Category: Photography

Spring is Short so Enjoy it Now!

Spring is exceedingly short, a beautiful season that could be cut off by a quick few days of heat. Last week in one of my regular posts of watching paint go slowly onto a canvas, I ended the post with a photo of my yard (“the yard”, “our yard”, the place outside of my home, oops, our home and my studio, etc.) and that photo received the comments. I think I can figure out what you, O Blog Reader, wants to see more than watching wet oil paint land on canvas.

Today we will have a spring fling thing.

These tiny blue flowers have the odd name of Speedwell, or Bird’s Eye Speedwell.

Baby-blue-eyes might be my favorite. You have to know where to look for them, and I do. Every year. They are earlier this year than usual.

These tiny bright spots should be called Magenta Maids, but the real name is Red Maids.

Looks like popcorn, but these are actually the bloom on Miner’s Lettuce.

Miner’s Lettuce and Fiddleneck are the earliest wildflowers in Three Rivers.

Last week Blog Reader Anne asked if I ever sit in the white chairs. Indeed I do, and Tucker often joins me.

But then Pippin butts in.

He’s kind of irresistible.

(Jackson isn’t very social nor is he loving or even friendly. He’s fine—Thanks for your concern.)

The flowers behind the white chairs have the unlovely name of “freeway daisies”. When the nursery owner showed them to me about 25 years ago, I said, “Those leaves are hideous so I bet they’ll do well in my yard.” The leaves without the flowers look sort of spiky, but the prolific flowers and easy propagation have overcome any objections on my part, although they do clash in color with the flowering quince. Since the deer don’t eat either of them and they bloom, I can handle a bit of color clashiness.

A few days ago, a dear friend tiptoed up to the front porch and left this incredible pot of tulips. They don’t grow well around here, so they are a HUGE floral treat.

They look electrified in the morning sun!

Just hanging around the tulips caused me to look for other things to photograph in the yard.

This guy is early too. It is profuse in the pots by my studio all summer long.

Finally, I saw this freesia in my not-quite-awakened lawn (the one I let grow tall in the summer so Tucker and I can play hide-and-seek in the grass). How did it get there??

I love spring. LOVE IT!! Especially in Three Rivers.

Three Rivers

Happy 2024!

If you receive this in your email and want to see the photo, click on the title “Happy 2024”.

(no reason for the photo other than I like it)

THANK YOU for joining me on my workday musings, day in and day out, week after week after month after month after year after year!

2024 Calendar is Here

This year’s calendar is photographs of Mineral King from the odd and beautiful summer of 2023.

“Odd” because the damaged road limited access to only a handful of intrepid cabin folks, but not the public. (Stay safe, all y’all, but you cabin folks are on your own.)

“Beautiful” because the winter had been phenomenal, with water running in every possible drainage and going strong most of the summer, the tallest grasses in memory, abundant wildflowers, and greenery through September.

I chose to not post about Mineral King in the summer because it just seemed wrong to rub people’s noses into the fact that it was gorgeous but inaccessible.

When it was time to choose the calendar theme, I decided to share the beauty that many people missed. Good idea? Bad idea? Everything is a mixed bag.

As the back of the calendar explains, seeing Mineral King at its most beautiful reminds us all that even when we can’t get there, this beloved place endures.

The calendar is $20 (including tax), plus $3 shipping for one, $4 for two, and $7 for three (shipped in 2 separate packages). If that sounds pricey, be thankful that I am not charging for those overpriced cardboard mailers, and that I am not charging the entire mailing price. Just wanted you to know this, in case you were thinking of making do in 2024 with one of those freebie calendars that advertise a business or show you places that you will probably never see.

There are several ways to get a Mineral King 2024 calendar:

From me in person (no mailing costs that way) either just around, or at the Holiday Bazaar at the Three Rivers Memorial Building on November 18
Order from my website store
Visit the Three Rivers Historical Museum, either in person or on their website.
Put an old-fashioned check in the old-fashioned mail to old-fashioned me (P.O. Box 311, Three Rivers, CA 93271)
Be related to me and wait until Christmas

Short Glimpse of Fall Color in Three Rivers

Fall in Three Rivers is often late, subtle, or hidden in smoke. Most of the trees are evergreens, whether a variety of oaks or even some conifers. Some of the deciduous trees are also oaks, and they simply have green leaves that fall off without any hooplah. That doesn’t stop me from hunting fall color. In fact, the few places of color really stand out against all the brown, green, and gray.

