Category: Personal

Hume Lake Instead of Mineral King

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Every summer for the past handful of years, I have had the privilege of joining a friend from childhood at her Hume Lake cabin. She brings 2 other friends with her, and now they are part of the fun that I look forward to each summer. This is a different part of the Sierra than our other home in Mineral King, and it is more than just a geographical difference: the cultural differences are stark. This is not a good/bad situation; it is simply a different situation.

We walk around the lake (3 miles on a well-used trail), rent a water something (rowboat, stand-up paddle board, kayak, canoe), walk among the fancy mountain houses (I can’t really think of these beautiful homes as “cabins”, part of the stark contrast to Mineral King), hear excellent speakers (a Christian camp with good chapel services), reunite with my friend’s cousins (now my friends too), eat too much, laugh until I fall down, talk late into the night, and sleep too little.

The journey this year had this dismal landscape for part of the trip.

The lake and all of Hume escaped last year’s conflagration.

On Saturday evenings after the campers have left, some of the staff race to the end of the dock and fling themselves into the lake. It looks different at different times of day, always picturesque. The dam which creates the lake is highly unusual. It was built in 1908, and the lake was created for transporting logs. My favorite part of the trail is below the dam where it is green green green. Or wait—is my favorite part of the trail where the wild iris bloom?

Or maybe it is at the beginning of the trail. I like the view from the bridge that crosses Ten Mile Creek. We like to walk to the top of the hill, and were blown away by the potential lumber. These folks believe in mechanical thinning, in managing their forest. Could this be why they have escaped the wildfires through the years? The view from Inspiration Point was somewhat obstructed by clouds this year. And finally, this year our visit coincided with the elusive and magical red mariposa lily! (My friends may have been concerned for my mental balance when I insisted that we look for it, amazed that I spotted it, and puzzled by my enthusiasm, but one of them took this photo for me.)

Hume Lake

Trail Guy Hikes For Us

Who is “us”?

You, me, anyone who reads the blog but isn’t retired or on vacation in Mineral King. While I was painting walls inside Three Rivers buildings, Trail Guy went hiking in Mineral King.

He went up toward Timber Gap, and then to Empire, but not to the top, just a loop that gives good views.

While he was there looking at the mountains, I was painting the very same peaks in the Mineral King Room at the Three Rivers Historical Museum.

This is Ranger’s Roost, AKA Mather Point, looking through the timber of Timber Gap. When you are looking at Timber Gap, it is the bump to the left/west. The Mather Party came over Timber and saw Mineral King. I drew the cover in pencil and colored pencil for a book about it, but I haven’t read it. I just look at the pictures. (This was a second edition—the original drawing on the first edition went missing so the publisher commissioned me.)

There were a few flowers: shooting star, Western wallflower, phlox.

This is the rock outcropping on Empire that gives the false impression of being the actual peak. It is a favorite for enjoying alpenglow in the evening light.

Mineral King Is Now Open

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional cabin opening weekend. It is when Sequoia National Park unlocks the gate, and people begin backpacking and camping. Some years it feels like summer; some years it does not. This year was snow-free, but it did not feel like summer.

The classic view

This section was stripped of willows and other shrubs in the fire prevention efforts last fall. (I spent a ridiculous amount of time going through my photos to find one of how it looked before it got pruned to no avail.)

Monarch Falls and Creek are flowing well.

This is “Iron Falls” along the Nature Trail.

This is Iron Falls as recently painted.

The dandelions were prolific, bright, and charming (because they are not in my lawn).

This is the view of the stream that I painted 7 times over the winter in the Sawtooth oil paintings, and I took this photo in hopes that it will assist me as I paint #8.

This is painting #6 of Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint.

As now seems to be the norm, there were dogs coming both up and down the Nature Trail with impunity. No one reads the signs, and no one cares. (There is a dog in this photo, although it is sort of a “where’s Waldo” type of view.)

We had a super clear day to walk up to Crystal Creek and the wind was quite icy.

This is the section that I think of as the Yellow Tunnel in the fall. The cottonwoods were just beginning to leaf out.

Crystal Creek was doing its normal spread into about 4 shallow branches.

Thus we conclude my first visit to Mineral King for 2022. May there be many more!

Mineral King Mineral King oil paintings

Between Jobs

That’s “between paying jobs”. I didn’t charge my church, a decision I made many years ago—I will charge people in the church, but not jobs for the church.

What does an artist do when there aren’t commissions or upcoming shows? (Besides look out the window and contemplate matters of consequence).

(Or think about joining Pippin in a nap.)

(Or look out the window and wonder why this blooming shrub has the peculiar name of “pineapple guava”.)

