If I were a cat...

I'd be purr-fectly happy with a spot of sunshine and a cardboard box...Crouching Tigger-Hidden Pooh taking a solar-powered nap the other day...

Morning glories, mullein, and mist at dawn...the remains of my garden are a tangled mess because of my back being so problematic all season, it breaks my heart to see it look so bedraggled...but there's beauty in chaos that I adore...

...the season is changing...it's no sooner than usual, tho' I've heard people complain that it feels too soon...the leaves have a bronzed look to them, some have already begun to change around the edges...the poplars rattle and sound like rain...

...there's a certain angle to the light at dawn and dusk that I know it's about time to order firewood, fill the oil tanks, have the boiler man come do his annual visit to the dragon in the cellar so he roars to life whenever I feel a chill...it seems like summer just got started after the waterlogged start, the long tranquil days of barn swallows taking wing at dawn, blue sky afternoons buzzing with bees, evening haze and flitting bats at twilight are done...goodness knows, I might get bored if the weather had no variety...I write more in the winter...

If I were a cat...I'd reserve a good place by the woodstove for the winter...

Dedication...

For those of us who fight the good fight - the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

When I decided upon this dedication in my novel, Dusty Waters, it was around the time of the Democratic Convention, and that old rabble rouser, Teddy Kennedy, did us proud, roaring onto the stage in spite of his illness that we knew by then would eventually rob our country of the last of the Kennedy boys. He lived a long life like a cat with nine lives. The beauty of the man was that he wasn't perfect, and he acknowledged that...the best part, he served our country with a conscience and dedication...he might not have been right all the time...but you can't crap on the guy for trying...at least he learned how to compromise...to agree to disagree, and reach out for common ground.

Yes, this dedication fit the spirit of the folksinger in my novel...it fit the spirit of a time...the spirit of a generation...the spirit of our nation...and the spirit of a man who inspired us to keep fighting the good fight.

Here's to the spirit...the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

Bobby, Teddy, and Jack, 1962 (AP)

August flowers...and a detail from The Fractured Hues of White Light

A sunflower at dawn...it's a gloomy day..."Bill" is throwing clouds our way...threatening skies and then peeks of sunshine...humid, a damp feel to everything, and it's very buggy this year...yuck...and of course, August allergies...
I have a nice green pumpkin in progress...it's decided to park itself in the middle of my stone path...but that's okay...

Chicory has always been a summer favorite...I love that color blue!

The giraffes of my garden...they wouldn't hold still and then the sun ducked behind the clouds again...the tallest one must be at least seven feet tall, if not a little more...(I was getting a crick in my neck looking up at them!)

But I did manage to get a good shot previously which I broke down to a small detail...I had several of them die off this spring, a few that did come back shriveled up during the early summer deluge...but the few that survived are lovely...

Ah, there's the storm...pouring out there, and grumbling...my faithful dog is nearby for comfort...

I've been editing The Fractured Hues of White Light today...I've been in Chapter 19 today...it's one of the older chapters...Samantha Ryder has been painting on a cliff in Canyonlands in Utah for about two weeks, and suddenly decided that she didn't like what she's been doing and pitched her paint loaded pallet off the cliff...her companion, Guthrie, just prevented her from throwing the painting over the edge after it...here's a very brief piece of it...

...you don’t understand, it’s not mine—I’m just reacting to it—I can barely grasp it—it’s so big here,” she sat staring ahead at the horizon, her body lightly rocking in place. “What I have in my head is much too big—I don’t think I can ever paint it. It’s like music—sound—like Beethoven, his music trapped inside his head—he wrote it to let it out, but he never heard it played by anyone to his satisfaction—no one understood. I can’t see what I want out here—what I want my work to become—I might as well be blind like Beethoven was deaf,” she said, clasping her hands over her eyes...

