Jaci Dawn

I’ve been carrying my camera to work for months now. Every time we go on a walk during breaks, I carry my camera. Half the time, I see nothing interesting. The other half of the time, I make you, the readers of my blog, suffer.

Guess which one tonight is?

I was waiting for my walking partner to get ready today and one of the senior vice presidents was standing at the counter. Being observant, she noticed my camera. And asked about it. I briefly explained the challenge of taking one photo per day for 365 days.

“Is this like ‘Julie & Julia’?” She asked lightly.

“No, not nearly so intense and I was blogging anyway.”

Then we discussed the movie (which was great). We both had to twist our husband’s arms to watch it, and both of our husbands thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

But I digress. I just thought it was funny that she hadn’t noticed my camera before. It’s not a little camera.

So, off to walk. And I’m desperate for a photo today, especially as I knew I would not have any other opportunity (I was invited to a party among strangers tonight). (More on that later.)

I’ve been thinking about taking this particular photo for a long time. I live where lichen takes over every thing, and there are these strange circles of lichen on the sidewalks. They are between an inch to 3 inches (2.5cm – 7.6cm) in diameter, never much larger.

As I stooped to take this photo, my walking partner said, “Are you photographing bird poop?”

She thinks this every time I kneel to get a photo. So maybe sometime I will really have to take a photo of goose poop. You, my readers, should be worried.

I assured her that I was taking a photo of lichen.

“That’s likin’?” She frowned.

“Moss. Lichen. Grows on rocks and trees.” And sidewalks.

It’s very strange stuff, lichen.And very cool looking. I think I need to explore it more.

Anyway, after work I had this party to attend which was a little reunion party for me. I found an old roommate of mine from the late 1970’s on FaceBook. She happens to live in the Portland area (and has lived here for 20+ years) and she happens to be having a birthday next week. A group of her present friends threw her a party & she asked me to join them for a mini-reunion. It was a lot of fun but it was also very late. She’s changed a lot, all in a very positive way. And she hasn’t changed at all, also in a very positive way.

But now I am home and I am uploading my two photos of lichen to my blog.

Be thankful I didn’t take pics of the goose poop. Because, believe me, it is more abundant than the lichen.

ttfn-

The apple trees are in full bloom.

Originally, they were on this side of the garden fence but we discovered that Murphy loves apples. He’ll eat all the green apples off the tree. So we moved the fence to protect the apples. A fence probably seems redundant since the espalier forms a fence, too, but – again: Murphy.

The trees are Don’s babies. Eventually, he’d like espaliers all around the veggie garden, and probably up the sides of the house.

I don’t mind: the fruit is wonderful to have!

Speaking of fruit, the reason I was outside taking pictures was that Iwas hoping to see one of Don’s mystery bees.

Nobody was home.

I’m hopeful: it will be a nice weekend and I’m sure the bees will be busy pollinating the apple blossoms. There are a lot of apple blossoms.

I’m thinking:

Apple pie

Apple butter

Applesauce

Apple crisp

And just plain old apples.

I’m making me hungry.

Don has discovered new bees in the yard. At least he tells me they are bees. I haven’t seen them yet.

But I have seen the holes in the ground where they live.

Don told me where there were several holes, so I went out to see if I could see these mystery bees. Of course, the sun had already disappeared behind the clouds and all sensible bees had gone to bed for the night. But I had no problem finding the colony.

Admittedly, these could be earthworm holes, but they were in the same vicinity as the other holes (the dug-out ones), and there were several of them together, so I included them in my investigations.

This is a bee’s nest.

If these are like our little shiny green agopostemon bees, then they are stingerless. I am going to assume they are for now, since Murphy hasn’t been stung and he trots over this section of yard several times in a day.

Donald says these bees have a black abdomen and a black-and-gold thorax, and they’re closer to honey bee size. Again, I didn’t see one, so I don’t know. It definitely bears watching, however.

The more bees we can encourage, the better the world will be. (Especially if they don’t sting because Murphy is allergic to bees stings.)

That’s all I wanted to share. Holes in the ground. 🙂

Not quite. But I was searching for some great photo of the day to share. I’ve been upstairs all evening problem-solving an elf (I promise – I’ll post pics as soon as I am finished) and daylight is fading fast.

The sun was glinting golden off of the fir trees right out the south-facing upstairs window, so I tried to get a photo of that through the glass.

😦 I just couldn’t capture that last-minute-in-the-sun glow. All those little pollen cones were golden yellow (which is what color my cvar will be when the next good dry wind comes up and all that golden pollen is released to the wind, but I digress).

