miserable days ahead in more ways than one

Wednesday I went with my friend who is undergoing treatment for cancer to one of her doctor appointments. Because we live in a rural county it’s a two hour drive there and back, or nearly so, to certain appointments and treatment so when I can I accompany her to keep her company. On the way there I checked the weather forecast for the next arctic vortex barreling down on us. The first front turned out to be not that severe and most everything survived with little or no damage. This next one, no suck luck. They are predicting high to mid 20s for three nights Saturday through Monday and then Tuesday a low of 18˚ and the temperature will never rise above freezing. So the azalea buds forming will freeze; all the various lilies, the fire spike, the banana trees, the morning glory bush, the rangoon creeper, the pink trumpet flower, and more will all freeze to the ground. And if that’s not bad enough, we might get snow and if not snow, freezing rain. Yay.

I’m going to have to get Handsome Boy, Lovey, Twin, and Momcat in the shed with the little heater for one night at least. Feral Ghost will be on his own. I’m wondering if I can get them to follow me to the shop and get them in the studio for that night as it’s insulated and much more space. I’m not sure they’ll go in even if I put their food in there.

Add to that the impending doom of the incoming administration of unqualified ass kissers whose only desire is to carry out the demented orders of a guy whose emotional maturity stopped developing when he was five so my mood isn’t great today. As such, I’m limiting my exposure to all the depressing reports. It will do me no good to continue to read about the horrible people and horrible policies that are almost upon us. I know it’s going to be bad. How does that go? My need to be informed is at odds with my need for sanity. Something like that. If not sanity, serenity. Reading about it over and over will not stop it from happening. All we can do is resist. Of course if Hegseth gets okayed for the Department of Defense we might get shot in the legs for resisting.

The only rainbows likely for the next four years will be on my walls on sunny mornings.

Progress has been slow on the new painting, haven’t had much time to work on it this week but I’ll be mostly housebound Sunday through Wednesday so maybe I’ll get it finished. In the meantime here’s where I’m at. Keep in mind that the colors are more intense/saturated than the actual painting. I’m using a picture that I printed out years ago from a photo I took when I was working on the cast glass series of which this was one, the drawing I did of this, and pictures on the internet that I searched for but haven’t printed out for reference. In the end it’s probably not going to look like any of the sources but that’s ok. I’m liking what I have so far.

yesterday

The new neighbors (correction, not the new neighbors but hired workers either by the new owners or Montreal) were at the house yesterday, not moving in but working on the house scraping the exterior doors and the trim around the windows. It was in the 50s yesterday and sunny so they had the doors open and the curtains on the windows (or shades) drawn. That is the first time since we have been here that I’ve seen the curtains drawn in that house. Many years Montreal was not here, traveling for work or up north visiting his wife and son but even when he has been in residence the curtains were never open. I’ve always been curious about the inside of that house, not that I can see anything now. And today they’re back working inside lots of banging and sanding noises as it’s overcast and not quite as warm.

I started pulling out the dead cosmos, clearing the ones in the day lily bed. I don’t think I’m going to let them grow there again since they’re plentiful in the flower bed on the east side which I haven’t begun to clear. I’ll leave them a little longer since the seeds provide food for birds in the winter.

I found a dead white wing dove in the front yard. It didn’t look damaged as if Cat had gotten it so I figured it must have frozen. You might remember I have a small collection of bird skulls on my buffet. 

l to r: seabird from Scotland, seabird from Galveston (those two found), bluejay, cardinal, mockingbird, wren, house finch, warbler

I don’t have the wren skull anymore. A mouse pushed it off onto the floor and Marc stepped on it when he sat down at the table. (If you are squeamish, you might want to jump to the next paragraph.) When I find a dead bird I cut off its head and nestle it in a fire ant bed for them to clean it up for me. And so I did with the white wing dove and then I disposed of the body by flinging it into the wild space at the back of the property, food for insects and night creatures. When I told Marc he said I hope it didn’t die from bird flu. Erk. Well, I did wash my hands when I came in. When it’s clean I’ll add it to the row.

Also yesterday I had a nose bleed and it would not stop! Took about 3 hours before it finally stopped. Damn blood thinner. I’ll be so glad when I am finally off this one. Today I’m afraid to blow my nose for fear it will start up again.

