End of Year 2018

It was a year of change when we sold a house, got a new rez rescue dog, dealt with problems facing our elderly parents, and began the gradual slowing down of our work lives.  We also took our first overseas vacation together and spent several glorious weeks in Scotland where we had excellent weather.  All in all a memorable year with several retreats:  Abiqui/Santa Fe, Brown County, Indiana, Lubec, Maine and wonderful workshops in Sedona, AZ, Grand Canyon, Cincinatti, Columbus, and other locations where we met new and old friends.  At the very end of the year we settled into our home in New Mexico, where we discovered the joys of fencing by putting in 300 feet of  new fencing and 17 new posts into sandstone rich ground!

Raku Times Eight



Happy Holidays and a Joyous 2019 to Everyone!

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

The Winter Floods in the Verde Valley, Arizona

People think of Arizona as the desert and it is usually sunny, but when it rains, it can really rain and in the Verde Valley that means flooding.  We have had quite a few days of rain so the creeks and rivers have risen.  This morning I took a picture of ducks in a tree above Oak Creek who are probably confused as to why the placid creek has become a torrent of muddy water and fast moving logs and other debris!

In our community we have two creeks, Oak and Spring Creeks which went way beyond their banks in the past few days.  Our hiking trails are flooded and even walking bridges have been relocated by the powerful rushing rivers!  It is a good reminder of how powerful water can be.

The following series were created from photos taken this morning.  Happy Holidays to All!  There is a surprising amount of color in nature for such a dreary rainy day.  Red or pinkish soils, brown water, green grasses, and many other colors shine through the kaleidoscopes!

ducks on a tree

The turtle made of debris

Above the flood waters

the poor bridge

floodwaters and winter's lack of foliage

Last Day Of Summer, Autumnal Equinox and Spectacular Spider Webs and next summer's vacation planning!

Maybe soon I will be able to close my windows and seal in for winter.  It has been really nice this late summer season with just a hint of the coming season.  As usual, this is the season for mushrooms and spider webs and the hint of Fall color.  However, in this area, the leaves are not that spectacular as compared with other New England areas I have lived in partly because of all the evergreen like spruces, but also the few maples do not blaze with color.   The most colorful thing is the berries on the ash trees!

I believe it is because the night time temperatures are moderated by the ocean breezes so the leaves do not have to go out in short blaze of color, but have an extended dying off period.  The first frost happens usually in October on Campobello Island which is really late for the 45th parallel!  Our garden is just beginning to bear some green beans!

I will post a few spiderweb kaleidoscopes for my last one of my summer season here in Lubec, Maine and Campobello Island, NB.  There is an international border between the towns here, but it feels like one town as the services and amenities complement each other and we own property in both!  I make my escape to another country nearly every day!

It is not too early to begin thinking about summer 2017!  We are taking reservations for our artists retreat vacation rental in Lubec, Maine for summer 2017 now.

Water views, walk to beach and waterfront restaurants.  Make your own artistic retreat, musical or painting,  or join us in a plein air workshop.  $500 for 5 nights, contact me!  Great for SummerKeys students.

Colorful Kaleidoscopes and a More Monochromatic Seasonal Palette

Visited one of our favorite local National Monuments as a treat yesterday.  Spoke with a younger generation seasonal ranger who took out his smart phone to answer a question we had which was a first for us.  Learned he was studying "sustainable communities" in graduate school.  What more appropriate location for him to study than a native American pueblo as a posting!  They were nothing if not sustainable, except evidently the long drought finally caused them to abandon theur communities along Oak Creek and the Verde River.

I was inspired to do 2 series of kaleidoscopes.  One based on my late blooming Minerva Amaryllis at home and secondly the fantastic rock walls of Tuzigoot National Monument with it's wonderful winter palette of seasonal grasses in Clarkdale, Arizona.

Minerva Amaryllis as Subject

Tuzigoot Walls as Subject

Only 10 weeks and we begin our long trip back Campobello Island, NB  This year we will be spending over a month travelling to get there with a significant stopover in Santa Fe, New Mexico on the way.

Waterflows and Lacy Trees

Fall is here in North Central Arizona.  Furnaces are on and wood stoves are wafting wood smoke in the morning hours and the leaves are changing color.  We are fortunate to see leaf change from mid-September to late November due to our travels from Canada to Arizona.  It's a wonderful time of year here.  Come and take a 4 day Paint Sedona Plein Air Painting Workshop with Michael Chesley Johnson.  We are also offering a Paint Sedona Intensive for those who want a one on one experience.  Lodging can be with us or at the Sedona studio that Michael uses at 220 Goodrow Lane, Sedona, AZ 86336.

I have done a series of kaleidoscopes based on Fall colors and waterflows over rocks.

Anyone who doesn't believe that Arizona has brilliant red maples in October and November needs to take a hike!

Oh what a Difference a Day Makes!

Have you ever had the experience where things were humming along and all of the sudden a decision made by someone else rearranges your life and you have no control over it?  Well that is where we are at, so we will push forward, redo my plans, and move on.  In the meantime, creating kaleidoscopes has a calming effect.  At least we were lucky, relatively speaking, with the hurricane damage we suffered.  It has not been a good week so I am looking forward to next week being better...it generally is.

Summer Commences in My Garden

This summer's extravaganza continues.  At their peak right now I have peonies, yellow yarrow, yellow hawkweed, heritage roses, iris, daisy, delphinimum, bridal wreath spirea, clematis, cosmos, dianthus, chives, ferns, Miss Kim late blooming lilacs, and lupine( although they are beginning to go to seed as they do from the bottom up!). I am sure I missed a few and the ferns are still spring green so we still have much more spectacular blooming to go until things begin to die back in September or so.  The first frost here is late, usually not until some time in October, as the water begins to moderate the fall temperatures as compared to areas farther inland. The seeds I planted a week or so ago are up 2-3 inches!  We have had 5 inches or more of rain in the past few weeks so everything is blooming now that we have an seemingly unending sunny period ahead of us.  The comfrey was flattened by the rain, but everything else seems to be relishing the weather.

I am going to do a lot of kaleidoscopes of these flowers as they have inspired me! Friar's Bay Studio Gallery and Artists Retreat Studios & Gallery open on Tuesday so I will have enforced indoor time beginning on July 1st to plan some new projects...

I did not caption the kaleidoscopes so you have to actually look at them to see what flower is "kaleidoscoped".  Some are very obvious and others are a little more subtle.