I’ve been gone. These pictures were taken two weeks ago. The snow was still plentiful on Farewell Gap, and the water was high.
Someone left his boots in the parking lot. They were gone the next day. Glad they were retrieved.
The light was very beautiful.
I saw the tiniest wildflowers and it was a reminder to keep a dime in my pocket to photograph these little ones so that you can understand the size (also in case I do a second edition of Mineral King Wildflowers.)
The wildflowers were decent along the Nature Trail, if you kept your eyes open, always a good policy when walking a trail (or a city sidewalk, or a rural road, or your hallway or. . .) These are both violets. (I just work here.)
This is a different sort of currant, but I forget the name.
Forget me nots are the most wonderful blue, a color that is hard to find in domestic flowers.
Mineral King, I won’t forget you. I’ll be back soon!
I have some new friends, acquaintances really, because we haven’t met in real life, but we are learning to know each other. They are bloggers like me, but with much bigger audiences, so I feel honored that they show up here from time to time. They don’t know about Mineral King so here is a little introductory information.
Heading to Eagle Lake, 16×20”, $650
Mineral King is an area of Sequoia National Park, accessible by a gnarly dead-end road. It is the most beautiful part of Sequoia and only open seasonally—Memorial Day through the end of October, weather depending. There is a community of private cabins, and I am fortunate enough to have married in 39 years ago.
Sawtooth #65, 24×30”, $2000
Cabin communities are a real treasure, with their own unique culture. Because I have lived most of my life at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, I have had the privilege of spending time in four different cabin communities in the mountains. My business is called Cabin Art because when I started, I lived in a cabin and I drew people’s cabins. I have published two books of of pencil drawings on two different cabin communities—one sold out a long time ago and the other still available.
Honeymoon Cabin, sold
Because Mineral King is such a beloved place, I write about it frequently during cabin season. I try to incorporate some art**, because this blog is supposed to be about my business. Frankly speaking, people are more interested in cabin life, the trails, wildflowers, the road, and Mineral King in general than in my art.
Sawtooth #66, 12×24, $650
*I won’t be writing about Mineral King every Friday at the beginning of this summer because I have a handful of situations that will prevent me from going quite as often as normal.
**Yes, this time a lot of art. I came here to earn a living.
P.S. I’ve included links to the first four “chapters” (posts) that I wrote about cabin life back in 2023. If you want more, you can follow the prompts at the bottom of each “chapter” (in quotes because it is more like a picture book than a chapter book) that will lead you to the next posts. There are twenty-two.
In the lengthy month of May (why does 31 days feel so much longer than 30?) I spent time finding interesting things to ponder on the interwebs along with painting, planting native plants at my church, drawing a map, and getting used to the two-home rhythms of summer. I also took in the last wildflowers of spring in my neighborhood of Three Rivers.
1. Have you heard of the Scottish term “hurkle durkle”? It is explained here in this blog post on Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist. (Hi, Elisabeth!) It’s a verb that means to lie in bed in the morning until you feel like getting up.
2. My internet friend Elisabeth posted a list of the Five Best Beaches in Nova Scotia. Holy guacamole, good thing it is far away or the entire world would want to live there. Her photos! The beaches! (Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not covet…)
3. A friend offered use of his car when he learned of Fernando’s terminal diagnosis. LOOK AT THIS BABY!! (I know it’s not a Honda Accord.) I declined, because Fernando is still running just fine for the shortish distances in my life. What a generous and fabulous friend. . . who gets to have people like this in their lives??
4. Doing hard things and all the varieties of ways to incorporate this into everyday life, along with the reasons for doing these—great food for thought from the blog This Evergreen Home. It follows the same line of thinking as the book The Comfort Crisis, which I bought and read a year or two ago (and promptly gave away or lost). Still not interested in jumping into cold water or taking cold showers.
5. While we are talking about websites, there is an enormous quantity of wisdom on This Evergreen Life. Great fodder for introspection and conversation. . . shhhh, I need to think. Here is an example: “[Minimalism] insists that the cheapest item is the one you never purchase, the most efficient storage system is deletion, and the best bargain is time reclaimed when you no longer have to manage mountains of things.”
