upside down

could there be a denser populous of birdies in my garden than right now? with all the ripe sunflower seeds ready for plucking off the decaying stalks the birds have found their haven. the aeronautics of these little guys is mesmerizing as their supersonic speed catapults them to actually fly upside down just before landing on their seedhead perches. grab seed, eat up in the nearby apple tree, then back for more. the dance is repeated seemingly thousands of times with the flock all in their own individual rhythm. i would like to lay a piece of acetate over the window to trace their path on the sheet and see the sinuous lines of intersecting flight patterns in a abstract perspective drawing of nature at work.

form

simple delights are found in the infinite variability of natural forms. i love the lacy texture of the maple leaves. right now these trees are glowing cadmium yellow, with a bit of tuscan reds peppered in. the usual purply-black leaves of the smoke bush have now turned the most luscious burnt orange on their orbital leaves.

any excuse

we love any kind of holiday around here to dig out the cookie cutters and paint away with icing or sculpt a night creature. my husband should write a book about carving pumpkins. he is the master. year after year they delight the trick or treaters.

wet paint

here's a peek at my latest oil painting (un-named so far and i will probably add a bit more embellishment). i wanted to pair the humble house sparrow with gold leaf in a nod to russian icons and the lovely paintings of fra angelico. i have loved these devotional paintings since childhood, not so much for the content, but for the method in which the subject is rendered, with great reverence, skill and charm. my religious icon is nature in all its simple and stunning glory.

a garden of autumn treasures
as seen on 10-28-06

pyracantha, cornus, sorbus, cotoneaster, arbutus, calycarpa, euonymus

acer, viburnum, sorbus, perrotia, oxydendrum

boltonia, geranium, rosa, dahlia, dianthus, fuschia, tagetes, lavendula, zauchneria, salvia,

saffron!
the most delightful end of the season harvest!
this is my first picking of this year.
the harvest continues daily for a few weeks.
the hard part about harvesting saffron is that the lovely lavender crocus petals tend to get sacrificed for the precious salmon threads held within their grasp.
the background is one of our rouge vif d'etampes pumpkins.

first one

this was the first birdie basket that i made years ago, although the original intent was to leave peanuts in it for the squirrels while we were at camp sherman, oregon. it fell off the tree here at home and someone stepped on it.
i'd like to have fabric printed like the leaves in this photo.

my latest birdie basket

with cornus kousa (korean dogwood) holding it in place
i put lots of black oil sunflower seeds in my baskets to attract a multitude of feathered friends

sunshine on colorthe latest quilt
wow fibers look so great outside. too bad they can't stay there without nasty chemicals to stave off degradation.

sorbus alnifolia
such an ordinary tree most of the year and then instantly becoming the belle of the ball in autumn. such happiness to behold your foliage in the sunshine!

what a noise maker you are mr. stellar's jay! you scare away all the sweet little birdies with your racket. the little guys have no problem sitting in the feeder baskets but you, oh big blue one, must be daringly acrobatic to grab the black oil seed. i must say i lust after your ultramarine feathers. i'm so tempted to catch you and bring you into my studio to paint your form. oh what a noise it would be resonating throughout the house multiplied by our cat kackling at you all the while!

can autumn get any better than this?acer circinatum

boltonia asteriodes

anenome hybridus

rosa 'ballerina'

70 degrees in october? how can that be? delicious!!! raspberries and tomatoes still ripening! how can that be? the sunshine penetrates my core with delight and admiration for the colors that brilliantly reflect back in the low angle light. whites are in their crispest cleanest form. chroma everywhere is intensified by this gift of sunlight in this already color charged season. ahhhh autumn. let me soak it in.

back up, hold on, wait a minutejust to stir up the pot of confusion some more...KNOCK is publishing portions of my green belt project in their fall issue coming out in late october, instead of next year. look for an issue coming soon to eagle harbor books.

patience x 2this just in from the publishing staff:
the next edition of the Seattle Review won't be published (with my cover art) until around the end of january because it will be a double issue. it is interesting to get a glimpse of the publishing world...a stark contrast to the architecture + design world (where i toiled for decades) where deadlines were yesterday and construction starts before the ink is dry on the design documents. patience required to see my stuff in print.

patiencewondering about the release date for the KNOCK publication i went back to the original entry info and my work won't be published until oct. 2007! wow, i thought it was coming out this month. i'll have to be patient.

htmli've been busy writing html code for the new bhs sailing team website. it's up and running at bhs sailing. i covered the CNN logo on a hat that was given to me at the state fair (because i answered so many political trivia questions correctly in a contest) with the bhs sailing burgee to wear to regattas this year. go team!

