last days of september

It is a dark and gloomy day ...

but Boy! Is it welcome!

It's been quite the drought these many weeks. I don't remember the last time it rained. July?
The irony is not lost on me, considering the devastation that wind and rain have brought to so many this last month while we have waited longingly for a bit of that rain. Nature, for all her beauty, well, I have my reservations.

One can't help but admire her, keeping a huge amount of respect in reserve.

Here, one evening, we pass the Agricultural Centre on our way into town. This is where I saw a fox nosing around on the lawn a few weeks ago, oblivious to the cars; a rare sighting.

New Minas is a big box town, full of little plazas and a mall. 

Since this is one of the few pictures that turned out on this balmy evening after the heat of day, I thought I'd share it, especially as the moon and the sweet light lend a beauty to almost anything.

A grand Victorian that stood on the market for quite a while

is most wonderful when it is decked out for Christmas. The rest of the time it is a little spooky as some Victorian houses are wont to be.

Little houses like this one on the main drag get bought up for business,

this one by a discreet professional.

I've been promising myself to remember to bring my camera when we go out in the evening as we see the most amazing sunsets across the wide expanse of parking lots, this one at the mall.

The primordial roar of triumph!

After Wally assembled the first wall unit, we searched for months for the dowels, bolts and brackets for the second one til Wally finally searched the hardware stores for the missing pieces, even travelling to Berwick for them. In the meantime, he stripped wallpaper, patched plaster cracks, sanded, primed and painted the room, researched the best way to preserve our vintage linoleum floor and proceeded to clean it as well.

Imagine his chagrin when he realized that he had assembled the first unit with a top part on its bottom and now had 2 bottom parts with which to assemble the second unit. Patient, dear Wally replaced one of the "tops" with a bottom on that first unit and proceeded to assemble the second unit with a proper top and bottom. Hence his out-of-character rejoicing! He holds my father's mallet that came in handy for pummelling the dowels into place.

This narrow room once was our guest room. Then it was where Wally set up oil painting. It began to fill with more and more random supplies til it was a holy mess. I measured the units, each 6 feet long to run the length of the room, but it only exaggerated its narrowness and created a corridor where a planned table is to go. It is actually an "L" where it turns to the left by the half revealed window and opens into a closet that creates the ceiling of the stair landing below. How to keep it open and welcoming, functional and cheerful, that's been the question. I'll show you what we come up with as it progresses. I have a feeling I won't love it so much as I do when it's empty.

Now we move onto my boys. Babu looking most fetching.

Muji admiring my art,

then hunkering down for a nap

Babu on another day, licking his chops after breakfast

Try to get this boy when he's not moving.

oh-oh, two little monkeys squaring off. These little tiffs don't last long and often break up with a licking session or just plain obliviousness. You know, the cat kind where "it never really happened".

Muji was feeling particularly needy this day and needed lots of cuddles.

I forget just how small he really is until I see him in context like this.

I've been pulling out my watercolours lately. This one embellished with white details with the uni-ball Signo and outlined with a fine Pitt pen in black india ink. The busyness of the washi tape border gives me a Persian miniature vibe that I really like.

Then, as often happens after I use a lot of colour, I turned to the monochromatic palette of a mechanical pencil, but ended up adding some paint pen because I can't help myself. It was interesting going over the bright pink roses in her dress with more graphite to help them recede.

And now I must continue restoring the new studio. Hopefully I'll have some pictures to share of it by next week. Til then, be well, be centred, be present for everything you do, you see, you hear.

It is the gift.

an early evening drive in the valley

Hello and welcome back, or just plain welcome to those of you who have never been to this site. It is a gorgeous day here in the Annapolis Valley after a post Hurricane Jose dreary start to this week that culminated in much needed rain on Wednesday. Wally told me that hurricanes start as thunderstorms in Africa and escalate as they move westward out to sea. The results here are generally benign though that can be a different case altogether on Nova Scotia's south shore. So far so good this year.

It has been super dry this last month. Though there is some colour change, the leaves on the trees are crispy and somewhat brown from dehydration so we're glad for a little rain. Today is the first day of Autumn and we're sure to see some change in the weather. Already the nights are cold, the days temperate, sometimes warm.

Last week we drove to Berwick to find some bits and pieces at a specialty nut and bolt shop to assemble a no longer made Ikea shelving unit that we'd like to put together alongside its twin that Wally already put together. I'm sure the package of elements will show up one day (we've looked for many months), but in the meantime we'd like to get on with it. So last Thursday, after quite a bit of paper sorting on my part and much painting and plumbing on Wally's part, we rewarded ourselves with an afternoon drive. These are my best shots from a moving car:

A big grey house in Berwick with signs of ongoing renovation on the front porch

one of many apple orchards that line the drive home

another apple orchard with old apple wood stacked

an old country home tucked back from the road

an old barn turned garage, roadside

pride of ownership, an old home, landscaped and in good repair

a humble old country house

a corner house in Waterville looking quaint and somewhat European

a maple lined drive with a tire swing hanging from an old maple out back 

the old Waterville Community Centre (I think)

evening country homestead

raised bungalow with a courtyard installation

Cambridge Baptist Church with a promise of "ham potato scallop bean supper" on September 30th

The yellow door makes it

Muji in the vestibule after breakfast. I just missed him rolling around on his back which always means he's in a good mood.

Babu has taken to exploring under the rolling laundry cart which we use for a recycling divider.