6. A dear friend has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (Who was Parkinson? Poor guy. . .) Her Movement Specialist Neurologist (that’s a medical specialty?) told her, “exercise is your medicine.” People with PD who exercise daily for 30 minutes at 80% of their maximum heart rate have significantly fewer symptoms and thus need less pharmaceuticals.
7. Ever heard of “money dials”? Ramit Sethi is a money guy who has coined this term. He lists the 10 most common “money dials” to help you find where you are most likely to spend any extra money; when you figure it out, you can turn the dial all the way up. (Why??)
8. I had a one-year follow-up appointment in Santa Barbara for this dadgum peripheral neuropathy. After some thought, I realized that the doc would confirm that yes, I still have it (well, duh, that is why my feet are still numb, I can’t comfortably wear any shoes except Crocs, and they really start hurting if I walk farther than 4 miles), and she’d remind me that there is no cure but to watch the prediabetes, which she says can cause neuropathy (to which my local doc says baloney). I emailed the SB doc to see if an appointment was necessary, she confirmed my line of thinking. and I cancelled the appointment. (SHE REPLIED TO THE MESSAGE!!) The learning there is to THINK and ASK.
9. One final realization came to me in May: people begin a physical decline in their 60s. Look at the list of things happening to my friends in first decade of the esses: cancer, diabetes, prediabetes, prolapsed body parts, prostate cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, early onset Alzheimer’s, bad knees, ruined shoulders, DeQuervain’s tenosynovitis, and yes, peripheral neuropathy. On top of that, we all have friends in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who need help but often won’t admit it. The ones that do admit it make it easier on those around them and have an easier time themselves.
For those new to my blog, Mineral King is an area of Sequoia National Park where I spend copious amounts of time in the summer. Next Friday I will provide a more in depth explanation.
Today’s post is a long one. You’ve been warned. . .
The road is under construction, so it is a mess, and there is a schedule to follow. This is what we saw at the bottom of the road.
We stopped by Silver City to deliver paintings and cards.
I’m given quite a bit of leeway in placing the pieces and actually took my own nails, easels, and hammer.
That’s my design on the tee shirt in the background.This is that tall narrow space for which I paint something tall and narrow each season.The most popular subject—sold a 6×6” version of it on the weekend.
Shortly after arriving at the cabin, we headed back to a friend’s cabin with an enormous tree blocking her driveway. The men didn’t have big enough chainsaws but eliminated some parts to create a path around, carried some of her gear up to the cabin for her, and supplied a hand-truck so she could get things back down to her car later. “Did you see Tracy’s tree?” was a question we heard many times over our stay.
She had some good flowers in her driveway.
Very very tiny unknowns.Five spot is the name of these cuties. Those leaves in the center look like a cactus. What in the world??
Hiking Buddy and I hoofed it back up the road to our cabins.
I had a nice afternoon of watching the daffodils and untangling yarn from a sweater that fit me wrong.
Our after-dinner walk was beautiful, but my camera is fairly inadequate for this sort of lighting.
However, it is perfectly fine for this sort.
The next day was busy for the men as they assisted cabin neighbors in various opening tasks. However, I had time to continue watching daffodils bloom.
Hiking Buddy and I ventured up to Spring Creek to see if the bridge had been installed yet. Nope.
When the men were available, we took a walk together.
Some of the cottonwoods had quite a few broken branches, and one was swinging precariously. The guys tried to dislodge the widow-maker, but it survived (and so did the guys—no widows were made.)
Crystal Creek is running well, very wide and shallow (sort of like Facebook).
There was more time in the afternoon for unraveling that sweater and watching the daffodils.
More walks (I am unsure about hiking with my peripheral neuropathy this year. . . more will be revealed, but for now, walks are fine with me.)
These are the tiniest blue lips I’ve ever seen! All I had so that you can appreciate the size is this chapstick (okay, Carmex, but who knows what that is?) in my pocket.
It was chilly in the evenings so we gathered with friends around this ring of fire. (Someone besides me was wearing Crocs—mine show at the bottom).
Look at the daffodils just 3 days later. Yellow wildflowers are a little bit boring to me, but daffodils are neither wild nor boring.
It wasn’t a hot weekend, and the drive down was quite beautiful. Almost all the wildflowers were yellow, and I wasn’t bored. Bush poppy, flannel bush, blazing star, monkey flowers—all yellow. The bush poppies are prolific and abundant. I didn’t photograph the areas where they cover the hillside, because it isn’t prudent to stop the Botmobile on steep slopes or blind corners or when the road is just one lane or if someone is on our six and there is no turnout.
