While on a Blogging Break, Chapter Three

Gnat and I returned to the beach, this time heading to Capitola, a cute (expensive) little town we’d never been to before. Why there? Because some friends of mine have a little place there and invited us to park in their driveway. Because one of those friends is a drawing student and happens to be drawing their little place, this cemented my time there as a business trip.

I hadn’t fully comprehended several details about the little place, so it was helpful to see it in person so that I can help my student. It was rather pretzelish to try to get a photo. The things I am willing to do for my students make me laugh sometimes.

We walked a trail along abandoned railroad tracks to New Brighton Beach.

It was mostly a cloudy day, but any day at the beach is a fine day in my opinion. There were many pelicans diving for fish, and quite a few fishermen too. A guy told us the water is the warmest it has been in many years, which has caused some of the fish to increase, or move closer to shore, or something appealing to birds and fishing people.

We ascended a path up 45 steps; yes, we both counted without consulting one another and both got 45 (told you we’re astonishingly compatible.)

The sun finally started peeking through the clouds.

We decided it was wiser to drive to town to find a place for dinner than to walk, because we didn’t want to walk back in the dark. My friends told us about Gayle’s https://www.gaylesbakery.com/, an extraordinary eatery. I didn’t take pics of our photogenic meals (this blog is the only almost “social media platform” I use, and I respect my readers too much to show photos of my food), but did take pics of the charming decor, primarily mosaics, throughout the restaurant.

The food was outstanding, although ordering was a bit of a puzzle. We soldiered through the process.

table
table
1/2 of a giant wall mosaic
table
Not a mosaic—a metal table with an enamel type design.

After we stuffed ourselves, we meandered a bit around outside the restaurant and came across a pumpkin patch. A pumpkin sales yard? A bunch of pumpkins, displayed for sale. The evening light was utter perfection.

The variety was quite impressive.

Every parking space in downtown Capitola had a number painted on it. To park in town, one must have a smart phone, download some parking app, and then pay via tech in order to park. This made us particularly grateful for my friends’ driveway and for the free parking at Gayle’s. I’m not cut out for this sort of baloney, and was ready to just get out of town quickly. However, we found Gayle’s and were quite happy to have soldiered through the annoying, unwelcoming, and demanding obstacles.

Thus we conclude the blogging break report. Next week we will return to our regular programming.

Maybe. If I can remember how to work again.

Meanwhile, the road construction on the Mineral King Road continues. Check the schedule here: NPS road construction.

Meanwhile, Back in Mineral King

Before the blog and website went dark and I took a subsequent break, there was a major work weekend among the cabin folks in Mineral King. This was the 2nd weekend of reducing fuels, which is another way of saying that a bunch of people gathered together and worked our tails off to clear off branches, downed trees, thin trees, and prune trees.

It was a historic undertaking; our cabins are on National Park land, and as part of our leases, clearing and cutting are forbidden. However, the Park hasn’t done the necessary work of forest management, so things have been in a precarious state for many years. After much negotiating, countless meetings, and a whole lot of talk, we received permission and finally got to take action.

We got hot, tired, dirty, sore and stung by wasps. All those things were much easier to recover from than a devastating wildfire would be, had we not done this work.

And when you are reading this, I am probably back up the hill, continuing the work. Feels endless, but with a lot of help from our friends, we are all making progress in mechanical thinning, forest management, fuels reduction.

While on a Blogging Break, Chapter Two

Anytime I visit Gnat in Gilroy, we go to the beach. Just do. Any chance I get. Always. Every time.

We went to this beach last year about the same time. Rio Del Mar has a semi-sunken cement ship, such a curiosity. You can read about it here: https://www.cabinart.net/away-in-gilroy-chapter-one/ (Scroll down about halfway)

There were quite a few dead seals on the beach. Seals or seal lions? Is there a difference? I’m ignorant on this.

There were four young women (everyone seems young to Gnat and I) wresting to load a still living seal into a giant cat carrier. (That’s what it looked like.) They hauled it away on a wagon, heading to a place in Sausalito where vets try to revive the creatures. There is some sort of toxin that builds up in the water from time to time (I remember this in 2009 at Cayucos and Morro Bay), and seals eat critters that are loaded with the stuff and then crawl up on the beach and croak. (I’m ignorant of this too.)

The explainer asked us to come up with a name for the creature, saying that her team had run out of ideas that fit the parameters of their rescue organization (sorry, didn’t get the name of the organization). Gnat immediately popped off with, “Hope”, which was a very acceptable name.

On the way to the beach, we encountered a hammer in the middle of an intersection, with no place to pull off the road and rescue it. Neither of us has need of a hammer; neither of us can stand waste (hence, thrift-shopping). When we tried to find the intersection on the way home from the beach, it was a bit disconcerting to realize that all the intersections looked alike and there was no visible hammer in the road. At least someone else found it and it wasn’t lying there with a broken handle.

