Three Rivers sort of has four seasons; spring is my favorite, summer seems to dominate, fall stays hot and is sometimes smoky, and winter is sunny and green, so it feels like spring very soon. It is confusing, when you hear and see snow, rain, ice, freezing temps all over the country.
This is what I mean about it being confusing.
I took all of these photos on Christmas Adam, Christmas Eve, and maybe Christmas Day too.
Often in winter when it is cold and gray down the hill, it is sunny in Three Rivers. On a sunny day in mid December, Trail Guy and I took a walk in the foothills of Sequoia National Park.
First, we had to go through a gate.
The whole walk was on a dirt road.
That bump on the left is Moro Rock; next to the right is Alta Peak.
I was going to remember the names of these ridges/peaks, but I already forgot.
We turned around at Sycamore Creek. It was a short walk.
Those pokey rocks are Castle Rocks.
If you live down the hill and get tired of the cold and gray, come to Three Rivers in the winter. We don’t have much winter here. Tomorrow I will show you a few more photos of how confusing winter can be here.
I read a lot. It’s my favorite thing. Always has been.
The publishing company BookBaby recently posted an interesting (REALLY REALLY INTERESTING TO ME!) article about the different reading habits among 5 generations of Americans. (Turns out that although I am in the Boomers, my fiction preferences match the X-ers and nonfiction match the Silents.)
I keep track of most of what I’ve been reading on GoodReads, which I joined (it’s free) in 2013 (WHAT??? TEN YEARS AGO??) It is a great place to learn about books, to see what people you follow are reading and what they think about it. (It also has the unthinking quick rude opinions like much of social media, but you can skip that part.)
You can see how other people rate the books and you can also rate them from one to five stars. Because I know how enormously difficult it is to write a book, much less get it published, I have stopped rating books unless I have very strong reasons to give one star or if I really loved it and give it four or five stars. (I am difficult to please, and the fives are few.)
Here is a list of books that I have rated four or five in the past several months, with links to their descriptions on GoodReads. I don’t think you have to be a member (with yet another dreaded user name and password) in order to see book descriptions.
All of these were library books except for #6.
Do you have any book recommendations for me? Do you want to be “friends” on GoodReads? (Hi Donna. 😎)
A friend was remodeling an old house, one I have admired for many years. The porch had pillars, and it would have been a terrible waste to put those 100-year-old handmade wooden objects in a dumpster. So, I remembered a friend’s son who likes architectural pieces for his antique store, and then asked my remodeling friend if I could have the pillars to pass along. He agreed.
We loaded them into the pickup, took them home, and learned that the antique guy didn’t want them.
Oh-oh. A pickup full of pillars, needing to be stored? Nope.
I made a list of things that they could be used for. Then I gave half of the pillars to my very creative neighbor.
The first item on my list needed to be done before Christmas.
I used a few miles of painter’s blue tape, wrapping in a diagonal pattern. Next I covered the pillars with 2 coats of white paint. When I peeled the tape off, it was a little tricky to see where to put the red paint, because the new white paint wasn’t that different from the old white paint.
Remembering that no one was paying me and no one really cared, I painted the red stripes without taping. There was a great deal of covering red wobbly and hairy lines with white paint, and then recovering white wobbly and hairy lines with red.
Because the pillars are actually tapered, a couple of times they fell over while sitting outside to dry.
Finally, we carried one to the abandoned fire hydrant at the bottom of the driveway and dropped it over the pipe. (Trail Guy sawed off the pieces that were in the way so it would fit.) I’ve been wondering for years what to do with that old thing. You can see that the stripes are a bit wobbly and unevenly spaced; this is the result of pantsing the project.
I carried the second one to another neighbor’s house and dropped it over an abandoned address post that lost its numbers several years ago. (We seem to have abandonment issues in our neighborhood.)
The past week has been full of random and varied posts, no particular theme. So, I will keep going on this while I wait for my next mural job to become a reality.
Today’s is a gift to you: a list with links to some of my favorite blogs. I don’t subscribe (because who needs more email?) but I just keep the list on the top menu bar of my internet window and check from time to time.
I didn’t include anything political or faith-based. None of these uses offensive language; a few have ads, which are easy to scroll past. All write with completely original voices, humor, and wisdom.
I hope you find something here that rings your bell.
And finally, here is a cartoon I stole from the interwebs to share with you. It was too good to not share.
What did you learn in December?
At the end of 2021, I posted a list that I called Ten Truths of Life. Since then, I have gathered of a few more, and borrowed a few from Reader Anne, who is both wiser and older (by EXACTLY 5 years I think – we are birthday twins).
The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. I paint with 2 versions of each of these three colors plus white.
Some say white is the absence of color, some say it is the sum of all color, some claim it is not a color. Doesn’t matter – it is impossible to mix colors without it.
The primaries keep appearing in my life. Early in my painting career, I took half a semester of painting at College of the Sequoias. We were given the assignment to copy one of the old masters. I chose Vermeer, and later realized the primaries figured in large in the painting.
Our next assignment was a still life, and I brought these items. Still life paintings usually consist of things like a vase, a lemon, a rose, and maybe a skull. No thanks.
I noticed these gas cans while walking through a town in Alaska.
My flower pots often end up with primary colors without planning. Now I do it on purpose, but it used to just happen subconsciously.
Recently, the primaries plus white appeared in my yard. Apparently in addition to liking the primary colors, we like to sit.
Today’s post is a visual list of pencil, colored pencil, and oil paintings, some commissioned, some sold through galleries, some to people getting in touch via email, and from the one show that I didn’t do. You have probably seen all of these, but not in one big whack that makes me feel all puff-headed and successful.
Because of missing two weeks of work, the two oil painting commissions became a rush job. I had one week to get them from the sloppy first layer to finished.
The yellow ranch house needed a tiny bit of finessing, a signature, the edges of the canvas painted, and then it needed to dry. I was so focused on that last day of painting that I forgot to take any pictures of the process.
The barn needed another layer of sky, another layer of grass, some cattle, more finessing, a signature, painted edges of the canvas and to dry on the same schedule as the yellow house.
Because the sky was so empty, I supplied it with some clouds. In addition, a tree grew on the left, a shrub on the right, and the barn got a bit of tightening up. I had to resist the urge to draw in every ripple on the corrugated tin. It’s a PAINTING, not a pencil drawing!
Cattle—distant? Yes. Closer? Yes.
More grass with visible details was needed in the foreground, along with a few more cows.
Again, I was so rushed and focused that I didn’t take photos of the process. I had to get this thing into the house so it could dry in time to be shipped.
So, here is the result of a week of painting with gazelle intensity.
And once again, the gazelle-like painter outpainted the cheetah-like clock.