Your Central California artist does these chores:

Plan new paintings, based on the assumption (and experience) that current ones will sell, and the sellers will want replacements.
Package notecards for a custom order.
Balance the checkbook
Sort through piles and toss or file all the stuff that seems to multiply in the dark
Go to the bank (as a few checks trickle in)
Write a few notes
Contact drawing students who have missed for awhile to ask if they quit and forgot to tell me
Write blog posts
Answer the phone, learn of a request for a QUICK, CAN YOU HELP US RIGHT AWAY?, and dive in to planning the next job.

Okay, let’s roll!

Ten Things I Learned in May

I learned about a Redbud booth location that was new to me: a. the patio is very convenient for set-up and breakdown; b. that location would be too hot if it was a warm weekend; c. sharing a booth is an excellent idea; d. my screens can blow over.
Selling a home without an experienced and organized realtor is UNTHINKABLE. (Nope, not my home; I’m still here). I highly recommend Diana Jules of Sierra Real Estate if you live in my neck of the woods. (Woods have necks??) She made it stress-free and is a joy to be around.
It is very complicated to be simple. Setting up a new landline at our cabin has taken 4 very lengthy phone calls with Huge&Rude, the dominant (and only) communications company for Mineral King. I could fill a page with the things they promised and did not deliver, along with all the lies I was told (probably by accident of ignorance, due to the complicated nature of simple things).
Look what happens when you neglect to pay attention while baking; let’s call it Flour Deficit Disorder. I kept ignoring the little voice in my head that said, “Not enough flour—the dough is too thin”. (It sounds an awful lot like the voice that tells me that a knitting project is going the wrong direction).
Iron-on patches don’t work. (And isn’t it interesting that my jeans wore out above the knees rather than on the knees?)
I learned that there is a Murphy bed with an attached desk that keeps its load when you lower the bed. See that desk/tray piece beneath the mattress? It stays in a horizontal position even when the bed is down.
Precis is a real word. It is pronounced “PRAY-seez” and it means a concise summary.
Have you ever bought or seen squished pennies at a tourist site? They were introduced to the USA in 1892, although begun in Austria in 1818. The elongation machines cost $4-5000, and and it usually costs .51 to squish a penny. Even if a single transaction costs $1, it seems like a pretty long shot to make one’s money back. The coins are called “elongated coins” and collecting these souvenirs is a popular hobby. Souvenir collection itself goes back to the early history of humans when one needed to bring home something foreign from travels to prove one had been somewhere. The Three Rivers Historical Museum plans to get a machine, and one of the designs will be the logo I made for the Mineral King Preservation Society. There are maps online for the dedicated collectors which show where the machines can be found throughout the USA. When I was first asked about the use of my design, I had my usual response:
A friend showed me an app for the phone called Picture This. If you take a photo of a plant using their camera, it tells you the Latin name, common name, and characteristics of the plant. To keep the app free, you have to hit “cancel” a few times each time you use it. Otherwise, after 7 free days, it will cost you $29.99 for a year. I wonder if the subscription comes with benefits other than just not having as many interruptions to sell you things. . . see? My mind is flooded with questions. (Discovered the name of a terrible smelling weed in our yard is “stink grass”!)
For several years I have used DuckDuckGo as my search engine. I didn’t like the sense of being stalked by Google. Now I have learned of a new search engine called Ecosia It plants trees when you use it a certain number of times or something like that. I just like the idea that it isn’t trying to make a gazillion dollars by selling ads instead of helping me find stuff on the World Wide Web. We’ll see if it works. I learned about it from Seth Godin’s blog. He is a little bit too smart for me, but I do trust him when he tells about a good product that I can actually use. Not sure how, not sure if it will work, but I will try it.

Always Remember

Making Non-Work Art

As a professional artist, it is my job to make art. (Once again, thank you Captain Obvious.)

As a hobbyist, once in awhile I also make artsy things for fun.

Mosaic stepping stones are one of those hobby projects. I started this about 20 years ago because our massive yard needed stepping stones. It was so fun that I started selling them. I must have made 10 dozen, and the more I made, the more tiles appeared in my life.

I could stretch this into a series of posts, showing old photos, explaining the process, photographing them around my yard, along with other mosaic projects.

Nah. Let’s just look at the current crop.

First I gather the supplies, then start arranging the pieces and cementing them in place. Sometimes I have companionship.

Dark gray grout really makes the color pop. I bought it because it was the only color available, and the bag has lasted and lasted and lasted.

I keep thinking that I will run out of tiles or grout pretty soon. I sure hope I have enough grout to finish these last four. But then I will still have tiles, so I will have to buy more adhesive, forms and grout.