And I worked on the painting. I think I’m through for now with the stigma part of the pistil (the female parts) of the zucchini flower. Now on to the rest of the pistil and the surrounding petals.

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The following is from Heather Cox Richardson’s Jan. 8 newsletter. The Republican MAGAt representatives are compiling their wish list of bills that implement their Project 2025 and one of them is this gem urging Congress to support a consortium of antiabortion doctors for women because, as the bill says, “health care should emphasize the whole woman, including her physical, mental, and spiritual wellness…health care for women should also address the needs of men, families, and communities.” Emphasis mine. Women’s healthcare shouldn’t be just about women, it should support the needs of men. Hey Christian nationalist MAGAts, you can stick your patriarchy where the sun don't shine. They care so much about women and families that they would rather pregnant women bleed out or die from sepsis leaving their other children motherless than get the life saving abortion they need.

And then there’s this…Where do you think the California republican legislators are? If you said California providing help and leadership you would wrong. They’re in Florida at Mar A Lago kissing Trump’s ass while he lies and casts blame for the fires. 

No solutions offered of course, just lies and blame. You know who we're getting help from? Canada and Mexico, our allies that Trump is threatening with economic disaster.

when we were young, fucking fire hurricane, slow progress

I’ve had enough winter now. One more night tonight below freezing, our coldest night so far I think at 28˚, and that’s it for the foreseeable future (but we all know that can and probably will change) even though it will still get down in the 30s every night for the next five nights and then it’s going to yo-yo up and down between the 30s and 40s at night. Yesterday was cold and drizzly wet. 

Yesterday we started back up at SHARE after being closed the past two Thursdays and we were busy. We served 44 families with food orders. We also gave away lots of winter coats. A couple of the volunteers opened on Tuesday and Wednesday, days we aren’t ordinarily open, for several hours just for that and I think today also.

Yesterday morning I had a message from the son of a man who was one of Marc’s and my closest friends. In fact it was Tommy who initially got Marc and I together (I was dating his roommate and Marc was dating his sister which made Tommy the common denominator) and Tommy who married us all those years ago and we’ve know his son, Tommy (the 4th), from the day he was born. Our friend Tommy (the 3rd) died in 2004 of liver cancer and his som, the 4th, was going through a drawer crammed with pictures looking for photos of the 5 generations of Tommys for his son Tommy (the 5th) to take to school for show and tell when he came across this picture of me which he sent to me yesterday morning. This must have been taken soon after Marc and I were married and it looks to have been taken at our house from the blurry shapes in the background. I was 26. I’d forgotten how long my hair was then.

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We draw ever closer to Doomsday when that convicted felon and rapist and his company of unqualified billionaire goons formally takes over the government while he and his sycophants blather on about using economic and military might to take Greenland, annex Canada, take over the Panama Canal, and this is like the icing on the cake, rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and his idiot MAGAt congresspeople have already submitted a bill enforcing the use of the new name in reference and documents. Meanwhile, Los Angeles is burning to the ground while Trump spews his lies and lays the blame on Democrats, liberals, and DEI. Seriously. Why the fuck won’t Newsom tell Canada to just turn on the giant faucet preventing all that snowmelt from flowing into California. I mean, it can’t possibly be because of climate change and that California is experiencing a fucking fire hurricane (video Jeff Tiedrich posted) and the water is being used faster than the storage tanks with plenty of water can replace it.

But all is not lost. This guy, real estate developer Rick Caruso, hired some private firefighters to save his upscale shopping center while the homes around it burned to the ground. Where the fuck do you get private firefighters and why the fuck aren’t they trying to save Los Angeles from burning to the ground.

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Progress is slow on the new painting but here’s where I am so far. 

winter activities and the monster came to play

Here’s my annual cuttings of the yellow angel trumpet and the morning glory bush in water to root in case the ones in the ground don’t come back.

And it is cold out. Below freezing when I got up yesterday morning and when I wrote this it had just then creeped up to 33˚, clear blue winter sky and a little windy. My workroom was ablaze with prisms in the morning. Minnie and I ventured out before noon once it hit 40˚ and nothing looked damaged but we had another night a few degrees below freezing coming last night. This morning, obvious signs of damage, some total like the cosmos, others just bit like the fire spike, some still seemingly unaffected like the shrimp plant.

