue delphinium are getting about as tall as I am, the purple clematis are in full bloom, and my russian sage finally grew to the size I was hoping for....full of happy bees. Events of note since I last posted: my son graduated from college and my daughter graduated from high school. Oh, and I have a new grandpuppy, Sargent, a very handsome young German shorthair retriever who is growing by leaps and bounds. Will post some photographs later.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Tennis Fever

Tennis league starts today and I am looking forward to a fun and hopefully winning season. I will work on getting some photographs of my team's road to nationals. It promises to be a beautiful day in the Rocky Mountains, perfect weather for a tennis match.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Moving on to Spring

The promised acrylic version of the aspen stand. It is framed and hanging in my husband's home office. I love it and think for now I am done with aspen painting. Time to move on to more springtime topics, although aspens also look pretty in the springtime! I am working on an acrylic of some flowers I photographed in Cabo. Also intend to start a full sheet watercolor of the columbine. This is a photograph I took of the columbine growing in my garden last summer before they succumbed to some tiny black bugs.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Everywhere I've Been



About ten minutes after I took this photograph the clouds passed through and the sun was shining. Life seems to be moving as quickly these days. I have fifty good years behind me. Where do I go next after everywhere I've been? The education I pursued, the home I have created, the books I've read, the children I've raised, the paintings I've done, the places I have traveled, the photographs I've taken, the husband I've loved, the friends and family I've cherished; all these combine to form the very large canvas that is my life's work. I cannot see the next brushstroke but know that even as I write this the image on the canvas is shifting.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Respite


Respite (res'pit) n. A usually short interval of rest or relief. After being all gung ho with this blog initially, it has now been about five weeks since I have written anything. You have to live life to write about it. During those weeks, I painted the Aspen Stand again in acrylics. Like it much better. It is at the printer's being scanned so I can't show it to you right now. I read The Friday Night Knitting Club (just ok), Twilight (page turner but I'm not interested in continuing the series; I just wanted to see what all the fuss is about), and Confessions of a Shopaholic (actually quite good; made me laugh out loud, I think you have to be a shopper to appreciate it). Not my usual reading fare, can you tell I was at the beach? This picture is the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez, taken from my friend's house in San Jose Cabo. Eight glorius days with the girls. We played tennis everyday. Walked on the beach. Ate delicious food and drank don julio blanco margaritas. On Valentine's Day we celebrated my son Tom's 21st birthday with a wonderful family meal at the eating club followed by Tom's favorite white cake with white frosting and a layer of raspberry in the middle. These things and the stuff and work of everyday life have comprised my respite from blogging. It's good to be back.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Edgar Sawtelle, Not Ordinary

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a wonderfully written book but very perplexing until you find out that it is a retelling of Shakespeare's play Hamlet, a fact which escaped me entirely until I read a review of the book after I had already finished it. That explains the supernatural elements the author uses to advance the story and the ending that leaves you thinking, "what on earth?" There are not too many books that I continue to think about long after I have read them, but this is one of them. The characters are richly drawn and compelling, even the dogs. Edgar Sawtelle is a dog story and I am a sucker for dog stories. Old Yeller. Big Red. Call of the Wild. Just to name a few. The element that makes a dog story great is the relationship between the dog and the human. Because Edgar is mute and communicates with his dogs through sign makes the relationships even more poignant. This is not an ordinary book.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Snow Day and Monday

It is a beautiful snowy morning in the Rocky Mountains. I wanted to follow up on some previous posts. First, the refried bean failure turned out to be the best soup I have ever eaten. No kidding. I don't think I would be able to duplicate the process but even if it was close it would be worth it. If anyone wants to try the refried bean recipe, it can be found at www.cooking-mexican-recipes.com/pinto_bean_recipes.html. If those beans are as good as the soup it would be worth the trouble. I have to eat my words. Do not try the crockpot scenario like I did unless you are trying to make the accidental soup. I also used the roasted garlic chopped up in some homemade guacamole and it was great as well.

