Too Busy to Paint

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.

I love the variety in my job and life!

Well, I WAS Going to Work…

On a recent weekend, I said to Trail Guy, “I MUST paint on Monday! Do not distract me, and please, please, if you see me messing around in the yard or the house, remind me that I must paint because I messed around all week, postponing painting!”

On Monday, he said, “Want to drive up South Fork? I haven’t been there in a long time and I want to see how the repairs from the ’23 flood and the fires look.”

NO! NONONO!

Then I gave it another thought and remembered that spring does not last forever. (Yes, thank you Gnat, I know it is always spring somewhere in the world, but I am only here, not anywhere else.)

So I said yes.

He said it would only be an hour; I said it would probably be three hours.

It was very green but nothing looked photo-worthy until we saw Homer’s Nose.

This is looking back at the new bridge, built in 2021.

The road ended about 1/4 to 1/2 mile below the campground. About a dozen cars were parked along the road. I wondered where all the people went, and Trail Guy wondered how they would get turned around on such a narrow road. (We turned around with about a 5-point turn.)

There were three women walking along the road, and Trail Guy stopped to talk to them. Two are sisters from LA who have owned a home near the South Fork Campground since 1974 (well, the property—I don’t know what year the house was built). They were very interesting and told us to stop by to view the lupine from their deck. They were convinced that lupine seeds were scattered during fire fighting operations, when “ping-pongs” were dropped from the air to start back-fires. (Scary!)

They had great wildflowers in their yard.

One last photo as we headed down the road. If I hadn’t felt the need to do some painting, if my camera battery hadn’t croaked, if we had brought lunch, I would have taken another 2 hours or so for photography. Doesn’t matter, it clouded up, and we headed home.

I painted all afternoon. I’ll show you tomorrow.

P.S. We were gone 3 hours.

More Spring in Three Rivers—a Month Late

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!!

More photos, thoughts about Three Rivers vacation rentals

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.

Fading Spring in Three Rivers

The old rhyme “April showers bring May flowers” isn’t exactly true in Three Rivers. Here it is more that April showers prolong March flowers.

The turkeys are very busy right now. Too bad we don’t know where they lay their eggs; on the other hand, if you found a turkey egg, it might have a partially formed turkey inside. Guess I’ll take a pass on that situation.

These wildflowers are so predictably fabulous on the slope behind our house, and then we hire someone to weedeat them in early May. Weedeating would be a way to earn a steady income around here in the spring.

I walked across the middle fork of the Kaweah River last week. This is looking upstream (the left photo) and downstream (bet you can guess which photo) from that large bridge. It is the road that we call “North Fork”, in spite of the fact that it initially crosses the middle fork.

We walked in a new place last week. It was hot and dusty, so we didn’t go far. The green is hanging on by its fingernails.

The hill with 3 bumps is called Blossom Peak, unless you are a purist. Then you call one side “Blossom” and the other “Britten”. The details and precision of which bump represents which name eludes me.

The distant peak on the right is Case Mountain. Lots of people say they have hiked Case Mt. or sometimes they claim to have climbed it. If this is so, they went about 20 miles round trip, trespassing almost the entire way, and going through 7-9 private gates. Just want to set the record straight about that. I recently learned that a peak in that area (more like a tall steep hill) is called Holland Mountain. This is a new name for me, and I need to study a map to understand where it is. I love maps, learning new things, and knowing all I can about this county that’s been my home for 65-1/2 years.

I thought that perhaps this was a sketchy photo of the river in terms of painting, but since I had plenty of film (OF COURSE I AM KIDDING—film?? what’s film?), I took the shot anyway. All those stringy wild grape vines, the indecipherable brush. . . nope.

Thus we conclude another peek into Three Rivers in the spring. I want it to be spring forever.

One Morning in April

Not quite as pretty as the morning when I took the photo to paint Sunrise over the Kaweah River.

T (my walking partner) and I see these bunnies almost every morning. We don’t understand how they survive.

Blue dick and common madia are still going strong.

It was a morning to spend in the yard. If I wasn’t such a lenient boss, I’d have to fire myself. I seem to be semi-retired these days.

It is so interesting that there is one white iris on each side of the path, and they stand above the others. I planted these bulbs in autumn of 2023 and have no memory of arranging them in any particular order.

This segment of the yard is all pinky-purply. It has one purple iris, lots of freeway daisies, several redbud trees, some lavender and some lilac. Guess you have to be here to see it all in bloom at once.

Just a thought about color for you: there are 3 plants named for various shades of purple.

  • Lilac
  • Lavender
  • Violet

Sunrise Over the Kaweah River

Remember this messy beginning?

After finishing the new little paintings to sell in local galleries and gift shops, I returned to this 16×20” painting, which felt like a mural after those 6×6” canvases.

There was another painting session between the photo above and the next one. I didn’t take any photos because sometimes I just forget. Other times I say to myself, “Self”, I say, “No one cares”.

Sky first (because I paint back to front). These are colors I haven’t mixed before.

The improvements might be hard to locate, but not so hard if you remember that method of painting back to front. It means I paint the things farthest away first, and keep moving closer, rather than jumping around all over the canvas.

Holy guacamole, there are so many rocks in the lower left quadrant.

Nope, not going to paint all the rocks that show in the photo. I widened the river too, because I am the boss of the painting and the photo is not the boss of me.

Now it needs the edges painted, and a signature, but before either of those, I will mull this over for awhile. So often I think a painting or drawing is finished until I view it on my computer screen.

Weird, but not uncommon.

Some People Dislike Mondays

I’m not one of those people. The only day I don’t like is any day I have to go down the hill. But I only dislike the day while I am fixin’ to leave, because in spring, the drive is beautiful. Going down with a list of stops doesn’t make me happy, so I try to remember that it is fun to drive Fernando, that there are all sorts of good options for listening or a good chance to just have quiet, and that it is a real privilege to have a car, options, money to pay for gas and the various items to be accumulated while down the hill. (I’ve been a recovering pessimist for decades). Of course I am happiest when I am heading back up the hill, especially in the early evening with late sunlight on the hills and mountains.

In case you are one of those folks who dislike Mondays, here are some wildflower photos for you, taken in my neighborhood last Wednesday. (See why I dislike leaving home?)

We can do the Learned List tomorrow, if I can remember anything new learned in March.

More Spring in Three Rivers

The lavender started blooming early this year. That isn’t a real lawn; it is mowed weeds that dry out when the rain quits and the heat begins.

The Middle Fork of the mighty Kaweah River, looking downstream and upstream. The white-water is a little less than bright white because of the rain. (Ain’t nobody here complainin’ ‘bout that rain!)

Man oh man, I love me some green!

I was pulling weeds in the yard and heard (teehee, almost wrote “herd”) some funny sounds. These deer were eating weeds mere feet from me, chewing kind of loudly.

The first blue dicks, also known as brodaeia (can’t spell it, gave up trying), with an intense bush lupine behind. This is not in my yard.

Hi Pippin. You are the cutest cat, even if you have an entitlement attitude.

Drawing Workshop

Upcoming!

Besides loving to draw, it makes me happy to help other people learn to draw. A friend named Anne Brown has been asking me for many years to give a workshop up here, and since she offered to host it and for whatever reason I now have some time, (OH, because I’m not preparing for a solo show since I still have paintings from the last solo show, phooey but yea), we scheduled this drawing workshop.