I returned the two books to the library Saturday that I’ve had out for over a month. One went back without even opening the cover and the other, that weird book by Keanu Reeves and China Milville, The Book Of Elsewhere, went back unfinished. After about 80 pages in I decided I was done with it. For one thing I haven’t had any real reading time as we’ve been streaming 6 seasons of (sci-fi) The Expanse and have started watching The Outlaws. Anyway, it’s rare for me to return a book unfinished. Usually I’ll plow through it on general principal even if I’m not invested in the story but the library called wanting their books back. 

Of course I didn’t just take books back, I also checked one out. It’s an anthology, Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits. Ellison was a science fiction writer (though hard to categorize his work) and one of my favorite authors back in my late teens and twenties when I read science fiction almost exclusively, before I started delving into the origins of religion and myth, buddhism and taoism, theosophy and new age, Campbell and Jung. Anyway, it’s been a long time since I’ve read Ellison’s works so this will be a little walk down memory lane.

So, The Outlaws. There’s three seasons and we just started season 2. It’s a British crime thriller comedy on Prime. We started watching it because it has Christopher Walken in it so we figured it had to be good. The premise is 7 individuals from completely different walks of life thrown together doing community service instead of jail time for their infractions as they get drawn into some serious crime while trying to save their lives and the lives of their families. 

This little monster came over Sunday and played while her daddy worked across the street in the shop. I was instructed to draw camping and then rain. She colored in my outline of the tent. Also drawn on demand was fire, an octopus, and skipping (a little human figure with wild arms and legs and wild hair) while she drew snakes and many legged octopi that turned into spiders that turned into birds.

The blue leg kicking up is from Paisleigh skipping, the pink is me not skipping and her octopus/spider/bird.

I’ve started on the new painting, putting the first underlying color on the anthers. This first image is very frustrating because it doesn’t look anything like what is actually on the paper. What I have so far is almost consistently a lighter lemon yellow with some overlay of an oranger yellow but still very subtle all done while it was still wet. This picture is more like the direction I’m going to take it as if it’s a future picture, work I haven’t done yet, and no amount of dickering with exposure, shadow, temperature, contrast is getting rid of the intensity or the enhanced color value.

preparing for a week of winter

I’m seeing house finches and goldfinches on the bird feeder lately as well as the usual cardinals, chickadees, and titmice. White wing doves were abundant for a few days. 

Spent yesterday morning pulling four plumerias and the pink angel trumpet in, pruned back and covered the porterweed and the two small yellow angel trumpets that are in the ground. Then Robin and I got the ponytail palm covered and that was a chore. it’s grown quite a bit this year. 

Still had some smaller pots to bring into the garage but I wanted to get the last two plumerias and the cereus in first so waited on my grandson for that. Also to move the stag horn in as last year I could barely lift it and this year I can’t.

And now that’s all done and I’m squared away and ready for the cold weather to come barreling in today.

So hollering for the dog over at the shop yard after covering the ponytail I saw a car move slowly down the street, turned around in the drive of the Wicked Bitch of the West’s lot and came back slowly. I purposely watched it as it seemed like suspicious behavior to me. Coming back across the street I saw it had pulled into the drive of my neighbor who lives on the corner and there was another unknown car there as well and two people were standing around. Once I crossed the street a young man approached me since I was looking their way. Turns out they are my new neighbors, young couple about the age of my grandkids. Montreal had told me he was thinking of selling the house and a while back there was a man taking pictures of the property but no for sale sign ever appeared. So I’m glad to have a young couple next door and they seemed nice enough and perhaps when they get in and settled they’ll strike up a friendship with Robin.

Friday I transferred the faint lines of the next painting to the paper so I’ll be starting on it during our week of winter.  

Sunday morning and it’s 74˚, supposed to climb to 78˚ before plunging nearly 50˚ to a low of 30˚ tonight. I have the door open. It’s becoming overcast and the wind is gusty, the wind chimes are active, and thunderstorms are predicted.

many thanks and imminent winter

First, thanks to all for all the feedback on my painting as I progressed. Your honest critiques, suggestions, and specific remedies helped me make it better. I might go back at some point and work on the trunks a little more or add more sprigs popping up from the green or see if I can make the yellow a little brighter at the top but right now I’m putting it aside and filing those suggestions away for future paintings.