The lupine are hanging on too.
Thus we conclude our very long post about Mineral King. Next week I will show some Mineral King art (because this is my business blog and I came here to earn a living—any questions?) and explain for my new far-away friends a little bit about this place we locals love so dearly.
In the mornings I meet my friend and her cat so we can power up a steep road in the neighborhood.
Some mornings there are turkeys yelling in the middle of the road.
None of this keeps me too busy to paint. I just wanted you to see these pictures.
There is a large project at my church right now. It has been occupying a lot of space in my mind, figuring out what to do and how to do it.
This needs plants, many many many plants. How many? I don’t know.
Fortunately, I know someone who knows. Melanie Keeley has a native plant nursery in Three Rivers and she is a genius expert botanist. (Her nursery is Alta Vista—call or email for an appointment.)
First I had to make gopher baskets. It wasn’t easy, but I had help. We only bled a little bit.
Six or seven friends met Melanie at church one morning. She chose and brought 35 plants, placed them, and instructed us in the planting requirements. Some didn’t need gopher baskets, and some that did needed a hole snipped in the center of the bottom. Weird. Maybe gophers don’t bite tap roots.
After we finished planting and hand watering, we returned in the afternoon to cover it all with mulch. There wasn’t enough, but whatever got spread was an improvement.
Then two guys set up a watering system. Seeing them (lower right side of the landscaped area) in this poorly photoshopped shot gives you an idea of the scale of the project.
In addition to working on the planting project, I repainted a cabin sign.
Then I started on a design for embroidered caps for my friend to sell at her store, Stem & Stone in Three Rivers. (The link is a Facebook page, so I can’t open it, but maybe you can.)
There are two versions here because the embroiderer charges by the stitch count, and we don’t know what the different prices might turn out to be, so we want options.
After she approved these two arrangements, I used colored pencils and Photoshop to turn these into useful designs. (The one on the left isn’t showing completely here.)
She’s not in a big rush. That’s good, because I need to design a ranch map and get some paintings finished.
For many years, there has been talk of repairing the Mineral King road. Talk talk talk, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. Surveys, public meetings, emails. Fires, floods, emergency repairs, road closures.
Finally, the work has begun. The road won’t be open to the public until the Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend, and there is a very rigid schedule about when you can pass through the work zone and when you will have to just wait.
I was happy to see all the green and the wildflowers, along with the reassurance that the temporary bridge made it through the winter. (I’m always relieved to see the sign on the way back home too, because if it is temporary, maybe it will vanish while we are up the hill.)
Here’s my old friend the Oak Grove Bridge. During all the public meetings about the road, it was voted to simply repair the bridge. Then Those Who Know More determined that it isn’t repairable and there is talk of converting this bridge to a foot bridge and putting a new driving bridge upstream. I don’t expect this to happen in my lifetime. This is on the county portion of the road, and the construction is only on Sequoia National Park’s portion, ending about 4 miles below the end of the road. Yeppers, the very rough upper dirt portions will remain and the threatened fancy-pants parking lots aren’t part of the plan.
That’s Case Mountain over there. It is very green, and there are new roads carved in because of the wildfire last fall.
This is Squirrel Creek, just above the Sweet Ranch and below the park boundary, now with a mysterious road-construction-generated load of rocks by the turnout.
We pulled over to wait for the pilot car, and enjoyed some wildflowers and a view.
This is looking back at the road, still green. The wildfires (in 2020, 2021, 2024) required much brush clearing so it is a lot easier to see traffic ahead now. (Looking for a silver lining. . .)
Because Mineral King isn’t open to the public just yet, I didn’t want to rub it in that cabin folks can go. Right now it is rather colorless, because the green is barely beginning and there is a lot of snow. Here is the classic view from the bridge on the way out, which was a bit of a hustle in order to meet the pilot car*.
We got to the waiting area (just above Slapjack) with enough time to see some harlequin lupine.
It is going to be a summer of disruption, waits in the sun, and a much longer drive to Mineral King. (We left home at 8:30 and arrived at the cabin at 11:30. . . sing with me “a three hour tour, a three hour tour”)
*Someone reported being 10 minutes late to the pilot car area and he had to wait 3 hours for the next pass-through time. Do not mess with these construction workers and their schedule!
