(Happy Birthday, Ann!)
“In situ” means in position. Isn’t it fun to learn new expressions?
The question that nagged me during the entire process of designing and painting the Blue Moon Nursery sign was this: Would it be able to complete with all the signage along that stretch of the highway in Three Rivers?
See? A whole messa signs! But, I can spot ours. . . can you?
Here is the light blue with the darker green.
This is the darker blue with the light green.
Let’s go inside the nursery.
When we visited Cowboy Bert and Mrs. Cowboy Bert, the animals were all vying for my attention.
Remember this little Baby Cakes?
Look at her now:
Here: look at her where you can get a better sense of scale:
Still a bottle baby, along with the white one who is a bit younger and smaller.
There is also a short horse and a couple of tall dogs. Gets a person a bit confused about proportion and perspective. (short horse = pony?)
They wouldn’t pose for me so that I can show you the 2 over/undersized critters together.
New Hampshire Reds are beautiful chickens. This is a hen, not a rooster.
When the sheep all talk, they sound like people imitating sheep. There are bass, tenor, alto and soprano, and they make really funny sounds.
Scooter is my favorite of all 4 cats. Cats are my favorite of all the animals. The kind of farm I grew up on had trees, a dog or two, and always cats. No sheep talking like people, no short horses, and certainly no hens imitating roosters. Makes me feel like a city girl! I’ve often thought that growing up on the kind of farm I did only meant that everything was inconvenient, I got used to wide spaces without buildings, I learned to plan ahead for shopping trips (oh how I hated going to town unless it included a stop at the library), we were not dependent on neighbor kids for fun, we learned to drive young (ever driven a spray rig that has only a clutch and a brake, no accelerator?) and we ate as many oranges, olives, plums and walnuts as we wanted. Hmmm, maybe there was a pig on that farm who looked a lot like me.
P.S. I wrote this blog with my sweet kitty Perkins by my side. We weren’t allowed to have animals in the house growing up. Guess I’ve kicked over the traces of my raising in that aspect, but I still eat as many oranges as I want.
In early March, Trail Guy and I took a road trip. Trips are not the same as vacations, in my personal dictionary*. A trip is when you keep moving. A vacation is when you choose a place, get there, and enjoy the area. Maybe you actually unpack your suitcase, and park your vehicle for the duration.
This trip included stops in Redding (California), Salem (Oregon), some small place near Mt. Hood (Oregon) and a night in Bend (Oregon).
Oregon is clean, green, and has no sales tax. Why don’t we all move there? It was sunny EVERY SINGLE DAY! The standard joke about Oregonians is that they don’t tan, they rust. Couldn’t prove it by the weather we enjoyed in early March.
Enough chatting. Let’s have some visual aids, shall we?
Ask me if you want to know any specifics about these photos. There were many many more, and I may post a few more with details. Or not. The empty canvases are nagging at me.
*Personal dictionary also includes the true definition of hike versus walk, along with some fairly original (to someone else – I stole them) words such as “porkadelia”.
When I was a kid and there were guests from out of the area, my folks would take them up to visit Sequoia National Park. I remember thinking, “Do we have to go to the mountains again?”
What a punk. A punk in the Park. A Park Punk?
Two very dear cousins of mine were here recently. We had family business to attend to, and then, we went to Sequoia! I wanted to go, and I really wanted to go with them. They had spent much of their childhood summers in Sequoia, and many of our memories were from times there together.
It had snowed several days before and the previous night. Our first stop was Beetle Rock, which involved some fun stories and binoculars for bird watching.
It was overcast and cold. Doesn’t matter. We were in the Park, and surrounded by Sequoia trees. I love this fence, even when there is no sun on it, even when the snow is tracked.
Cousin Joel seems tall to me, but not compared to a Sequoia tree. He has binoculars, because he sees a bird. Or maybe he hears a bird and is looking for it.
We walked up toward Tokopah Falls, stepping in the tracks of some previous hikers. Doesn’t this look cold? It was 34 degrees.
This is the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River. It flows through Lodgepole. Brrrrr.
It got so foggy we descended to enjoy the foothill part of Sequoia. This is the Middle Fork of the Kaweah River as seen from a suspension bridge out of the Potwisha campground.
Isn’t this a cool bridge? When I bounced on it, it was hard for my cousins to hold the binoculars still and identify their birds. I tried to not be a punk and mostly succeeded.
Isn’t this cool?
This is an old flume and provides water for hydroelectric power. Very clean energy, and nothing gets wasted. There were no birds in the flume, so the binoculars weren’t necessary.
For the record, this former punk really enjoys Sequoia Park. I am now a California artist who loves the special places of Tulare County, and that’s the truth! (Raspberry sound, but I can’t spell that)
These are not necessarily things indigenous to the Pacific Northwest, but they are beautiful things I encountered while there. Beautiful things, views, places, all here for you to enjoy.
Puget Sound (AKA “The Sound”) as seen from Mukilteo, Washington.
The Mukilteo light house in what passes for sunshine in February in Washington.
An old architectural detail salvaged from a torn-down building and reused in a sign in Mukilteo, Washington.
Carol loves sea glass. I like it, she LOVES it. We took a little trip together for that purpose a few years ago. You can click here to see it on another page.
It isn’t very uncommon to see people decorate with lights in the Pacific Northwest. Helps alleviate depression. That, and coffee of course.
Yesterday I left you at the cliffhanger of Better Living Through Coffee in the Pacific Northwest.
Carol and I visited Port Townsend. It is a beautiful little town on the water with very stately architecture and art galleries and shops full of unnecessary items to enhance life and coffee and restaurants.
