By the time you are reading this, I hope to be on a flight to Texas. The way flights get cancelled these days, who knows? I could be sitting in a airport, fuming. I hope you are not fuming; instead, I hope you enjoy these last photographs of the most beautiful month in my yard and around its edges a bit.
Stop scratching your screen—it won’t make the scent of the lilacs come alive.
“Lilac” and “lavender” —two words for light purple with origins in very scented flowers, both in bloom at the same time in my yard.
Dutch iris all around my yard, and just a few with the yellow parts; not my favorite, but certainly nothing to ignore!
This one was falling over, so Trail Guy picked it, added fairy lanterns to the vase, and put it on the kitchen window sill.
This is a tiny weed/wildflower down the street; this is the first year I’ve noticed it.
Lemon geranium was taking over the herb garden chair. Too bad you can’t smell this.
I pruned it, and then put many clippings in pots to root and share with friends.
It makes a little pink flower. If it doesn’t look like a normal geranium to you, that is because this is a true geranium, not a pelargonium. (As if you care. . .)
Man oh man, the hillside will be all brown and/or weed-eated by the time I get home, and the Lady Banks rose will be finished, and so will the lavender. . . it is SO HARD to leave home, especially in the spring. (But I haven’t ever visited my dear friend in Texas during the 30 years she has lived there; I always wait until she comes here for a reunion, so it is past time.)
Maybe. Maybe not. However, I am heading to Texas tomorrow*, and when I return, I think the green in Three Rivers will be finished, or close to it.
My dear friend the Texan and I planned this visit to coincide with the blooming of the Texas bluebonnets (a variety of lupine). I think someone miscalculated, but I didn’t want to bump my trip earlier because there was just too much to adjust, AND I didn’t want to miss spring in Three Rivers.
So, let’s just enjoy the last hurrah of spring in Three Rivers. I might post while in Texas; I might not. More will be revealed in the fullness of time.
Instead of doing his business, this tom kept stepping on the hen’s tail while strutting around.
Bird’s Eye Gilia
Ithuriel’s Spear
Middle Fork of the Kaweah
Jackson, you will miss sleeping at my feet while I paint. No more campouts, you delinquent! You’d better be around when I come home.
Pretty Face
North Fork of the Kaweah
North Fork of the Kaweah River with Blossom Peaks in the distance.
White Crown Sparrow
I hate leaving but am so eager to see The Texan, another dear friend who is also a Texan, and yes, The Silos in Waco.
P.S. The Things I Learned post will appear on April 30. The Blog Equipment allows me to schedule posts ahead of time.
*Normally I would not post about being gone in real time on the World Wide Web, but the house won’t be empty so no squatters will take up residence while I’m away.
In the middle of a day of painting, I took a short walk.
Last year at this time, we were preparing for a wedding. I spent a fair amount of time preparing the yard where the wedding was to take place. This year I revisited the site, and the cows remembered me. When they saw I was weeding a little bit, they came to the fence to ask for treats.
These are some of the weeds I pulled to feed the beeves. They could also be considered wildflowers
This one was the most assertive.
Since it was a workday, I didn’t linger, but I did enjoy more wildflowers on the stroll back to the easels.
Redbud is actually pink, or magenta, or purplish pink, not red.
It’s kind of hard to focus on painting when this is outside the door.
Apparently, I’m not the only creature to appreciate spring in Three Rivers.
This little herd is just one body short of a baseball team. It looks as if this is a deer park, rather than my lawn. Actually, it isn’t even a lawn; we stopped watering it a decade or more ago. Water costs too much here. I love it green, but I’d have to work more and sell more instead of staring at the deer if I wanted to keep it like this through the summer.
Besides, lawn mowers will be outlawed in California in 2025. . . we don’t want to wear ours out if there can be no replacing it. (California is a special kind of stupid.)
We’ll look at the oil painting aspect of my life in the next post.
Sometimes I see a beautiful scene that just can’t be captured with a single photograph. The light is wrong so the colors come out weird, or there are branches obstructing important views. So, I take as many photos as possible and then put them together in a rough manner using Photoshop Junior. (Photoshop Elements is the “easy version”, in case you are wondering what Photoshop Junior is.)
One spring morning last year, my neighbor and I were walking on a trail above our houses in Three Rivers. I knew it had the makings of a nice painting, but I only had the inferior camera on my phone, and the light was quite low.
I took all these photos anyway. Each one had something going for it, and I hoped that I could patch them together to capture the moment in a believable manner.
Comb Rocks shows well.strong color on distant hillsnice trailComb Rocksvisible flowers different exposure, more flowers
After putzing around on Photoshop Junior, I decided that a square format looked best. Using Photoshop is the modern version of doing a “thumbnail sketch”, something art teachers always insisted on but never explained properly (like much of what was required in art classes, heavy sigh.) It is a way to see if all the elements look good together, are the right sizes and in the right places.