I wrote this post at the end of March and forgot to publish it. Will any of these photos translate into paintings? Maybe. No decisions yet. Just grabbing beauty when it is available.
The Lake isn’t actually in Three Rivers. The upper end is close; the dam end is closer to Lemon Cove. The lake level is even higher now, and the hills are mostly brown.
Some years there are fabulous lupine in great swaths at the water’s edge; they show in person, but not so well in these photos.
A popular turnout near the middle of The Lake (not out on the water—along the road 1/2 way between the intake and the dam) often has people pulled over taking photos. Me too. It is almost impossible to find a place to take the photo which includes Alta Peak and poppies. The poppies are excellent in the roadcuts where there is no shoulder, and the slopes are steep.
One day we were down the hill, we stopped by a friend’s orange grove and were probably 2-3 days early in terms of the blossoms being out. The oranges are fabulous. We expected to glean, but the grove hadn’t been picked yet. I gathered more photos for potential paintings.
Now get back to painting, Central California Artist!!
Today’s post has one token photo, and it has nothing to do with my normal topics. It is just me, expressing myself. Next week I’ll get back to business.
Trail Guy is the dinner cook around here—BBQ meat, giant salad. Simple, plain, really good. I fix dinner about once a week, normally just something I call Slop in a Skillet, recognizable plain food, mostly vegetables and meat, no recipe, no muss, no fuss.
Last week I decided to try a recipe called Husband’s Delight from an online acquaintance. It used ingredients that I am familiar with and seemed fairly straightforward. (Sometimes I am just adventuresome like that.)
I tried to follow the recipe, but WHY did it require a tablespoon of sugar? Nope, not this little gray duck. I didn’t have the right noodles, so I used a variety of whole wheat pasta shapes that are in my pantry, mostly going to waste because we are being careful to not become diabetic, and apparently carbohydrates are The Enemy. (All those lies about eating whole wheat pasta. . . who knows what “healthy” means anymore??)
I didn’t eat or cook ground beef for a couple of decades, so I was slightly revolted by the process. It was frozen in a tube that was hard to open and it bled on the counter. Ick.
Onions are also something I rarely use. I don’t like how they smell raw or during cooking or how sometimes they make my eyes water. I hacked off the amount called for, more or less, and put the rest in a ziplock bag in the freezer. I wonder if it will be useless later? Probably should have chopped it first, but I wanted to finish up.
And why did the recipe call a mix of sour cream and cream cheese “cheese sauce”? Nope, it was gloppy and got layered as plops, not sauce.
What happened to the grated mozzarella on the top?? It vanished into the 9×13” pan of “layers” once the thing was baked.
What an enormous output of energy! It took a long time, fumbling around with packages of this and that, oops, need another bowl, another pan, grab the colander, where is the grater, my hands are a mess, wash them for the umpteenth time, open another package of something—where are the scissors, nope, my hands are a mess again.
The thing about casseroles that seems so wasteful is that they have to be cooked in various steps on top of the stove and then baked in the oven. No wonder all those ‘50s housewives were on Valium.
Finally got the concoction in the oven and realized there were no vegetables for dinner. I was fed up with all that prep, so instead of making a salad, I chopped up a few fresh veggies and called it good.
So Trail Guy, AKA The Husband, was pleased with the casserole. I told him to be sure to thoroughly enjoy Husband’s Delight, because I am never making it again. I would have been a terrible housewife in the ‘50s. Probably would have taken up smoking.
If you made it to the end, here is a painting for you of a red pepper. Seems appropriate.
These are photos that could have been used in yesterday’s posts about what I learned in April. But since I am not working very much and Mineral King isn’t open yet, I saved some of them for today.
This white flower is a brodiaea that comes near the end of spring. Each one of those buds will pop open.
Lemon geranium is easy to start in pots, and I keep some ready to share on a regular basis. They came in handy when I needed a good ground cover for the vacation rental where I planted things last week.
While doing a bit of weeding at church, I realized that there were baby grasses of that roundy-moundy grass plant. I had just bought a new trowel, and this bowl was covering an irrigation timer, so I helped myself. Then I remembered to take a photo after we were on the way home from errands; hence the library book beneath the bowl.