TOPYIPEE!!i've finished my japanese hankie quilt top! it's my biggest quilt so far. now i have to do the back then sandwich it all together with the batting and do the quilting (ugh)....i'll post the quilt in entirety when it is completely finished.it may be a while!

visual AIDSthis is my second annual contribution to visual AIDS postcards from the edge, a show, in new york city at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. on december 2nd + 3rd, that benefits visual artists living with AIDS. the preview party is on december 1st, world AIDS day. my submission is a continuation of my interest in the greenbelt movement in kenya, started by wangari maathai, and hints towards the goodness that this amazing woman contributes to the world amid a continent devistated by AIDS.
heal the world with trees6 x 4"mixed mediaavailable for purchase through visual AIDS

harvesthelianthus 'lemon queen'
blue sky and big happy flowers...that's what makes this time of the year glorious!
destined for the cuisinart today our tomatillos will become salsa verde
these 'sun gold' tomatoes are the closest natural food to pure refined sugar. hot off the plant, juicy sweet goodness.
it's hard to hold back from harvesting the cinderella pumpkins. they get redder and redder, but just looking at them i am tempted to make some pumpkin bread. look out the clippers are coming...while i was chopping up redwood branches from a pile that had been sitting in the garden a while i noticed that a half eaten apple was tucked under some branches. okay, someone is living under there, i thought. and sure enough as i lifted another branch off the pile a tiny little cotton ball of a grey mouse sat up and looked at me. now, i don't know why there is a stereotype of women gasping in fear from mice, but i thought this little guy was just adorable. i suppose if he were in my cupboard eating my morning cereal i would feel differently, but outside he was too cute. lucky our cat, near by and facing the other direction, didn't see the fellow or else he would have been a goner. our cat is quite the huntress! she likes to leave presents for me at the back door....voles, mice etc. i just hope the little mouse knows his place is outside and doesn't tempt fate by trying to come inside. our cat would be only too happy to catch him in her home.

the late summer gardenfrom two seed packets i have a vast area of orange, red and yellow marigolds. it's amazing how a tiny seed can produce such quantity of bloom in just a couple of months. gardening at its most elemental is so satisfying.
i have never had taller dahlias than this year. i can't even reach the tallest flowers. what an excellent growing season. last year all my tomatoes died from blight early in the season but this year they are gloriously vigorous with sweet as candy fruit.
my daughter + i save the seeds from our sunflowers each year and she plants and tends them. such happy faces of color to greet us as we look out the window. soon the crows will be delighted with the seeds they'll steal.

chickens continued...i just came across this drawing that i did in middle school from a long series of farmy imagery (all in india ink and watercolor). many of the others ended up as cards sent to relatives or saved by my mom, who always encouraged my artwork. thanks ma. there must be boxes full of drawings like this in my mom's garage. my middle school art teacher let my best friend and i go into her class before school, during lunch and sometimes after school to work on our little projects. one project coalesced into quite a large diarama of ceramic people and animals across a paper mache landscape. it was awesome and stayed in her classroom for two years until we left that school and divided our creatures between us. too bad we never took any photos of that piece. i still have some of the creatures.

combs + wattlesyes, i'm a bit stuck on fair thoughts these days...when i saw this chicken at the fair and others that had next to no combs or wattles i had to ask why some chickens have extraordinary adornments while others don't. a 4-H chicken dad told me that you can tell the origin of a chicken species by their combs. the larger the comb the more southerly environment it originated in. the combs are used to release excess heat from the bird so mediterranean birds would have huge ones but those that were developed in northern germany would have itty bitty ones. if a bird with a big comb were to live outdoors in a frigid climate the comb would get frost bite. yikes. it's fun to learn new things all the time. now i have a new appreciation for chicken appearance.

crochet oo la latake a metal stick with a bent end and some string and what can you come up with? a tiny bowl for paper clips. crochet has to be one of the oldest of the needle arts. such simplicity. this baby, my own design, like it's so complicated, was made while i waited for activities to start at the county fair and has a 2" diameter