This is more of how I want it to look, but the trail is going the wrong direction.
I made the distant hills larger, emphasized the colors, made sure the hills included the landmark Comb Rocks, placed the trail where I wanted, and filled the foreground with wildflowers.
I finally got the photos to fit together in the best possible way. Here is the final painting, still untitled.
Now that’s what I’m talking about! I wonder why it took me so many years to learn to use my computer this way. Must be slow on the uptake. . . certainly not an early adopter of tech. . . plodding. . .the way I’ve always done it.
There is a place near me here in Tulare County that is fantastical for spring-time hiking, particularly in a wet year. The views, green, trees, flowing water, and wildflowers are utter perfection, unless you try to get a good photo. Then, all the beautiful things that you remember end up in different pictures.
What’s an artist to do? Why, use Photoshop Junior, of course! (My attempt is a mess, so I am not going to show you. . . something about watching sausage being made comes to mind here. . .)
I started with the sky, of course, and then began on the most distant hills.
Because the photos are on my laptop, I can make specific areas as large as necessary to pick out the various textures and colors.
I moved across from left to right on those distant hills, and then I decided that the lupine were calling my name.
The final step at the end of the painting session used up various greens on the palette.
I love walking up there. Nope, I’m not giving the location. It really frosts me when people publicize nice quiet local places all over the interwebs and then there is traffic, a parking problem, and too many people. Tell your friends if you want, but WHY do you have to tell the WHOLE WORLD??
The painting isn’t any one exact location up there. This is the way I want to remember the place.
I might want to keep this painting. That has been happening lately; I’ll take it as a good sign.
Spring is exceedingly short, a beautiful season that could be cut off by a quick few days of heat. Last week in one of my regular posts of watching paint go slowly onto a canvas, I ended the post with a photo of my yard (“the yard”, “our yard”, the place outside of my home, oops, our home and my studio, etc.) and that photo received the comments. I think I can figure out what you, O Blog Reader, wants to see more than watching wet oil paint land on canvas.
Today we will have a spring fling thing.
These tiny blue flowers have the odd name of Speedwell, or Bird’s Eye Speedwell.
Baby-blue-eyes might be my favorite. You have to know where to look for them, and I do. Every year. They are earlier this year than usual.
These tiny bright spots should be called Magenta Maids, but the real name is Red Maids.
Looks like popcorn, but these are actually the bloom on Miner’s Lettuce.
Miner’s Lettuce and Fiddleneck are the earliest wildflowers in Three Rivers.
Last week Blog Reader Anne asked if I ever sit in the white chairs. Indeed I do, and Tucker often joins me.
But then Pippin butts in.
He’s kind of irresistible.
(Jackson isn’t very social nor is he loving or even friendly. He’s fine—Thanks for your concern.)
The flowers behind the white chairs have the unlovely name of “freeway daisies”. When the nursery owner showed them to me about 25 years ago, I said, “Those leaves are hideous so I bet they’ll do well in my yard.” The leaves without the flowers look sort of spiky, but the prolific flowers and easy propagation have overcome any objections on my part, although they do clash in color with the flowering quince. Since the deer don’t eat either of them and they bloom, I can handle a bit of color clashiness.
A few days ago, a dear friend tiptoed up to the front porch and left this incredible pot of tulips. They don’t grow well around here, so they are a HUGE floral treat.
They look electrified in the morning sun!
Just hanging around the tulips caused me to look for other things to photograph in the yard.
Yeppers, white daffodils.
This guy is early too. It is profuse in the pots by my studio all summer long.
Finally, I saw this freesia in my not-quite-awakened lawn (the one I let grow tall in the summer so Tucker and I can play hide-and-seek in the grass). How did it get there??
I love spring. LOVE IT!! Especially in Three Rivers.
February in Three Rivers is the beginning of springtime. Look at all the daffodils (and narcissus? Or are they all narcissus?) in my yard in these photos taken on February 14.
One bright February afternoon, I took a walk in Three Rivers with my friend in Texas. We were on the phone together for the entire 3.5 miles, catching up on many topics, and sending photos back and forth. These are the pictures I sent to her (and a few extras).
I love February in Three Rivers, so I walked a route that I haven’t walked in a long time, wanting to test my foot and my ability to endure discomfort. There were plenty of things to distract me, such as stealing a tangerine, dodging traffic, and taking photos.
Looking downstreamLooking upstream
This is an area where I hope to bring a couple of artist friends so we can paint (and maybe swat bugs) together.
A friend said she cannot see the elephant on Alta Peak, so I took this photo and outlined its image in hopes that the elephant shows for her.
I take the same photos over and over, always hoping that I will discover a familiar subject in better light or find another angle in order to make an irresistible painting someday.
P.S. In case you were wondering, 3.5 miles, foot discomfort tolerable, and I figured I could have gone another 1-2 miles without actively looking for a hatchet.