Just a detail...but an important one...I just love this scene, the significance of her frustration with always having to make something that's in front of her, "copying", it's a plague for anyone who is creative, having to fit into the latest thing, a niche, a bestseller, the blockbuster (or a knock-off of the latest thing)...Samantha Ryder's life has been regimented because of her autism to create art, but none of it is truly hers...from the time she was very small, she started copying pictures out of books...her father encouraged this, and they became financially well off because of her special talent of producing art history's greatest hits in miniature (who doesn't want a copy of the Mona Lisa the size of a postage stamp? (Isn't it ridiculous what people are willing to spend their money on?) She fills volumes of sketchbooks with stream of conscious marks and studies of the people close to her, she's obsessed with hands and oddly enough, facial expressions (but she's never made a self-portrait.) Her artistic life has been focused on the money-making business...no one ever encouraged her to paint something she wanted to make for her self expression...(her constant sketching has always been thought of as a OCD tick dictated by her autism.)

As much as I adore my little ghost story Dusty Waters, I really love The Fractured Hues of White Light, and I can't wait until I'm finished with editing it so I can get it out there!

An artist is an artist because they have to be...I write and I paint because I have to (I'm terribly unhappy if I don't.)

It's Summer in August...and we have a guest...

An August sunrise through clouds...mighty glorious out there...

We have a "guest" in our house...ain't it cute? The little sweetie is very sleepy in this picture...


This little peep's nest happened to be in the weeds next to our burn pile, my Fred touched it off on Thursday after clearing away a significant bit of brush, and the nest was unfortunately too close (I was told that one had died and another was plucked from the ashes and put off to the side into the weeds.) Well, on Friday morning Max found this little guy, hiding in the weeds by our shed, singed, but mostly okay, though scared, yes, very scared, the frightened scream of a baby bunny is an awful thing to hear! (Max loves baby bunnies, he's been known to gently carry them in his mouth, and bring them to me.) I scooped it up from the weeds and tucked it inside my apron pocket until it calmed down (which it did right away, it needed a place to hide.) I went about my business with it riding in there, including feeding the cats (they had no clue, it smells too smoky!) I made coffee...found a box, a soft bit of flannel, an eye dropper, made up a batch of sugar water...then I settled down and looked over the poor waif inside my pocket. The worst of the singed fur is on top of its head, the black is the downy insulating fluff close to the skin...the skin is thankfully unharmed. At first, it didn't want any part of the eye dropper, but it willingly licked water off my fingers, and butted my hands with its nose looking for a place to hide. The first 24 hours of baby bunny rehab is always touch and go (I've done this before with success)...I had my doubts, figuring by morning we'll know which way this was going to go, so I made a snug little bed inside the box, it burrowed in and slept all day, by evening, it was perkier, less afraid, took more sugar water with the dropper. It was nibbling on greens by my bedtime and exhibited a spunky attitude. So the sweet little pea is with us until he (or she?) is a little bigger...and furrier...I've been giving the peep "finger baths" every day (dipping my fingers in luke warm water and ruffling the fur...the little guy gets frisky afterwards!) I cradle the little jumping bean in my hands (it seems to like my hands well enough), and I love feeling the bunny's little heart pounding lickety-split! It's calm and warm, smells very smoky...but appears to be thriving, greens go in one end and tiny poo out the other as it should be. I anticipate releasing it by Labor Day the latest...yes, I've done this before, it's the right thing to do...wild bunnies belong in the wild...I can only hope for the best...

Another morning done...another hot summer afternoon on the porch with the portable studio table, new paintings in progress...and spending time on my laptop editing The Fractured Hues of White Light...I'm working on the final polish before publishing it...it feels good knowing that it will go from my hands and into the hands of readers soon...how liberating...

My day in the garden...

Yesterday was a lovely day to spend outside, it was that just right warm, the just right breeze, the sky was bright overcast, the color of platinum...the flowers and weeds are out of control, but I'm enjoying them rather than fretting, it's been the summer of my herniated disc, I'm trying to just go with the flow while it heals, so, I briefly sat amongst the pretty things below their tops...

After I set up all of my studio stuff on the porch, put the cushions on my chair, made my coffee, and brought the laptop outside, I let Crouching Tigger-Hidden Pooh and the Fatty Woo outside to enjoy the day...and of course, Max too...(this is Tiggy-Pooh showing me how the door worked, just in case I forgot what to do...if only he had thumbs!)
It was a good day...I met a grasshopper...he paused his munching to give me a look...

