Every woman needs a retreat. A place to be where the creative muses can find her while her hands are busy and her soul is at rest. For me, that place is my garden. And now, a sanctuary within that sanctuary…my greenhouse is finished !
Three days of hard work to finish the carpentry and then stain and paint and today Pat helped me to carry the books and seeds over to start filling the shelves…
Now I can cast about the studio and cabin to find some things to make it homey, and make cushions for the wicker chair I found and a few hangers for hats and jackets, and some sort of solar powered lamp. It feels so good to complete something as fanciful as this. My garden folly. Now to find the windex !
We’ve been home for over a week now and the re-entry hubub has settled down and I am back at the easel in earnest. And back in the garden as well but not so earnestly as the summer heat wave continues. But this is all good because I am getting my garden fix early in the cooler morning hours and then the rest of the day spent at the air-conditioned studio easel feels like a spa.
Time then to post some photos from the Granary show. The opening was wonderful…a sea of art lovers with many new faces and lots of kind words of support. I took some photos after the crowds had cleared to show you blog readers the installation.
And not to be left out… a few snaps from this morning’s raid of one of the potato bags.
I’m in the mood for some vichysoisse and decided to dig around for some spuds. A task which I approach like an archeological expedition… gently brushing aside layers of dirt to reveal the brightly colored treasures. It’s just magical. Though I’m not too impressed with the yield so far. I welcome any advice from all my master gardener pals on how to improve next year’s crop.
In the coming weeks I’m going to look back and show a couple “paintings in progress” photos I took while working this spring. And I’ve got a slew of panels ready for a series of smaller paintings which will be headed out to Denver for the Gallery 1261 small works show in November/December.
Meanwhile I finished this piece the other day…(here’s an unvarnished studio shot)
It’s title is “Aren’t We Aging Well”…from the title of that wonderful Dar Williams song. I’ve carried just the title forward through several sketch books and when I decided on a visual interpretation it was originally supposed to be an anonymous couple, though always two women. But after Pat and I posed together in the studio yard…I used the remote shutter release on the camera to sneak some shots from behind the chairs…and I looked at the pictures, I realized that we were in no way anonymous. And then it became so deeply personal that I took it out of the Granary roster and put it aside to work on after the show.
I’m so glad now to have it finished …and have cleared some wall space in the studio to hang it after it dries, is varnished and photographed…just for us.
It has been years since I allowed myself to do a painting that wasn’t destined for a gallery or show. It’s good, as the song says, to “steal out with my paints and my brushes”…and paint as if nobody is watching.
But now…I’ve got to be getting on with the current still life. A few of the familiar props are making another appearance like the red stiletto, the silk camisole, and is that one of Polly’s cigarettes ? Really ?
Patience dear reader…all will be revealed…in good time.
The Granary Gallery show opening is exactly one week from today !
And I seem to be aware of that on a cellular level. My frazzled brain is tingling with firing neurons and my body is leaning into the promise of an ocean breeze. So it didn’t surprise me at all when, after watching a video on the New York Times website about preparing squash blossoms for an appetizer I went out to the yard and took some photos for the blog of the very blossoms I plan to put on a plate this evening…
I am in a bit of garden angst at the thought of leaving my tenders behind for our week on the island…just as the fruits of our labors are…well…blossoming. I have the drip irrigation system up and running and a timer installed yesterday seems to be working just fine…but if you have ever raised a raised bed full of veggies you know the rewards that are reaped from constant vigilance.
Anyway, I thought that stumbling upon that recipe was kismet since I now have lots of blossoms that, if left alone, will grow into fruit that I won’t be here to pick. So…much against my usual judgement, I’m a gonna pluck the best of the lot and nibble on them tonight.
Then I come in to write today’s blog and go to the folder where I keep all the show images to see what is left on the list and… wait for it…
#14 – Blosson 14 x 20
You’re all gonna think I planned this but remember that frazzled state ? There is no extra room for such detail…this is pure garden grace at its finest.
