Grateful End of Year Thoughts

Michael and I had a very busy year which was very happy with the exception of losing our best friend Saba after 17 years on April 10th.  Michael and I are still in the depths of our grief for her, but are rebuilding our habits in our new home in Ramah, NM and also printing out some of the over 1500 photographs of her life we documented which were all happy times!  There are several feral cats living on our property which I am now feeding so I am not entirely without "pets".  We have a pact, I feed them, and they keep the mice and pack rats away!

I have taken lots of photos this year, but done far fewer kaleidoscopes and seem to be moving back into quilting and incorporating cold wax medium into paintings along with photographs.  Michael and I are experimenting together in his studio which is great fun.  Come visit us at the new location of Pumphouse Studio Gallery or take a workshop with Michael through his new Paint the Southwest mentorship program or a regular workshop.

We just got back from Santa Fe where we saw several interesting artists work.  It was an interesting trip as I fell and passed out right at the end of Canyon Road on some loose gravel.  I was paying too much attention to the art and not enough to the ground.  After warning my 87 year old dad to be careful not to fall when walking, he had some advice for me!

Michael and I had memorable trips to Zion and Capitol Reef National Parks and Chiricahua National Monument.  We also paid Tucson and Sedona a visit in the Fall while Michael taught workshops.  I did not get to Bear's Ears National Monument which I had hoped to before it was reduced in size and scope.  We also had a wonderful week in the early fall in Nova Scotia and, of course, a nice Spring of 2017 in Sedona, Arizona before the move in April and a wonderful summer in Lubec, Maine and Campobello Island, NB.

We feel grateful that all of our parents are alive and quite healthy for their ages as they enter and surpass the beginning of their 9th decades.  They are our models for dealing with the aches and pains of being an elder.  Both our dads stubbornly do a lot of gardening despite balance and strength issues, while our mothers drive and do the household chores and even volunteer at various non profits.  We hope we are so lucky, but we do both have some good old age genes going back centuries.  I am still going quite a bit of genealogy and learning much about the world's history in the process.

Happy Holiday Season to All

A Perfect Autumn: Yellow Ferns, Red Oaks and Maples, and Many Boats in Maine

This September was a perfect month in Maine and the ferns turned yellow and the oaks turned yellow and red instead of the normal brown and the maples are iridescent this year.  I am fortunate enough to have spent 6 days near and in Acadia National Park while Michael Chesley Johnson was teaching plein air painting for the 8th time for Acadia Workshop Center.  He had a great group of 7 hard working students while I entertained myself taking photos!

Red, red maples!

Red Oaks and Gray Rock

Yellow Ferns

Celtic Cross of Red Maple Leaves on Gravel

Wooden Boat Skeleton on Land

Lobster Traps and Lobster Boats

Now I am in a studio apartment in a converted barn overlooking Mount Monadnock, a mountain with a lot of history, including a plein air painter...  Lucky me!  Michael is teaching for:  Monadnock Area Artists Association.http://www.monadnockareaartists.org/

Next stop is Strasburg, VA on our way to Sedona, AZ...where Michael will participate in the 10th Sedona Plein Air Festival...(It is his 7th or 8th time to participate....we lost track!) 

First Day of Summer Campobello Island!

We get to personally enjoy a tremendously long Spring season since we start off our seasonal bloom in Sedona, AZ beginning in March with lilacs, willow trees, apple trees, wildflowers, and all the bulbs.  Then we travel over 3,000 miles to the Canadian Maritimes and experience it all over again.  Here, off the coast of Maine, we are just beginning to see the end of lilacs and the horse chestnut candles are fading. The columbine, ferns, lupine and hostas are in their glory. The daylilies are beginning to bud and everything is green, green, green.  The lawn doesn't stop growing-- sometimes it seems to grow more than an inch in a day!  I did my final planting yesterday which included lots of red sunflower seeds which I planted successfully 3 years ago!

Michael has finished his project for the 50th anniversary of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park yesterday.  A catalog will be available soon.
Our busy season is just beginning for downeast Maine and the Canadian Maritimes and the students will begin to arrive July 1st for our Paint Campobello Plein Air Painting Program. If you want to do some guided plein air painting this summer, there are just a few spots left!

Below are some images based on our seasonal bloom.

chives

columbine and smoke tree

ferns and beach rocks

hostas

lupine ring

pink columbines and lupine leaves

maple trees and yellow ranunculus or creeeping buttercup

maple trees and yellow ranunculus

Ancient Writing and Archeology in the Verde Valley

One of the things we like best about living in Red Rock country is not the rocks, although they are spectacular, but the river systems and riparian areas surrounding our valley.  We have Spring Creek, Oak Creek, Wet and Dry Beaver Creeks, the Verde River and many other streams.  The ancient peoples also lived in this area as they had water, access to good soils they could irrigate, plentiful game and rocks to build homes with.  There are so many wonderful archeological sites such as Montezuma's Castle and Well, Tuzigoot, as well as many other sites which are still being discovered.  In fact they created many room pueblos every 3 miles or so up and down all the waterways and throughout the region over hundreds of years.

"ancient writing" 

8 x 8 $50 framed

I had the good fortune to hike with a wonderful membership organization The Verde Valley Archeology Center on Saturday to a beautiful site made of odd limestone of a surprisingly large size.  We found many interesting pottery sherds.  Then to cap off the weekend Michael and I went on a hike on Sunday and found interesting petroglyphs and a large unmarked pueblo in a completely different location!

ancient homeland sycamore and water 

8x8 $50 framed

Nice links to the Verde Valley here:  http://verdevalleyarchaeology.com/TheVerdeValley

We still have space in our paint sedona weekly workshops this winter and spring.  We would love to share our knowledge of this wonderful area.

A few random images of the season in Bernard, Maine

The french easel and the blue gloves

 One of my favorite Fall flowers:  the hydrangea  

The older ones are large bushes and this one happened to be drapped across a beautiful fence

The mussel diver

She dove for mussel's in her wet suit along with her companions in the late morning, then she set up a cooker and ate them with melted butter for lunch outdoors!  It looked like a nice lunch to me.  Something that is not so uncommon in Maine, but you would not see everywhere....