More of our upper-middle-aged adventures tomorrow.

While on a Blogging Break, Chapter One

My dear friend Gnat lives in Texas and spends time in Gilroy in the summer. It is easier for me to visit her in Gilroy than in Texas, so I took Momscar 200 miles northwest of Three Rivers for a handful of days. Yesterday I told you that we (Gnat and I, not Momscar and I) are astonishingly compatible, and since I haven’t been making art lately, I will tell you about some of our activities together.

We love to shop at thrift stores together, and have done this in Texas, Gilroy, Salinas, Pacific Grove, Rio Del Mar, and Watsonville. It was a severe disappointment to learn that there are no longer fitting rooms at California Goodwills. You may buy clothing, take it home, try it on, and then return it for store credit only. Sorry Goodwill Bigshots: no try, no buy.

Gnat found this fancy wooden puzzle. I only do puzzles when hanging out with friends, generally late at night. I had never heard of Quordle. There may be some sort of an internet scam saying the company is going out of business and selling puzzles that range from $50-$90 apiece at $4-8 apiece, and then never delivering. So if you want one, use eBay or Amazon.

We stayed up very late one night putting this thing together. There is a fair amount of hoodwinkery and bamboozlement involved, with the pieces quite different from normal jigsaw puzzles. Very intriguing, and it took us awhile. The next day Gnat did it again, timing herself at 52 minutes! (She’s kind of a puzzle genius.)

Gnat lives near a pumpkin patch. Why do we call these “patches” instead of “fields”? Prolly because it is kind of cute sounding. Gilroy is a very agricultural place, with many fields of row crops, greenhouses, and fruit stands. Pumpkin harvest begins in September, and those giant squashes are abundant.

My goal was to photograph it in the late afternoon/early evening light. That is what photographers call “the golden hour”, but I am in doubt about its duration being an entire hour. I almost missed it the first time I headed out with my new-to-me Big Girl camera.

Indisputably paintable. That makes this a business trip.

It was a very scruffy field, dried up vines and leaves, and weeds galore, called “redroot pigweed”, which the app Picture This said looked very unhealthy. Some neighbor kids came out and started bashing pumpkins with a stick and tossing some in the air to watch them go splat. Weird.

How to Comment on This Blog

In addition to my tech battles, the power was off for a day at home in Three Rivers. When it was restored, something weird happened in my studio.

I went to Gilroy to spend time with a dear friend of 40 years. We are astonishingly compatible, and the time together erased much of my irritation at the whole Fix-The-Blog episode.

A friend of Gnat’s forced us to assume this ridiculous pose.

“Gnat” is how I will refer to my friend, for semi-anonymity. She has told me how much trouble it is to comment on the blog, and often will text me her thoughts to my posts. So, we sat together while going through the steps on her phone, and I wrote them down in case you have wanted to comment but couldn’t tolerate the nuisance factor.

a. tap “Comment” or “Leave a comment” (it differs depending on what device you are on) as it shows in this example from September 14 (No, it won’t work to tap on “Leave a comment” in this screenshot)

b. Type whatever you want to say

c. Type in the name you want to be known by, for example “Gnat” as opposed to her full name

d. Type in your email address, which is required but never used (I just work here…)

e. It says “Website”, but this is optional in case you have a website or blog or Facebook or other social media where you want other blog readers to find you. Leave it blank if you have no website.

f. Tap Submit

g. Wait for me to approve the comment; this is so that weirdos and robots and creeps and spammers cannot slip past me, the lion at the gate (GRRRRRRR, guess I’ll show them.)

h. If you want to look at it the comment and see if I replied, go back to the blog (on the internet, not in your email) and tap on the word  “comments”. You will be able to see what you wrote, once it is approved.

If it doesn’t show, refresh the page. If you don’t know how to do that, go do something productive like wash some dishes or pull some weeds. Or you can find, somewhere on your screen, the little almost complete circle with an arrow on one end and hit that.

Whoooo-eeee, that was boring. Have a nice photo as a reward. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about my very action-packed break from tech.

No, really, look at this again!!

Should I hand-wind it back up??

Taking a Blog Rest

In an attempt to fix the subscription feature on this blog, I spent almost an entire day doing the phone hustle, the robot runaround, the giant corporation calisthenics, being batted back and forth between the blog host company and the platform developers, none of whom (except the robots) spoke English as their first language. (“I’m sorry, could you please say that again more slowly?” became my go-to phrase.)

If I were a smoker, I would have blown through a couple of packs by now. Instead, I tried to draw while I was on hold for hours. I hope the drawing doesn’t reflect my angst.

The time spent wasn’t fun but it was a necessary part of the business of art.

Now you can (re)subscribe, look up old posts by date (Archives) or by Categories.