Here he does the combat crawl. There's a conch shell in the stew can where I'm softening the  periostracum outer layer to make it more presentable. I change the water every now and then; it sure smells like seawater. 

Worked and reworked, I struggled with my propensity for muted colours, trying to bring the children (cut-outs from a Tim Holtz pack) into the foreground by colouring them with pigment markers. The muted washi tape colours didn't help, nor did the outer border in Winsor & Newton pigment markers and Gold Sharpie paint pen. Eventually I blacked and smudged an ink background over the original brown coloured pencil background which helped immensely, and added the quotation from who-I-don't-know in white Sharpie pen. It says:

"Do not let your fire go out spark by spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet and the not-at-all.  Do not let the hero in your soul perish in the lonely frustration for the life you deserve and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It is real. It is possible. It is yours."

Enhancing the subject with a darker outline,

this mixed media piece is a mix of watercolour, coloured pencil, paint pen, ink, and a washi tape border. The chair is based on my 1930's pink chair in the living room.

 Another mixed media piece starting with an inked circle for the face and coloured in watercolour with a little coloured pencil on her pathway and in her hair and dress. I used some white paint pen for details. The wing of this Flower Fairy is done with triangular points of colour cut from a magazine, the border done in various washi tapes. I felt the border was encroaching too much so I used some white China marker and white paint pen to enhance the separation between the picture and the border.

Late last night I completed this circle face group of a mother and her children.

There was no black outline for this watercolour but I felt it needed the distinction once again and added it afterward in fine-lined India ink with a  Pitt pen . The little boy's hair and teddy bear are blacked with a Derwent Colorsoft pencil.

Thank you for dropping by dear viewers. 

 with conscious breath that pulls us into this moment

happy Fall Equinox

mid-summer musing

Are you as surprised as I am that July is over (not including today)?

Muji ears

Muji is eating his meals these days - for the most part.  I have to baby him through the last bits by mashing his wet food to a grainy pulp- sheesh! - before I'll give him his longed for and much demanded kibble. I know, I know, I've created a monster!

My reward for this draining behaviour is a stroll around the gardens.

The sun is too bright to capture anything that isn't over-exposed or too contrasting. 

The grapes are coming along now with the heat they love

The bumblebees are out in unusual numbers and love the Echinacea

The day is heating up nicely- a little too much for me, so I got myself back in.

I had a request last winter for an old picture of mine, and try as I might I couldn't find it. 

Thankfully it had survived 5 winters on the covered front porch in a box with some other older work; I found it towards the end of June. I cannot tell you why I've stalled so long in sending it, perhaps a little sentimentalism mixed with worry that it will not survive transit.

I took it out of the frame to photograph it without glare.  It is a watercolour done in 2008 of a chameleon, a subject with which I was quite smitten, painting a number of them on pottery.

a detail of the same work

and another

I don't remember how I got the fine line in red. I'm pretty sure I would have used an ink, possibly an acrylic ink, though I don't know why it would have run into the wet watercolour though now that I think about it, it did used to revive with water.  The bleeding (ugh, I didn't want to use that word regarding the red) works though, adding an extra dimension.

Here is another drawing in the sketchbook I've been working in at the kitchen table.

Drawn in black Derwent Coloursoft pencil- a British product with "colour" spelt English style with a "u"- and Black Pitt Pen.

The White is a combination of Sharpie Paint Pen and Ranger White Opaque which is hardly opaque and needed several applications. The green hair is done in various Winsor & Newton pigment markers. Oh, and a Gold Sharpie Paint Pen for the background.

So are you ready for August? Psychologically I mean. Or does it matter to you? The passage of time startles me when I stop to think about it, its effects and consequences. My mind dances around history, both my own and that of the world's and the myriad of personalities and characters that have peopled it. Archaeological digs indicate climate changes and geographical shifts. It's always moving this world of ours, this planet, this reality. It's so easy to forget as we become consumed by our narrow focus on what is of immediate importance, but that doesn't make this trickling of change cease its relentless erosion/life force  of kinetic/static energy.

The irony of meditation, of ceasing all doing, all engaging, all thinking, 

is that it is the only way to keep up with this ever-changing life we've been given-

by being present with all that is.

What a miraculous thing to do.

breathe

a short trip

After a heatwave last week and the much needed rain yesterday, it is one of those glorious summer days without a cloud in the sky. The cooler weather has brought a shift. There's a feeling of, dare I say it- fall in the air.

On Saturday we hit the highway for Greenwood where my favourite health food store is located.

Cindy carries a wide variety of organics which she sells in the original bags for great savings or breaks down to smaller quantities when you don't want 25 pounds of basmati rice. I stock up on all kinds of things for Wally, me and the cats which makes the cost of gas and running the car worth it.

Outside of Berwick, we're 213 km from Yarmouth. I've yet to get there.

One of the rare days we take this route when it isn't snowing or rainy though it was a bit blowy.

 Kingston is the exit off the highway that we must take to get to Greenwood where Cindy's shop is.

My favourite house sits at the corner of the road into Kingston.  It is the home of the folks who run an

antique shop out back.

What a shock to see the fire damage along the way. Wally only then remembered that he had heard about a fire in Kingston.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Muji's having his day in the sun after breakfast

Babu comes to join him

But it won't be long before he's bugging me for cuddles or playtime

as he doesn't tire nearly as much as Muji.

just a glimpse of what I was playing at in the Second Peninsula Park the week before

Watercolours. I need a whole lot of practice.

I'll have some more artwork to show you tomorrow- something in a completely different vein.

Many thanks for your visits.

peace