So here we go… into the final countdown. Painter’s Notes must be finished today. Then a host of other computer work and some studio clean up and a whole lot of packing. Oh, I remember the days when a trip to the Vineyard meant throwing some clothes and books in a napsack. Now it’s the station wagon, the dog and the trailer…all packed to the gills.
I’m going to go with Boursin, since I don’t think Burrata could be found within 50 miles of here on a Sunday, and a basil/garlic tapenadey thing. I’ll let you know how they come out.
Meanwhile, go take a walk in your garden and breathe deeply of the beauty.
This is sorta fun…writing a blog about the garden… IN the garden.
Last weeks steamy hot summer days drove me deep inside the air-conditioned studio and forced me to focus back on my day job. Which is a good thing because the Granary Gallery show deadline is looming large and there is much work to be done and time for one, maybe two, dare I hope for three more paintings to fly off the easel.
But yesterday was so beautifully cool and clear that I gave up most of it to the garden. This time of year I am doing a lot of selective viewing. Only half of the beds have been weeded and there are a few of the vegetable beds left to be planted. The Greenhouse is a-l-m-o-s-t finished, the shed has still not been organized, the piles on the porch have grown a bearded patina from the pollen purging of six different species of hardwoods and there are maple trees growing in the gutters.
But from the sky chair…all I can see are the roses, and the herb bed which is thriving. And I can smell the wonderful hay which Pat hauled from the neighboring farm which is now snuggly mulching the veggies.
And the birds…oh the birds. This chair swings at the low end of the yard and I’m far enough away from the feeders to not be a bother so it is a perfect place to watch. This morning they are anticipating the storms on the horizon and busy picking out the last of the Service Berries and the sunflower seeds I put out yesterday.
At the end of the perfect yesterday, and I mean the very end because we didn’t sit down to supper until almost 10pm AFTER we cleaned out those gutters, we had the once a year treat of grilled garlic scopes. With some clams and a beet salad thrown in it was a magnificent feast.
This morning it is cool and cloudy and time to put the cucumbers in their cage. Just one of the experiments in small bed growing that I’m trying this year.
The broccoli is coming along but as this is the first time I’ve grown in I’m not sure just when to harvest. Suggestions ?
The potato bags are finally beginning to flower.
And if these beauties are blooming…
then it must be June.
There’s no stopping this garden now…but the raindrops are threatening the well-being of the electronics…so I am headed inside to the easel…for now.
Yesterday was one of those days when absolutely NOTHING worked as planned. I had at least fifteen meltdowns and that was before noon. The stalled storm front which dumped steady rain for three days was causing my vertigo to flare up, and watching the creek steadily rising in the background was like having one of those CNN crawls constantly going across the screen inside my eyeballs screaming flood warning. But even with all this anxiety raging there was absolutely NOTHING going on that was worthy of the whining energy I was giving my angst. At the end of the day, with a glass of wine in hand sitting on the porch swing, Pat was able to talk me down off the ledge and that, and a good night’s sleep, has this day dawning a whole lot brighter.
With the countdown looming for the summer show at the Granary, I decided to have some fun painting smaller pieces inspired by my gardens. And this week it’s all about the roses.
Don’t look at the weeding in progress beyond the foreground…but this is the view from my easel window. I have Gulliver’s windchime hanging just over my shoulder so she can keep an eye on me and the first summer after she died this rose bush began to bloom. It now climbs up the chime’s support and reaches out of the dark corner into her light. I noticed this morning that another branch is peeking up over the window sill. Leave it to Gully to know how to cheer me up.
Yesterday I brought this beach rose in and played all day with a still life set up. (Responsible for about half of the meltdowns it was.) This morning that flower is flat out and the studio smells wonderful.
And here’s the first pass which was done last night. With roses behind me and roses before me I am ready to face whatever this day has to offer.
With the promise of a bit of Shiraz and Herself waiting for me at the other end…I can manage anything !