After a number of years living here, I know where to look for the prettiest colors. Here are a few of the autumn leaf displays that I anticipate each year.

Flowering pear with a small glimpse of a brilliant Chinese pistache in the distance

Crape myrtle (some special unnamed variety)

Redbuds make yellowleaves. (Yes, I know, “yellow leaves”, not one word, but it goes with “redbud” as one word.)

Chinese pistache are the champions of fall color in Three Rivers.

By the time this post goes live, many of these leaves will be gone.

Three Rivers

Cabin Life, Chapter Three

Puttering

What does one do in a place without electricity, internet, cell phones, or even a working landline? (“Working” being the important word, since we no longer have a phone but rely on our neighbor’s intermittent line.)

An aspect of cabin living at a slower pace is the concept of puttering. Puttering is aimlessly doing a bit of this, a bit of that.

Sometimes I just start polishing our wood stove.

Sometimes I rearrange the collection of peculiar found items and pretty rocks.

Occasionally I wander around with my camera, looking for new angles and ways the sunshine hits things.

Recently I was curious about the various temperatures of all the flowing water. So, we walked around with a thermometer and recorded the temperatures, then played a guessing game with neighbors as to which was the coldest, and which was the warmest*.

Easily entertained, yeppers.

*Warmest: Chihuahua; Coldest: Spring Creek

cabin life

Washing the Mud Out of Our Eyes With Wildflowers

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Yesterday was fascinating and ugly, so today we need to recover from the visual assault of all the gray, brown, silt, mud, and sand. These are photos that I took on April 22, so by now I think most of the wildflowers are about finished in Three Rivers, at least on the bank behind our house. They last quite awhile if you drive further up, not that you can go on the Mineral King Road. But maybe you can explore the North or South Forks. (Just keep looking south so that you only see north-facing slopes.)

First, Tucker wanted to say hello. (I’d rather have my cats visit me in the studio than keep the rug vacuumed, and yes, I have done some work in my studio lately but it isn’t interesting enough to show you any photos or to talk about it.)

I’m done talking now.

Hope you are feeling better now that we washed the mud out of our eyes.

Three Rivers wildflowers

Fascinating and Ugly

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You may recall that there was some serious rain this winter in Three Rivers. I was fascinated by all the rushing water and posted a few times about it in March. March 11, March 12, and March 13. (Probably posted in January and February too, but who wants to chase down all those links?)

One result of that enormous amount of water is that Kaweah Lake filled up very quickly. Now, the Army Corps of Engineers is letting water out as fast as possible to make room for the large amount of anticipated snowmelt. This means we can now walk down at the lake bottom again, and wow, is it ever fascinating and ugly.

Looking upstream from the Slick Rock parking area; Alta Peak is visible with snow on it and Blossom Peak has three points on the far right.

Normally when the lake is this low, this gate is open and we drive farther down. Not this time.

There’s a culvert beneath our feet here. It had to be roaring through to create this canyon.

The water is still flowing through the culvert; that is Highway 198 above.

Somebody was here when the mud was still squishy.

Driftwood galore.

So many layers of different types of dirt: silt, fine sand, coarse sand, all so thick.

It started getting a little squishy.

Look how deep this stuff is!

Too bad backhoes and trucks can’t come get this for fill on all the washed out roads, for future sandbags, and just to allow the lake to hold more water. But this is owned by the government, which isn’t exactly known for practical thinking or helpful practices.

Weirdly fascinating, definitely ugly. Life in Three Rivers can be so varied and interesting; if one must live in Tulare County, I vote for Three Rivers (although Exeter is an awfully nice town if you like town living, I dearly loved living in Lemon Cove, and Springville is quite beautiful in springtime.)

Tomorrow we will wash our eyes out with some wildflowers.

A post about walking on the lake bottom in March of 2020 is here. . . scroll down for the lake pictures.

Kaweah Lake Lake Kaweah

More Yardening Photos

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This post about yardening is not about procrastination; it is about pure enjoyment of one of the most beautiful springs in recent memory. Is it just Three Rivers?

Our cats have always loved feather grass. They try to kick the stuffing out of it when they are kittens, and then lie on top of it or try to hide in it when they grow up.

Basil was the only item that the fantastic plant nursery did not have; I found it at our local hardware store the next day.