Next, I finished the aspen stand watercolor. I ended up using pastels to get the look I wanted which changes this to the mixed media aspen stand. I like this but don't love it. I think I will do it over in acrylics to try and get the concept I originally was after.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Knitting and Beans

I have been trying to keep my knitting projects small in light of the fact that I have two half done afghans that need to be completed. Above is a scarf that I hoped to have done for my daughter for Christmas. Now I'm shooting for before spring. I love the bright colors in this yarn. I wanted the scarf to be on the chunky side so I am knitting with two strands held together using the garter stitch. Previously I had only knit scarves using LionBrand homespun yarn which is so bulky it takes no time at all to knit up a great scarf, especially if you are using big needles. This is a less bulky yarn so the knitting process has been much longer. I'm going to add fringe and maybe look around for some sort of mother of pearlish looking sequins to sew on. Below is a scarf I am working on for myself. You can click on these images to get a better view. This yarn has pretty gray and cream tones in it and is super soft. I thought it would feel good wrapped around my head and neck, which is how I prefer to wear scarves much to my family's embarrassment, especially on days like today when the wind is scourging the mountains at gusts of up to 75 mph. There is nothing more aggravating to me than wearing something itchy around my neck.

The innocent looking legumes up there have been my nemesis for the last couple of days. Driven by the prospect of having the smell of good food bubbling on the stove all day I decided to try my hand at making my own refried beans. I roasted bulbs of garlic, soaked the pinto beans, bought a fresh bay leaf at the supermarket, and stood at the stove adding hot water as it boiled down. After a full day and the beans weren't done, I put them away for the night and then the next morning poured it all into the crockpot so I wouldn't be tied to the stove for another day. Every time I passed the pantry and saw cans of refried beans I would wonder why am I doing this? Long story short, apparently I had added too much water so I gave up on the idea of refried beans, and my husband threw in chunks of the leftover Christmas ham we had thawed out for sandwiches. This new and improved mixture we stored away again last night, and finally will be having ham and pinto bean soup for dinner tonight. As they say in Spain, "no vale la pena", which means making my own refried beans was not worth the trouble.




Saturday, January 3, 2009

The World is My Oyster



Oysters are a revered food at our house. I am still basking in the culinary afterglow of our new year's day oyster pie. Years ago I worked at the restaurant Harpoon Louie's in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Their specialty was an oyster pie which I had never heard of before I worked there. Man, was that good. I googled a recipe and after sorting through a bunch found the one that seemed most like I remembered. It is the recipe of the Waterman House & Gardens in Rockland, Maine and can be found at About.com where I got it. The recipe calls for a single pie crust baked over the filling which is placed in a 2 quart dish. I felt like my 2 quart pyrex baking dish wasn't dignified enough for the pie so I searched and found the deep pie dish by Emile Henry pictured here at the local kitchen store. I altered the recipe in one way and that was by using a bottom crust as well as a top. I am a big fan of pie crust. I bake the bottom crust first, then add the cooked filling and bake with the top crust. This is a really delicious meal. We ate all but one piece, which was still delicious the next day when we divvied it up as an appetizer before dinner. It will be hard to wait another year to have this again.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Aspen Stand Watercolor

I'm working on a full sheet watercolor of a stand of aspens. I took this photograph last October. It was early evening and very overcast which is why the light is so flat, but I like the subdued, peaceful look and was inspired to paint it. Below the photograph is the beginning painting. I like the composition but am at an impasse in terms of how I want to bring the color forward. The background has been painted with a beautiful Daniel Smith watercolor called moonglow. It is a dark grayish purple color that has a lovely granular look when it dries. I used new gamboge for the yellow because it is so vibrant. I would like to try to work in some lavender, maybe in the grass and tree trunks. I'll keep you posted as the painting progresses; right now it's time to paint.





Thursday, January 1, 2009

New Year. New Blog.

Well it's the first day of 2009 so thought I would give this a shot. I have been trying to figure out how to create the blog page and it looks like it will be a work in progress. The photograph in the header is of the view from my window. I am very fortunate to live surrounded by such beauty. Below is one of the paintings from my 2008 collection. The original is hanging in Pinewood Cabin, our little guest cottage. My intent is to use this blog as an outlet for my thoughts and creations. My house is overrun with paintings I can't let go of, books I'd like to talk about, and half done knitting projects among other things. Additional hobbies include traveling with my rugged outdoorsman husband and kids, gardening, my three cats, and tennis. All of these topics, and I'm sure I'll come up with more. will be up for discussion. Because I have run out of wall space in my house and the cabin, it is time to try to find a market for my paintings. Look for features associated with that endeavor as well. Happy new year everyone.