Awash in flood recovery our family, our neighbors, our community and our state have been blessed with a dry sunny October week. Wherever we go now there are weary faces and stories to match. Everyone around us has been affected and so there is a sort of commaraderie that has swelled and landed us all on higher common ground.
And those random acts of kindness you occasionally hear about…you know those little gestures from someone who doesn’t even know you…that catch you off guard and that take your breath away…as we go about our days wobbling with our tired backs and heavy hearts… we seem to keep bumping into them.
Like when Pat climbed out of her muddy boots and wanted to do something normal and went to get her haircut and her gal Marianne (at Salon Oxygen in York )made a space in her schedule… and listened to Pat’s story (as she always does because Pat tells the best stories) and when it came time to pay she told her Pat’s money was no good. “You’ve been through a rough time Pat, this one’s on me. Don’t you worry. You’ve been supportive or me for all these years. Let me give something back.”
And then today… when after weeks of having the industrial dehumidifier drying us out in the basement (you’ll remember the photo of Pete kindly delivering it to us right after the flood)…and worrying all along how much this was going to cost as the days dragged into weeks. Well Pat and I managed to haul it up one step at a time and got it in the station wagon and off she went to return it. Only to have Mike, and RSC Equipment Rentals in Lancaster, say to her, ” there’s no charge”. What ? “We know you’ve had a hard time. There’s another family who rented one from us too. It’s the least we can do to help out our flooded neighbors.”
Both times we wept.
And there have been so many other small gestures that add up to some very big sighs of relief on top of the huge out pouring of friends who showed up with gloves and smiles on.
We are making great progress. They were here today to measure for the furnace which they will install next week. Here’s a pic of the garage and shed finished with reclaimed flood wood and as you can see I’ve had time to plant the fall crop and Pat helped me get the greenhouse back up around it so our little garden can begin to grow again.
Here’s hoping that your neck of the woods is drying out too and that your October days are full of crisp apples and the kindness of strangers.
It has been a little over a week since my father died and there seems to be an endless stream of logistics to attend to, paperwork to be filled out, emails to answer and to write, and thoughtful considerations to be made by a caring committee of siblings.
Woven through the long hours in the day has been a gossamer thin thread of sadness. It’s soft and shiny enough that I only catch glimpses of it through the haze and weariness of dealing with all the details of death. Living with a hospice nurse for twenty years means I recognize it as grief. But knowing that it is my father who holds its fragile and faraway end has a sharper edge about it than all the other times I’ve seen it. This one is amber in color…with an Old Holland Red Gold Lake glaze…and has both a startling beauty and a staggering pain.
So, while I know it’s there and see that it’s trying to catch my attention, I am busy right now.
It’s been hard to concentrate at the easel. I’m finding just how much the creative act of painting draws from my deepest emotional pools. It doesn’t surprise me that now, when those emotions are so much closer to the surface, they have such a direct line from the heart to the brush.
So I’ve chosen to do some large muscle therapy.
Finn has been getting me up with the first birdsongs well before the sun rises and we’ve been spending those first cooler hours of the day doing the heavy lifting of turning the compost into the garden soil and getting the beds ready for planting. To Finnegan’s great pleasure we have a plethera of plastic pots. The best dog toy in the world…for our Finn…is a black plastic plant bucket. She will amuse us all for hours with those treasures. I will not embarrass her by sharing my favorite pic of her with one of them on her head like the proverbial lightshade but you get the idea that my gardening obsession is feeding her playful spirit as well as brightening up our yard…
Here in this corner of the planet we are three weeks past the last frost date. Our most tender vegetables should be into their teens by now. I am catching up. I recycled the wood that the roofers left behind in December and have made 5 new raised beds. The greenhouse bed is now in it’s second planting since the ridiculous heatwave has bolted most of the greens…
The best neighbors in the world, Sue and daughter Zola, drove their tractor over this weekend and…while Zola minded the best friend pups, Jed and Finnegan…Sue and Pat and I hauled a huge pile of soil up to the top of the yard. The next day I framed it in with the roofing scraps and made a bed which will nourish some watermelons this summer and, in the fall, will be planted as our long awaited asparagus bed.
