early morning mist

It’s been stressful in the studio this week and I have been finding solace in my early morning walks with Finnegan.

Finn on our walk

It’s not safe to walk a pup on our street so I drive 10 minutes over to a local park and we walk for half an hour or so. The farms along the way are close to harvesting corn and sunflowers and the other morning, when we got a particularly early start…and just as we crested a small hill…the sun was a firey re/pink globe hovering over pockets of mist that hung in the valley of the fields below. I have driven that way every day since and the late August morning mist is there but not that spectacular sun.

Here’s a look at yesterday morning’s mist giving way to the sun…

walk in the park

I have a couple other paintings in the works which the Granary Gallery has requested but I am taking a small detour to work on the challenge of recording these peaceful early morning vistas while they are still fresh in my mind and before the snow flies.

As Polly would say…Shake yourself together !  and indeed I have.

Bon Appetite !

Julia, my hero.

I floated out of the movie theater yesterday afternoon on a cloud of whipped to the peak of perfection egg whites…

at the movies

Magnifique, Superb and Brilliant !!! I laughed and sobbed through the whole flick and the creme de la creme was the gaggle of three women sitting behind us whispering to each other in FRENCH !!!

Julia Child has been a hero of mine for almost my entire life. I watched along with the early PBS viewers as she brought us into her kitchen and taught us to cook and she was elevated to goddess status when I worked in Cambridge and would catch the occasional glimpse of her regal gait bobbing above the crowd on the cobblestone alleyways.  My log cabin kitchen today is surrounded by homages to her genius… from the NY Times Magazine article that quotes her “last meal” suggestions…

my muse

to the windchime that has hung outside the door since her passing…

windchime

to the cupboards that have her famous quote painted on them to remind and inspire…

cabinets

Ahhh Julia…

We took Lorrie’s advice and did eat before we sat down to watch…but on the way home we rewrote our shopping list and Herself made a special trip to town to fetch us the fixings for a feast…

ingredients

A little bruschetta to honor the ripe tomatoes in our garden…

prepping

bruschetta

Then a lesson from the movie and an extra step to dry the scallops (not beef this time) to get a good sear…

drying the scallops

good sear

And of course the money shot…the lobster scream !

the lobster scream

And Voila ! we have Seared Scallops for Pat and Lobster Poached in BUTTER for moi…both over a bed of spinach wilted in garlic butter… ( did I mention butter ?)

main course

Ahhhhhh… our tribute was complete with a dish of Haagen Daz velvety chocolate ice cream topped with fresh raspberries…

dessert

and we raised our glasses to Chere Julia, and to Julie whose blog was inspirational and gave Nora Ephron the medium to shine once again…to Meryll who simply was breathtaking…to life itself which we know to be the proper binge… and to love which after all else is at the very core of every meal… Salute !

Pot Luck

Follansbee Folly

A calm between the storm of fun as the Follansbees make their pilgrimage to Country Workshops where Peter will be giving a workshop in joinery and box making… it is our great fortune to live halfway between MA and NC and so we get to be the watering hole at both ends of their trek.

Rose and Daniel are blossoming into spectacular little humans and as much as I want to stop and document the magic… I would rather not have the camera stopping my eye…there’s simply too much going on to capture.

I did get a couple shots and in between finding long lost fairies amongst the zinnias they planted the last time they were here…and swimming all morning in the lake…and drawing pictures of Finn and alligators on the porch…and telling story after story…Papa and I brought out the spoons bags to compare and take notes and see what each other’s spoons look like now that we’ve been a’ carvin’ for almost thirty years. A fair pile of shavings gathered at the foot of our rockers and mingled with the sidewalk chalk and our conversation seemed to pick up right where we left it …with three year old stories woven through the thin bits…while Mama sat near by knitting and Pat smiled on.

Now this artist heads back to the easel and waits to catch them on the way back through in a few days… ahhhhh.

Granary Gallery Show

Well it was a wild week up on the little island of Martha’s Vineyard… the show was a huge success, there were many new adventures, new vistas to investigate, a little bit of poison ivy, lots of early morning walks on the beach, many evenings of friendship and fine feasts, way too many kudos and not nearly enough sushi…and now that we’re home again I am rejuvinated by the enthusiastic response to the new paintings and ready to dig deeper and take the work to a whole new level.

Here is a gallery with some of the highlights of the trip…

check out our little apprentice as she visits the island for the first time…from the big boat to the bigger ocean she was a trooper… she left the last of her puppy teeth there and is now settling in to her cushy day job here in the studio…

another new adventure was being interviewed for Plum TV which has stations in lots of fancy vacation spots…they followed me around for a day with cameras and two delightful cinematographers…and our friend Barb followed them…very much looking the Annie Lebowitz part…

we had our usual techno breakdown on the night of the opening so there are only a couple photos… but I went in the next day and got some shots of the gallery to give you a feel for the place …just imagine a few hundred people milling about with mixed beverages and kind things to say and you’ve got the rest of the picture…

and then there are a few shots of good times with good friends and some views of the pond house where we whiled away the week that was… and of our visit with Ted to Menemsha and a stop over to Jane Slater’s, my teacup muse, and a chance for Ted and Herbert to catch up on some laughs…then, finally,  a tight squeeze on the new ferry back over to America…

I’ll let you check this out while Finnegan and I get back to work…

be well, Heather