In order to recover from the severe case of tech-itis and to prevent myself from saying negative things about this outfit I’ve been with for 18 years, I’m going quiet for awhile. Maybe a week ought to cure my attitude.

Thanks for hanging around with me. Thanks for resubscribing. Thanks for returning after my recovery. And please forgive the new look on the home page. If you find things that won’t work, please let me know and I will gird my loins and pick up the phone yet again.

P.S. No electricity for us on Wednesday, September 16, so no internet, cell phone, landline (or teevee for Trail Guy) that day. No A/C either, but we’re not going to fight the road construction schedule https://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/road-construction.htm and go up the hill where we are equipped for no electricity.

Taking Labor Day Seriously

Yeppers, off schedule for Mineral King on Fridays. Sometimes that just the way it all works out.

All I did was work over Labor Day. I labored, beginning with helping some neighbors make progress on painting their cabin. It was a very satisfying project, just a good productive mellow time of being with dear friends. It is so much easier to help other people with big projects than to do our own. It doesn’t require setting up or cleaning up, and we can quit any time we want.

Then, there was the labor of continuing to deal with the three enormous downed red fir trees in our back yard. “Fuels reduction” is the official name for this sort of work. This is how it looked shortly after the trees were dropped.

And this is how it looked after Labor Day.

Those photos would be more helpful if I stood in the same place. Couldn’t remember, besides, much has been removed.

There was time for a little bit of birthday happiness.

The sweater is too big, which is a relief, because it was too small and I had to take apart the entire body and begin again. I hope this lasts a year with this growing girl!

There was a meeting with my partner for an upcoming new wildflower book. (No photos for you.)

Finally, when I got home, I lightened the road on the barn do-over. Now I think I am finished!

Too dark—the painting felt depressing. (The shine on the distant ridge is because I used so much oil with the paint; hoping the spray varnish flattens it out)
When the road is dry, I’ll varnish it and pass it to the vacation rental manager to pop into a frame.

There was a real sense of urgency in the labor over the weekend and a great deal of satisfaction. I’m not sure why, but I seem to have lost interest in hiking. Maybe it was a sense of waning opportunity to tackle some tasks, or the fact of uncomfortable feet, or the fact that the wildflowers are finished.

Doesn’t matter—it was a good Labor Day weekend. We had an excellent time with our neighbor-friends. It is the end of the season for some, but not for Trail Guy and I yet.

Ready to Sell

These paintings are finished: detailed, varnished, scanned, priced, and ready to sell. The goal was to get them into Kaweah Arts before Labor Day. Well, oops, they were ready to deliver on Wednesday, but KA is closed on Wednesdays. Thursday before I headed to the Land of No Electricity, Phones, or Internet Unless you Have StarLink? Nope. Closed Thursdays too.

Oh well. The river in these paintings is unrecognizable as the Kaweah River in September. Not very picturesque at this time of year. HOWEVER, the big trees are always picturesque, unless wrapped in foil and shrouded in smoke. But no fires yet at the time of this posting, thank you, Lord.

Kaweah, Downstream, 8×8″, oil on wrapped canvas (framing optional), $150 (plus Calfonria’s confiscatory sales tax if you live here or buy it in person here )
Kaweah, Upstream, 8×8″, oil on wrapped canvas (framing optional), $150 (plus Calfornia’s confiscatory sales tax if you live here or buy while in the state)
A Pair of Big Trees, 7×14″, oil on wrapped canvas (framing optional), $200 (plus you nkow the drill)

P.S. “Big Tree” is a euphemism for Sequoia Gigantea, AKA Redwood.

Painting Three Rivers Paintings in Three Rivers*

“Painting” can be a noun or a verb. In this case, it is both.

After 3 wifi-less days, there were many little tasks** to attend to, and when I finally got into the workshop to paint, it was a real treat.

Made a couple more adjustments on the barn, then moved it into the sunshine to dry.

These two 8×8″ river scenes, “Upstream” and “Downstream”, got some new detailing. Yes, I drew with my paintbrushes.

Next, the sycamore along the road.

Finally, I began detailing the 11×14″ painting of the oak tree with the river in the distance.

That was a satisfying afternoon following a fairly unpleasant morning. Those tech troubles are no fun.

*Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Dept.

**Trail Guy’s iPad went into a coma and I showed him how to use my old iPhone for checking weather, listening to the radio; it took awhile to make a decision and then buy a new iPad (he will be graduating from 4th to 11th generation); the subscribe button on the blog took about an hour of puttering to get one in place (does it work??); my ATM card expired and the bank had a “glitch” in sending out replacements, so Apple is threatening that I will lose information if I don’t provide a substitute to pay for The Cloud this month. And the day before I locked my keys in the car for the first time in my life and couldn’t call Trail Guy for help because without internet, we had no landline. On and on and on it goes.