We’ve expanded the vegetable garden in some unusual ways…
These back beds are producing peas faster than we can eat them this week… and yesterday I planted bush beans, watermelon, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, onions, and runner beans…
And then there’s the great potato bag experiment…went a bit overboard here… so I’m told…
And the roses, oh the roses, they are doing such a good job of lifting my spirits…
And the greatest gift of all… from Gulliver. I inherited this rose bush from the previous owner. For the last three years it has been eight inches tall and only bloomed once. One single flower. Until I put Gulliver’s wind chime there, just outside of my easel window. Now look at it. Gully likes it when I sit in this chair all by myself in the morning. She rings loud and long to let me know that she’s still got my back.
Finnegan is listening to her too…and learning from both her predecessors how to take good care of me.
The kitchen table has been piled high with vegetable catalogues and gardening bibles and seed packets and yesterday it was time to get some dirt on my hands. This year we’ve added two new raised beds. One for raspberries and the other for a cold frame greenhousey kind of thing under which I’ve started all the lovely salad greens and those devine french breakfast radishes.
Next project is to repair and secure the old Finnegan fence sections and then finish planting the peas…but mother nature is helping the muses out by dampening those plans with a forecasted week of rain.
Sooooo…it’s back to the easel for me. But at least I’ve got some dirt under my nails and those wonderful gardening endorphines keeping a smile in my heart.
Zoe’s smiling face greeted me in the studio this last morning of 2010…
as my Aunt Lorrie said…it doesn’t get any better than that ! Right on Lo…we Grandmothers have it made….but they were only here for a brief visit and Finn is at a loss without her baby to take care of…
… to take her mind off of watching her sweet smiling pal being bundled up and tucked safely into the car and waving goodbye…Finn and I have begun to plan next year’s garden additions.
The seed catalogs have begun arriving and a mini-January thaw is promised for the weekend so we are going to build us a new bed and move the last of the dirt, which is threatening to become one with the driveway, into it and let it hang out with some compost for the rest of the winter and be ready to receive the salad green mixture of seeds in the early spring. I’m seriously eyeing one of those cold-frame covers in the gardeners catalog but the goal this year is to recycle the pile of construction materials from the old garage shed, and the other bits and pieces of clutter and debris that have taken up residence in our corner of the planet over the two decades we have been responsible for it’s care…and feed ourselves and a few neighbors along the way.
So…when Finnegan suggested using her old wading pools as planters…well we were off and running…
We’re thinking zukes and beans here…with some of those fabric potato pot planters as anchors…at least that’s what Finn is thinking.
We’ll head back out there after a morning session of painting…
and tonight, when we’ve put away the brushes and the tools and watched the last sunset of the year, and settled in with Herself by our fireside…we’ll pop a cork and raise a toast to all of you out there who make our lives so much richer for being at the other end of this blog.
They called for the first frost of the season on wednesday…so Finnegan and I spend the day before putting the garden to bed. We soon had the big bucket filled with peppers and parsley, green tomatoes and beans.
It was sweetly satisfying to pull out all the withering vines and stems which had worked so hard this summer to feed us…and to haul it all over to the new compost bins. We picked a corner to plant the garlic and casted the winter rye seeds over the rest of the beds. Then we fired up the lawn mower for the last time and limped around the yard collecting clippings and chopped leaves to gently cover the soil. But the sweet peas and the nasturtiums refused to give up…so they get to stay a little longer.
Every woman needs a retreat. A place to be where the creative muses can find her while her hands are busy and her soul is at rest. For me, that place is my garden. And now, a sanctuary within that sanctuary…my greenhouse is finished !
Now I can cast about the studio and cabin to find some things to make it homey, and make cushions for the wicker chair I found and a few hangers for hats and jackets, and some sort of solar powered lamp. It feels so good to complete something as fanciful as this. My garden folly. Now to find the windex !
