Day Two began with finishing the UHaul load, and then leaving Tahoe, headed toward Barstow. (I know, “WHY??”) The drive was gorgeous. We went over two mountain passes, heading toward 395. We don’t often get to see the Sierra from the east side.
Stopped somewhere near Monitor Pass for road work.
Keep that UHaul in sight!
Good thing the traffic was light with all this distraction and multi-tasking. NO, it isn’t because I have a cell phone now – I used to do this with a camera, so there. It takes many attempts to get a decent photo without looking at the screen.
So many missed shots because I was driving. I think we need to return to this part of the world, preferably with these clouds and all this snow.
We gave up in Ridgecrest and had to eat the motel reservations in Barstow. That made for a very long Day three, but sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Women too. We had to stop. Had. To. Stop.
California is a HUGE state. We began our trip by driving to Tahoe. Trail Guy’s sister needed help moving and we were chosen.
There is a rest stop in Central Calif. on Highway 99 that has incorporated blue glass shards in its sidewalk, something I find puzzling and delightful.
See the trees ahead in the median? On the south side is a palm and on the north is a (barely visible) pine. These trees mark the center of California from north to south. They are on 99, not too far north of Fresno.
These next photos are my version of a drive-by shooting. I think I could do some paintings of oaks on golden hills (minus the phone lines and road signs).
I took a brief walk and discovered a new-to-me wildflower.
Trail Guy is a brilliant packer and loader of trucks, cars and vans. He is excellent at putting all the odd pieces together to maximize the space.
What a day to leave Tahoe! Trail Guy drove the UHaul, I drove our pick-em-up truck, and Sister drove her car.
Since we only have one cell phone among the three of us, it made sense to have the highly visible UHaul in front. Trail Guy and I had walkie-talkies, which was helpful, since I was the navigator but not driving in the lead.
I believe that UHaul is a highly necessary, convenient business model. Whoever thought that up was a genius, right there with the dudes who invented Post-It Notes, W-D40, and Hidden Valley Ranch dressing.
Penstemon, planted on purpose in my yard rather than a wildflower, but in spite of being a native, it isn’t really thriving.
Is it possible I didn’t learn anything in May? Or is it that I just didn’t keep track? (Who said, “You learn something new every day?”) What can I pull out of my memory from just the past 30 days? How about these 7 items:
I sold something on eBay for $20 and charged $5 for shipping. Someone in Florida bought it and it cost me $16.17 to mail (there is currently no UPS outlet in Three Rivers). EBay took their bite, and my net profit was $7.80. Ouch.
I went to the bank to do a routine transaction, or at least I thought it was routine. In the olden days, it would have meant interacting with a human behind a desk. This time it meant sitting at a desk, watching a human interact with a computer. Ouch.
While at the bank with high ceilings and echoey acoustics, I wondered why they feel the need to play annoying (too loud and echoey and irrelevant) pop music. I didn’t learn why, only that my tolerance for noise seems to be diminishing in direct proportion to the increase of noise in the world. Ouch.
A small number of vendors and low visitation at a local arts and crafts fair does not mean low sales. Un-ouch. 😎
After saying, “no more shows” (meaning entering juried and judged shows), I made 2 exceptions: entered the show “Seascapes” at the Exeter Courthouse Gallery, and plan to enter a show (untitled) at the Tulare County Government Plaza Building. Haven’t learned anything yet, except that maybe I am the living embodiment of the triumph of hope over experience.
Kittens are so much fun! I’ve always known this, but now we have healthy and well-socialized kittens instead of feral, rescued, or weaned-too-early babies. There is a difference, and this is a good litter.
Memorial Day used to be May 31. Now it is the last Monday of May, a way to mark the beginning of summer. Really??
Sometimes I have the overwhelming need to share some beauty with you that is not of my making. (I hope you know me well enough to not take that sentence as if I believe all my art is beautiful. Gotta stay real and humble here.)