As the daughter of a citrus grower from Ivanhoe and the wife of a Trail Guy from Mineral King, cities and towns and beautiful buildings just THRILL me. It is a little embarrassing to take me anywhere because I am just THRILLED. THRILLED, I say.
Excuse me while I calm myself here.
There is a yarn shop in this building. With great restraint I did not go inside. I was already a bit overstimulated by the ferry ride and the beautiful buildings and the fantastic coffee.
No more caffeine for you Young Lady.
Get to the point already.
The point was to see Bob, my former drawing student! He and his wife and their horse (RIP, Porky Doc) and dogs (one less now, RIP Rose) moved there 4 years ago. Mrs. Bob loves it. Bob misses the sunshine and the drawing lessons. I miss Bob.
We had a wonderful visit. He drove us around town a bit, and treated us to a wonderful lunch at a very nice restaurant in a very old building. I could hardly eat from the excitement of it all. (Yeah, I know, I don’t get around and out much.)
We visited several art galleries, and the highlight was dropping by Don Tiller’s studio. Who is Don Tiller? I’m glad you asked. He paints what he calls “contemporary acrylic landscapes”. His work is whimsical and colorful and unusual. Bob took private lessons from him, and Carol took a workshp from him last month. Here, click on this to open his website in another page.
Tomorrow I’ll share some photos of beautiful things I saw while in Washington, the beautiful (and wet cold and rainy) Pacific Northwest.
AFTER we finished working on the design of The Cabins of Wilsonia, Carol and I went on an adventure.
Riding a ferry is always an adventure to me, but we spiced it up a bit to see if we could rely solely on public transportation.
First we drove to the Mukilteo ferry. I love that ferry. I love all ferries.
This is the view of the Mukilteo light house from the ferry. It was raining. Are you surprised?
Then we caught a ferry to Port Townsend.
Before I get to the reason for our trip, let me share a photo with you of a business that made me laugh:
Tomorrow I’ll tell you and show you why we went to Port Townsend.
Stay tuned. . .
I went to the Seattle area so my friend Carol could help me finalize the design on the upcoming book, The Cabins of Wilsonia. She taught me how to use Adobe Indesign almost 2 years ago and has an excellent eye for design. I get caught up in “oh, I love that cabin” and “those people were so nice” and “wow that one was challenging” and then I forget to pay attention to the design of the pages.
We worked.
We walked, always either in rain or the threat of rain.
There are some things that are just wonderful about visiting Carol, in addition to just being together.
1. The internet is SUPER CRAZY FAST at her house! Probably isn’t any different than anywhere else in a larger population than rural Three Rivers. But oh my, how thrilling to download a book from Audible in THREE MINUTES! Takes 2-3 tries overnight to get it to download at home.
2. Scarves are for warmth instead of decoration. I wore my knitted items with tremendous thankfulness while in the cold and wet.
3. Ferry travel is the best way to travel, the ultimate in getting from point A to point B. I love it! Carol said that back when she was in college, some kids would study on a ferry. They’d stake out a table and sit and ride and study all day long. Now, you are required to get off when the ferry reaches its destination. If you want back on, you buy another ticket.
Tomorrow I’ll post about some of the things we saw and did AFTER finishing the design work. It was a business trip of course. You weren’t questioning my work ethic, were you?
I know, it is Friday and I’m still talking about Tahoe. It was beautiful and this post is for your enjoyment, not because I have a compulsion to finish topics, although that may be a factor here. This post will be long so that I can finish (not that I have a finishing compulsion or anything).
Before my friend The Other JB moved away, we used to walk and hike together. She told me about a lake near Tahoe called Fallen Leaf. I thought it was a small lake with a dusty campground. I was wrong. It is about the same size as Emerald Bay, 3 miles by 1 mile, and has a fancy-pants community of awesomely beautiful lake houses and a few cabins. Who knew? the Other JB, that’s who!
In spite of it being late October, there was sunshine and fall color remaining.
Then, we visited Taylor Creek where the salmon were spawning. This means swimming upstream out of Lake Tahoe to lay eggs and die. There were zillions of dying and dead fish. It smelled like it, too.
The ducks didn’t seem too bothered by the fish and their smells.
Beaver activity – there is a dam on the creek behind this fallen tree (not to be confused with Fallen Leaf Lake).
See the dam?
See the fall colors? Weird extended summer this year – Please God, send us rain and snow!
We woke to this on the morning that we left.
If you came here on Friday for Mineral King, I’m sorry. I temporarily ran out of things to show and tell on the subject. I hope you aren’t too disappointed to find Lake Tahoe . . . same mountain range. . . does that count?
We took a short hike, along with what felt like hundreds of strangers, many of whom spoke other languages. Obviously, Lake Tahoe is much more accessible than Mineral King. Ever had to say “excuse me” to pass someone on a trail in Mineral King? Maybe if it was narrow and someone was carrying a large pack. . .
No, we didn’t climb that. I think it is Mt. Tallac.
This is along the trail to Eagle Falls, and ultimately Eagle Lake. (There is one of those in Mineral King. There are probably lots of Eagle Lakes.) This one required a permit for a day hike! In spite of it being late October, there were still some wonderful places of colored leaves.
The falls were barely trickling under this bridge when we were there. This is probably quite spectacular in the spring. We chose not to go on toward the lake, because there was a giant one behind us. Besides, we hadn’t applied for a permit. A permit to day hike! Kind of irritating, if you ask me. (You didn’t, and I don’t blame you, considering my attitude toward such things.)
This is the view of Emerald Bay on Lake Tahoe as seen from the Eagle Falls and Eagle Lake Trail.
Emerald? Looks more Cerulean to me! (That’s an art word for blue. It isn’t quite as fun to say as “indigo” which is a fancy word for “navy” or “alizarin” which is a fun word for red.)