And I met a Giant Swallowtail who I've never met in my garden before, I feel good about that...he didn't sit still for his close up, but he wasn't shy around me, just being a flutter-bye...



I almost forgot...every garden has to have one of these little guys slithering around...
(I saw him again this morning while I pulled my daily allotment of a few weeds, and touched his back as he shyly snaked away...)

Later in the day, Fatty Woo became tired and tipped over onto the driveway...too much catnip...too much fun...it' s nap time...

I alternated between laptop and artwork...juggling my passions...I'm creatively doubled damned...I'm a writer and a painter...not that it's a bad thing...I think it's wonderful that I have found a balance between the two (finally.)

However, it's funny how people react to my creativity in different ways...

"Wow, when do you find the time?" (I don't watch a lot of television.)
"What don't you do?" (This is usually said with a roll of the eyes or hands on hips, sometimes both.) (Why do you say it like that, are you jealous?)

Occasionally the attitude is a smiling one without the sarcasm, "You paint and you write books? Wow..." (so we're back to the "when do you find the time" thing.)

"There's no money in doing that!" (Why is everything we "do" have to be about money?)

There are some positive reinforcement...

"Well, that's great!"
"How awesome is that!"
"Cool."
"Good for you."
"You go, girl."

(Not to sound too harsh, I don't mean to be critical, but it's rare to see some of these people at gallery openings and I sincerely doubt they'd show up to readings or book signings...I've gotten used to this kind of surface enthusiasm.)

Sometimes I'm just startled by how some people just don't have a clue about creativity...they're totally lost at sea when they talk to me...I've always felt like an alien, that odd puzzle piece that never fits in, the square peg being jammed into the round hole...thankfully, I'm comfortable in my own skin, I love what I do. I feel like they're missing out on something special when they don't attempt to explore their creativity because they fear not being good at it. (That's why you have to make the time to practice.)

Today is another day, more editing, more painting...the sky is gray and the air is heavy with humidity...I'm hoping for at least a platinum later, but blue would be nice too...Max is waiting at the door...

a honey bee in catnip...

This bizzy little sweetheart was loving my catnip...which, seems to not mind our damp summer, I have quite the bumper crop, my kitties will have more than enough to share...I quick dry it in the oven...and you CAN'T imagine how insane that makes the cats...well, maybe you can...

Crouching Tigger-Hidden Pooh and Charlie behave like angry drunks and wrestle on the floor until someone cries (usually Tiggy-Pooh)...
Fatty Woo just purrs loudly in a tubby tabby bunch on the bed...
Willy Big's eyes get bigger and that little white tip at the end of his tail gets poofy...
Picky-Picky starts to chase shadows...wait...she does that anyway...she just becomes paranoid and tweaks out...hisses at the nearest cat who might be stalking her...or not...

Poor Max, being a dog, he feels left out of the loop...he doesn't understand catnip...he's tried to eat it, but doesn't see the point...I tell him, its a cat thing...his little coffee bean colored eyes beg once again for "a little brother", and I promise again...someday we'll bring home a puppy...a special one who needs us...

Max doesn't like bees (he doesn't like buzzy bugs around him, he eats them)...so I keep him away from the little honeys...and think about the idea of beekeeping...where would I put the little buzzers home on my acre? You know...and all that sort of beekeeping stuff...maybe it's something I'll do in my golden years once I'm done running around doing the day job thing and I can be here doing the fun stuff I like to dream about full time...

Someday...

The Health Care debate

"The Admiral" didn't mind my getting close...but he kept his wings shut tight. (Yeah, I know, the flutter-bye has nothing to do with health care reform, but ain't he pur-ty? It just feels healthy knowing these little guys exist!)

Bill Moyer's once again is timely, he did a repeat of the Wendell Potter interview last night on PBS...Potter is a former insurance company executive (Cigna), he drank the corporate Kool-aid and felt that what they were doing was right...well, in spite of that, he has seen the light about what is wrong with our nations health care system...his conversion is interesting. I'm providing a link to the Bill Moyer's Journal website...check it out, please...and pass it on...

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html