Here is the studio to make this post a little bit about my art business.

It is a mystery as to why hollyhock keep volunteering when the deer bite them down to nothing.

In the past several years, I have weeded all around the baby poppies and ended up with a nice showing. This year I decided to skip that task, maybe because it rained almost every weekend. The result is tall weeds and almost no poppy plants.

Chances are there will be very few blossoms.

Had to end with a studio photo (and a bit of the painting workshop) to remind myself to get back to work.

Finding Information (Instead of Woo-woo Inspiration)

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I was procrastinating (and yardening) in order to think. Sometimes procrastination is simply waiting for inspiration. If you are a person of faith, that is a time of waiting for the Lord to show the way through some of life’s more puzzling situations.

One of my puzzling situations was how to paint the mountains accurately on a commissioned oil painting when I didn’t have the right photos. Sure, Part A is in Photo A, Part C is in Photo C, but then Photo B doesn’t match or fit because it was taken from a different location or there is a tree blocking what I need to see.

I can fake mountains and foothills pretty well, but this particular painting is calling for accuracy. Well, actually, Mr. Customer is calling for accuracy in the mountains, and I fully understand and endorse his desire. The point of the painting for him, besides recalling a moment in time, is to be able to see specifically which peak is where.

I had a good start, but there were some significant difficulties, such as what happens between Castle Rocks and Sawtooth. I could make a few white dabs, but when Mr. Customer and I try to name peaks, our efforts would be stymied by misleading information. (Heaven forbid that we participate in dis and mis information!)

The answer came while having lunch on Rocky Hill.

Let’s crop and enhance it.

Nope, this isn’t the span of mountains I am seeking. It’s in this photo, but those beeves are in the way.

I cropped out the cattle, messed with the exposure so the mountains were very distinct against the sky, and VOILA! (That is French for THIS IS WHAT I WANT AND NEED! Maybe. I don’t speak French.)

Was I seeking inspiration?

Maybe. People who aren’t artists think there is some sort of woo-woo inspiration thing that causes artists to do our thing.

I am more practical. There is beauty everywhere, subjects that would make great paintings, but as a professional, I have to take into account what my customers (and potential customers) want.

So, more than inspiration, I was seeking information, but needed help to find it, and then, right on time, the Lord provided. (If you are not a person of faith, you might credit “the universe”. That’s too woo-woo for me.)

custom art custom oil painting oil paintings Sierra Nevada art

Lunch on Rocky Hill

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Rocky Hill is private land, in the hands of several people. One of those people is a friend, and she arranged for us to go to the very top. I had asked her if we could have permission to climb it with The Farmer and Hiking Buddy, and she said she has access to the top and can take people, and yes, she would love to take us up. Then Tulare County had a flood.

After things settled down from the flood, we learned of a tour to see the pictographs on Rocky Hill. Our friend was part of the tour, and she suggested that we go to the top for lunch after the tour. You betcha!

Get this: there is a paved road to the very top of this big rocky hill, and by “big” I mean 5 miles in circumference and 3 miles in diameter (not sure where that got measured). Friend has a key, of course, and we loaded up chairs, a table, lunch, and ourselves, and headed up. And up. And up some more. 2.4 miles, specifically.

Friend had laughed to herself when I asked if we could climb it. She later told me she wasn’t having any part of climbing but was happy to drive up with us.

It was so very very perfect. Very very very perfect. A perfect way to spend the afternoon. Perfection.

Shut up, Central California Artist and show some photographs!

At the base—the hill sloping into the frame on the right is Rocky Hill.

That blue line is the Friant-Kern Canal. The wildflowers are mustard.

This is looking west.

And this is the unparalleled view of the Sierra. (Lots of people say “the sierras”, but it is the Sierra Nevada Mountains; thus “the Sierra” is the correct shortened term. You’re welcome. P.S. My dad taught me that.)

The tiny blue piece of water is actually called “Hamilton Lake”, and only appears in wet years.

The creek in the distance is Yokohl Creek, which did some real damage during the flood. People used to be able to remove sand from beneath the bridge, but some other people made them stop (for very petty reasons). Since then, the sand has piled deeper beneath the bridge and as a result, the creek flows very close to the underside of the bridge, which means debris builds up quickly during high water and then the water finds its way around the bridge, washing out the approach. Water always finds its way. (Ever heard of “unintended consequences”?)