I’ve already written about how I decided I wasn’t a painter way back in my 20s (you can read that here if you missed it and want ) so five decades later I’m trying my hand at it again and of course I would pick the most difficult medium, watercolor. But that’s me. Screw baby steps and go straight to the thing that takes the most skill. 

My first introduction to watercolor was via two six session classes taught by a woman here in this small town who taught art in school for many years and is an accomplished watercolorist. The first was in January of 2020, the second in March of 2022 and I did nothing in between the two sessions. Beyond the class exercises/paintings I have only done four paintings on my own. The first was a copy of another artist’s watercolor of birds and pink flowers as an exercise in technique though I changed the birds to different ones. I did that one on my own at home during the time of the second class. The second was in June of 2022 of the yellow trumpet flowers.  Most of ’22 was spent making my last major piece of pate de vere, the Coral Box and then I went into a creative funk. I didn’t do glass, I didn’t draw, I didn’t paint until August of last year when I got out the watercolors a friend had sent me that she no longer used. The result was my third painting, the landscape of the dead tree in the lake. My fourth is the just finished aspen trees. Also did three drawings, the tallow leaves, the buckeye butterfly, and the honeybee. My intent is to have either a drawing or a painting going at least every month for 2025. I’ve been collecting photographs for inspiration but I think the next painting is going to be one I first did in glass and then a drawing, a close up of a female zucchini squash flower. It’s small, only 4” x 4”.

I check the forecast every day and currently predicted lows are two nights at 29˚, two nights at 31˚ during a week with lows in the low 30s. Sunday it’s going to plunge over 40˚ from 75˚ to 29˚. I started bringing plants in yesterday. I’ve got all but three in of the plants that come in the house, one of which is the big stag horn (that empty space on the table is for the stag horn). 

I’ll bring those in today and tomorrow I’ll bring in the big ones with my grandson’s help, the plumerias, pink angel trumpet, and the night blooming cereus, that go in the garage and cover the ponytail. I went ahead and cut all last years growth off the two bridal bouquet plumerias today for two reasons; one, they will be easier to move and protect and two, I cut them back in the spring anyway because they just get too damn tall over the summer.

Today I went around and took the last pictures of blooming things I'll get because Monday everything will be frozen. In order: pink trumpet flower, all the roses of which these are just some, lantana, shrimp plant, a little ground cover, and the cosmos. Most everything is on its last legs anyway.

new year and finished

New Year’s Day. Really the only day we have any kind of ritual. Mimosas wherein we consume a whole bottle of champagne with brunch. And then take naps.

I’m glad to see this year end even though it means come April I will be another year older. My sister’s sudden death at the end of the year before had a profound effect on me in ’24 which manifested in a summer of medical procedures, some necessary, some unnecessary as it turns out. So yeah, not bemoaning ’24. And while the country is going to be immersed in a shitstorm politically, I don’t think it will affect me much personally, being an old white woman, unless they succeed in cutting social security which I don’t think they will be able to do.

I decided yesterday that I was done with my painting after working on the green background following several suggestions from commenters. I could continue to dick around with it but I don’t think I could really make any significant improvements and I think I’m as satisfied as I’m going to be. So this morning I removed all the blue tape securing it to the canvas board, looked at the photo I was working from, and then decided I would do one more thing, very minor and subtle, but now, yes, It’s done. I also played around with the exposure function on my camera which my granddaughter Autumn alerted me to to see if I could get a photo that more accurately depicted the values and then played around with it in preview but don’t seem able to get an accurate depiction of the actual intensity of the colors in the green and yellow background which are ‘softer’ and less defined in the actual painting, although this is fairly close. And thanks for all the suggestions for rescuing the green and yellow. 5 3/4" x 8".

Also, here’s the photo I was working from.

I’ve been checking the weather predictions every day for the arctic vortex. Yesterday the two nights in the 20s were one night at 29˚ and today one night at 32˚. If this keeps up I won’t have to bring anything in.

No SHARE tomorrow so I’m thinking my regular routine won’t asset itself until next Monday. And I’ll have to decide if I want to start another painting and if so what, though I have an idea or two, while the paints are out or a  new drawing or put it all away in favor of the sewing machine. 

I just filled the bird feeder this morning and it’s already more than half empty.