My vacation rental manager/friend texted me from a nursery to ask if she should buy some society garlic. “Absolutely not!” said I. I have enough for a small island nation, right here in my herb garden.
She and I have landscaped an entire rental that began as squirrel holes and weeds. We did it on a shoestring, using plants that self-sow, rooting cuttings in dirt, rooting cuttings in water, and digging up plants all over my yard. It looks pretty great, albeit not formally landscaped. We definitely made some mistakes when buying plants, not understanding how large they might get. That’s okay—she now has someone who does mow/blow/go with occasional pruning, me for weeding, and the pair of us for transplanting.
When you live in a small town like Three Rivers, you get to know lots of people. This brings opportunities to try things, to experiment, to help friends out: hence, my “side-hustle” as a gardener.
Many people complain about vacation rentals, and it is true that there are too many in Three Rivers. “Too many” because normal people have been priced out of the market. Our town is hollowed out of actual residents—folks who put children in school, join clubs, attend churches, serve on local water boards, and lend you an egg or a can of tomato sauce in a pinch.
However, those vacation rentals are well-maintained, well-landscaped, pay their bills, don’t have barking dogs, and don’t park on the lawn. They also provide gainful employment for locals and people who come from down the hill to work (because they can’t afford to live here). Sigh.
1. Here is a fun list of 100 ways to live better: Less Wrong (Warning: needless occasional vulgar language and some controversial suggestions with an occasional gem.)
2. The “platform” where my blog lives did a tech update again. This time it actually improved things. Now when you are a subscriber, you can see photos in your email from the blog. I wasted countless hours trying to figure out why this stopped working for some people about a year ago. Apparently it was caused by the “platform”. (It surprises me how many of my subscribers don’t know how to click on the title of the blog post in the email and go to my website to read the blog and see the photos.)
3. Sometimes I don’t want to paint*. I had a week like that in April, and it coincided with the need to pull weeds at one vacation rental and do some planting at another. It wasn’t hot, the mosquitos weren’t out, the satisfaction level was very high, and I got paid. With art, one produces without any guarantee of an income, so instant gratification is an occasional threat to the production of art.
4. Have you wondered why we are assaulted by teevee ads for prescription medicine? We aren’t doctors and can’t prescribe, so why are they telling us about this stuff? I learned that the reason is if we tell our doctor to prescribe something and (s)he doesn’t comply (imagine telling THE DOCTOR WHO KNOWS ABOUT MEDICINE what to prescribe!), then something goes wrong in our bodies which we blame on not getting that medicine, we can sue the doctor for not following our recommendation. As usual, follow the money. (Why would anyone want to be a doctor these days??)
5. It’s extra hard to find a good used car right now. Did you know that if an old car is running at all, it will probably sell for $1500? I’ve learned this because Fernando has cancer. He’ll be okay for a little while, but it is (past) time to find a car. It must be Honda or Toyota. Since I’ve owned nothing but three-pedal Honda Accords since 1981, I may need to do some mental readjusting and accept whatever I can find. (Please please, not red or black…)
6. Holland Mountain is a new name to me. It is close to my house. Why have I never heard of this before? I can’t find it on a map. Who names these places? Why do people know about this but not me when it is in my backyard??
7. Anne Lamott says “All truth is paradox.” I’m not sure what she means by this, but I think it might be similar to something I am noticing more and more. “Bury coffee grounds to enrich your soil”; “coffee grounds have caffeine which is an herbicide”. “Put crushed eggshells in the dirt beneath your tomatoes”; “Eggshells do nothing in the soil for tomatoes.“ Thus and such is likely causing your problem,” says one doctor; “Poppycock,” says another. “First prize!” declares an art contest judge; “The emperor has no clothes,” says a regular person.
8. The website called “Bookpecker” which summarized books has gone the way of all flesh. Phooey. That was helpful site, but it probably got shut down by booksellers. Or maybe there were too many people like me with a giant list of books to be read (called the TBR list) who were looking for a shortcut, and the site couldn’t make money.
Thus we conclude another month of living and learning. Thank you for joining me in a month of semi-retired life, with more soaking up spring than producing art.
*A friend said to me, “Yesterday I did nothing all day and today I realized I wasn’t finished yet.”