I could just give away all the excess. . .

She Loves Flowers, Chapter Three

I wasn’t joking about loving flowers.

My yard is huge, and these represent little dots of color, scattered all around. It is not like some classic English garden, or as if everything is perfectly placed and professionally landscaped. But oh my goodness, I do love me some flowers.

P.S. This post comes to you after a very full busy weekend. I will tell you a bit about it later this week. Now, hold it down, will ya? I want to take a nap.

She Loves Flowers, Chapter One

“She” means me. Loving flowers is a cliché, and as someone who normally marches to the beat of a different drummer, it is a little embarrassing to admit how much I love flowers. After all, who DOESN’T??

Oh well. I am 62 years old, and I can say and do (almost) whatever I want. Of course there are consequences to one’s choices, but I don’t see any downside to admitting that I love flowers.

One morning, the local crew of superior weed-eaters showed up at 7. In my opinion, they could have waited a week. However, these guys are popular, and we wanted to get on their list sooner rather than later. And if they come early in the day on a day that isn’t hot, there is less fire danger.

BUT THE HILLSIDE STILL HAD FLOWERS!

So, I was out there at 6:30, doing something I NEVER do: picking wildflowers. The Fairy Lanterns were so good this year. What if we weed-eated (weed-ate?) too soon and there won’t be enough seeds to bloom next year??

At least I have my photos.

Maybe they’ll last longer on the front porch.

How about from the other angle?

Or some close-ups:

Okay, how about seeing them straight-on:

Let’s observe a moment of silence for the end of spring, the demise of the the wildflowers behind my house and everywhere. . .

. . . sigh.

Nine Things Learned in April

Converting a print book to an ebook is a bit of a slog. The type cannot be justified but has to be “ragged right/justified left”; text cannot wrap around photos; all blank pages (the left side or “verso” page that forces chapters to begin on the right or “recto” page) need to be deleted. Boring, perhaps, but I did learn this in April while converting Adventures in Boy Scouting: Tales by the Old Scoutmaster to an eBook. (print book available here)
The correct term for the little card that allows you to drive legally is DRIVER license, not DRIVER’S license. (I know—nobody cares, anymore than they care that it is Daylight SAVING Time rather than “Savings”)
Electric bicycles! My friend bought a pair and invited me on the maiden voyage. What a hoot! They weighed a ton and there were many little buttons and levers, so we stood in the parking lot for awhile trying to understand what was what. Then we made some circles around the lot before heading out. It was definitely not a workout, it was definitely fun (everything I do with her is fun), and I definitely don’t want to own one. She decided that they are just a moped with the option for a little exercise.
These are Phacelia campanularia, AKA desert bluebells, native to Southern California. Deer don’t seem to like them, but the gophers did.
I lent my piano to the annual Jazz Affair here in Three Rivers for a session called “Dueling Pianos”. I learned that mine is called a “spinet”, the other was an “upright”, and they were closer to dancing than to dueling.I learned that there are people who can play in perfect synchronization without ever looking at music, discussing what key or tempo, who will begin, when to end, or even practicing together. Blew my mind. My piano has never ever sounded like that before, and unless the High Sierra Jazz Club needs to borrow it next year, it never will again.
Here is a matter of consequence to contemplate: “Over the past few centuries, we’ve traded speed for rigor; innovation for wisdom; achievement for sanity; technology for connection; and disconnection for immediate comfort. And we’re all paying the price.” Excerpt from Dr. John Delony, Own Your Past, Change Your Future. This book became available at the end of the month, but because I preordered it, I got an e-book to read before the real one arrived. I haven’t finished it yet, because I’d rather read a paper book than a screen one.
I tried to make a stepping stone with poured cement instead of a preformed one. That is because I had some chunky items that needed to be tapped down into the wet cement. Instead of wasting the items that I have been collecting for several years, I used some tiles to make an experimental one. Good thing, because it crumbled. An experienced friend helped me make a second one, and his experience made all the difference. He built a mold, brought the right tools to mix the cement correctly, knew the right consistency, and even helped arrange the items. Here it is while still wet.
If a plant in my yard survives the deer, chances are that a turkey will smash it. After planting 12 foxgloves last year, 5 survived a week in the summer without water. Those five promised blooms, and then those stupid wild turkeys broke the stalk of at least one. So, planting 12 and getting 4 blooms means I only have a 25% ROI on my planting. (Haha, clumsy turkeys – all the daffodils survived)
The past participle of “prove” is “proved”, not “proven”. “Proven” is reserved for use as an adjective, such as “It is a proven principle that one should consult the Chicago Manual of Style when deciding the correct participle of ‘prove'”.