What is this new-to-me wildflower, across the road and downstream from Reimer’s (the candy store in Three Rivers)?
So glad you asked! It is Globe Gilia.
The plant I pilfered a cutting from last summer in someone else’s yard is in bloom!
The Jerusalem Sage is in bloom!
The Spanish or French Lavender is in bloom; I’m inclined to think of it as Red-Violet rather than Lavender.
The Rock Rose is in bloom!
Look at the Honeysuckle! Too bad you can’t do a scratch-and-sniff on your screen.
The summary of what I learned in April doesn’t seem to fit my normal end of month list. A paragraph will suffice.
Uncle Tucker, the guardian
In April I learned how to plein air paint. I also learned to use a cell phone, how to navigate the world of travel that is now dependent on cell phone ownership, usage, and competency, and that a green lizard in Georgia is actually called an “anole”. I learned that a small cat can have 5 kittens, that a cat with a stump of a tail can have tailed cats, stumpies, and rumpies. (We don’t know yet if the “rumpie” is healthy. Stay tuned.)
So, here is a beautiful and dramatic photo for you (because it was a beautiful and dramatic month) and tomorrow we will resume our adventures in plein air painting.
So many things to choose from for my final plein air painting.
More “tabby cabins”. I don’t know why that name bugs me. Maybe because it is whitewashing a segment of our history.
THIS is what I wanted to paint, but minus the palms.
Like this, but waiting for the light, which Laurel explained would come soon.
Step one, only 2 hours to complete this.
Step two, adding in the dark colors which make the light places appear.
Step three
Preparations for a wedding on the outside of the chapel. That’s unusual. I thought people got married INSIDE churches. But actually, very few do anymore. That’s a different topic for a different sort of blog.
Time for the critique. I didn’t get a good photo of this painting but have asked my hostess to photograph it for me when it is dry. I left it on top of her refrigerator.
And that’s all, folks. Suddenly, the carriage turned into a pumpkin. I told Laurel that the entire experience was so perfect that I’d think it was just a dream if I wasn’t sweating so much in the humidity.
So, back to the host and hostess’s home in Brunswick, rearrange all my supplies to pack for flying, say a quick good-bye (like ripping off a bandaid), hit the road for a silent drive back to Jacksonville (since I never did figure out the fancy radio), return the car, oops, go back to gas up the car (less than $3/gallon in Florida when it is over $4 now in Calif.), get a ride to the hotel, find some dinner (grits! because I was in the south), fall into bed for a 4 a.m. wake-up call. “Pumpkin”? More like a squash.
It was a fabulous adventure, a time of new sights, learning, friendships, challenges, new wildflowers, and, umm, sweating.
After class on day 2 and before class on day 3, I went driving around, looking for things, taking in all the sights. I love exploring!
There is always time to look at wildflowers.
Laurel told me this church, which was in the Eugenia Price novels, was a must-see. When she said Eugenia is buried in the adjoining cemetery, I asked for directions. Something was happening inside the church, so I didn’t go inside.
I wondered around among the graves, but didn’t take many photos. It was tempting, because I saw a plot called “Graves” and another one called “Coffin”. There was also one called “Outlaw”. These were people’s names, of course.
I met someone who showed me what I was looking for.
The next morning I drove through the Victorian neighborhood of Brunswick, just being a looky-loo. It isn’t often I get to see such fabulous houses or such a variety of architecture, so I was definitely gawking.
For sale. I wonder how much they are asking. I ducked it (DuckDuckGo is my preferred search engine) and saw there are 800-1600 homes for sale there. Not gonna find this one easily.
Churches on every corner. I didn’t have time to capture them all, but none were the plain-Janes of Tulare County.
No kidding!
I couldn’t figure out the meaning of this. Finally my host explained it to me. It means that bridges ice up sooner than the roads do.
These flowers were profuse and beautiful. I bought a wildflower guide to learn the name. None of the people I was hanging out with had much interest in wildflowers, definitely not the way we have been going gaga in Tulare County this spring.
Marsh, marsh, marsh. This is one of the draws of the area. What’s the difference between a marsh and a swamp? Do people go wading out in the marshes? Are there wildflowers out there? wildlife? Do people drown? So many questions.
My wildflower guide was grossly inadequate.
But, it did have the name of this beauty, an unfortunate moniker of “Spiderwort”. What??
Trail Guy wanted me to show you Scout and the grandkitties as they appeared yesterday. They are almost 2 weeks old now.
Now, back to Georgia. It took some focused discipline to concentrate on painting a new way when there were so many new sights to see. I was a good student, but I was eager for the next stage of exploring the area after class.
I want to know how many of the outbuildings were slave quarters, now referred to as “tabby cabins” because of the building material, called “tabby”.
This was not a fancy plantation house; the owners had their fancy home in Savannah.
The wildflowers weren’t profuse like they are in Three Rivers and most parts of California right now, but they were present.
Fresh flowers on the mantel of the fireplace in the building that housed the bathrooms.
Fresh flowers in the bathroom too.
I took the official tour of the plantation house. Our guide was knowledgable but less than vigorous, so the outbuildings were not included.
The rooms felt crowded to me. This is probably because we are giants compared to the era when those folks were alive.
Someone spent many hours knitting this bedspread, but what else was there to do, besides tell slaves what to do? So hard to imagine that life.
On the way to Laurel’s house after we painted, she dropped me off at the beach. THE ATLANTIC OCEAN BEACH!
It rained on me while the sun was also shining. I was ridiculously happy about it all.
Lots of weird jellyfish, and I only found 3 shells, which I left on the railing when I put my shoes back on.
After our visit at Laurel’s house, where she gave me a much needed private lesson in brush washing (how have my brushes survived my ignorance all these years?), I went to find the lighthouse that was featured in Eugenia Price’s novels, where I first learned of St. Simons Island. This is not the lighthouse.
THIS is the lighthouse! It is so much fancier than I imagined, all dressed up in a well manicured park area, surrounded by perfectly maintained historic brick buildings.
Look at these shadows on the side of the lighthouse. And you can bet there weren’t perfectly pruned shrubs around it in the era of the book I read.
I wonder if this lightkeeper’s cottage was the original. I wasn’t there during touring hours.
I walked back to the car along the beach, just full of gratitude that I got to be there and see these places.
Leaving for a trip involves lots of preparations. Whether or not there are specific deadlines, there is a need to finish things. This is mostly due to not knowing what else will be stacked up when I return.
Besides, if I am learning to paint plein air, maybe I’d better finish all my working-from-photos-in-the-studio paintings because what if I hate them all when I get home?
These paintings have been varnished and are drying.
These paintings are all that remain to be finished in the big goal of 32 new paintings.
These are actually finished now, but I didn’t photograph them in their final state for you.
Scout is waiting for me and I am waiting for our grandkitties.
This one is finished now, and very very wet. Will I hate it when I return because I will be completely sold out to plein air painting?
SCOUT HAD 3 LITTLE TABBIES and 2 GINGERS! THEY ARRIVED ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 5. 2 TABBIES HAVE TAILS, THE REST DO NOT.
This is the small stash of some supplies I for the workshop. The rest have been ordered and now I need to learn to pack them correctly. We have been also instructed to bring a few photos in case it rains so we can paint indoors. See? Studio painting is okay! Take that, you Plein Air Snobs (one of which I hope to NOT become)
To top it off, I discovered that I thought I had mailed 5 Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names but I didn’t actually send them. What a goof. I am sorry, and you know who you all are because I emailed you and then sent you your delayed orders.
And, FINALLY, my business phone is working again. I wonder how many missed calls; there was no voice mail the past 4 weeks, so I’ll never know. The number remains the same as the previous 17 years. (It is on my contact page.)
I might need a secretary. Or a nap. Or some calming knitting.