Then I looked down.

Into The Artist’s yard. I love this guy’s yard. The couple who live next to us are elderly: he used to teach art at the community college. From the minute I saw his back yard and learned he made all of this, I’ve considered him a kindred spirit.

My husband looked and said, “Hey, he makes weird things like you do.”

Learning to weld is definitely something I want to do.

This is just the backyard. Their front yard sports more. They don’t have a lawn or flower beds: they have sculptures and a few trees.

I don’t think Don would go for it, but it makes me think. 🙂

(hack hack) – I use hair spray instead of an expensive fixative for pastels, a little trick I learned from my high school art teacher. It’s the same thing, just cheaper.

Oh. Did I mention pastels?

I did. Last summer when I had the crazy idea to have a studio, I decided I should spend one hour every day sketching. I bought some cheap pastels & a newsprint art pad and sketched about six times.

I’m back in my little studio and I actually have a bigger project going, but it requires waiting on glue & drying & time. I don’t want to take photos of it until it is finished, so after I applied the glue that needs to cure 24 hours to it, I decided I should do one of those practice sketches in pastels.

I haven’t worked seriously with pastels since high school. That’s 35 years ago, plus. I decided tonight that I remember why.

I smeared & smudged & forgot how all this works together, but eventually began to feel my way forward with a remake of a sketch I did in oil pastels about 3 years ago. It’s one of my animals-transforming-to-faeries sketches (or is it faeries transforming into animals?): a tree-climbing faerie caught in the act of becoming a squirrel (or the other way around).

Here’s the original:

I wasn’t happy with it, so reworking it tonight seemed like an ideal way to work through what I don’t like about the original.

Here’s what I did tonight:

I can see that pastels are not really my preferred media, but I can also see how they benefit me as an artist and will help me grow. For one thing, I have to give up trying to be perfect.

I did not pre-sketch the squirrel in the second rendering. I did it all entirely free-hand, working with my mistakes as I went. That part was fun: seeing how I could handle the mistakes.

I’m not entirely happy with either sketch, but since that is all they are – prelim sketches for an eventual painting – I can afford the mistakes. I can afford to not like them: that’s how I grow.

Here they are side-by-side, just for the heck of it:

I have a very limited palette  of chalk pastels & a more extensive oil pastel palette. I like the arch of the second squirrel’s tail and he looks a little more life-like in pose. The first one looks a little stilted.

Neither one is perfect, but boy were they fun!

I went out and captured some more textures with my camera. These were all accidental captures. I wanted photos of the Dandelions or the bumblebees or the flowering currant. It just so happens that those photos didn’t come out and these did.

The concrete we poured onto a rhubarb leaf last summer (left over from sinking my clothesline post). Love the cracks & texture.

The weathered side to a cedar pot for one of Don’s many Bonsai trees.

The inside cup of the tulips that finally bloomed today.

Until tomorrow –

Jaci

When we drove up to the house tonight, this is what greeted us.

The sun was at a perfect angle, lighting up the rhododendrons.

It was a simple “wow” moment.

It came at a wonderful time, too. I pulled into the parking lot contemplating the stupidity of supposedly highly educated and well-brought-up people. (Insert a sarcastic “hahahaha” here)

Don & I chose to stop at our favorite little wine bar (it’s something of a hole-in-the-wall that draws people from all professions: we have seen former governor Barbara Roberts there). Vinos has a little wine tasting nearly every Friday. It’s a wine bar that is more like “Cheers”, with a little for anyone and everyone, not expensive, great atmosphere (there is none: you create it) and absolutly no ambiance but the personality of the man who owns it (Bruce) and his employees. It’s the best place in the greater Portland Metro area to have a nice tasting of specialized wine (mostly reds). Bring your own eats.

We’ve been going to Vinos for years and have met a lot of fascinating people and made a few friends.

Tonight, we were surrounded by folks who were obviously medical professionals (not the first time we’ve met doctors there, but the first time for this group of folks)). I love to people watch and admired the interesting dangly earrings of the 60-something women while they chitted companionably together about their lives and other medical professionals they know. Then one couple decided to make our acquaintance and asked a few genial ice-breaker questions. You know: Do you live nearby?

Nearby would be the highly desirable old hippie neighborhood of Sellwood, which is now a high-rent Yuppie district. Lovely old homes with small yards, wonderful landscaping, and very kid-friendly. Very granola: bike to work, carry baby in a sling, ride a bike to work.

We live in Oregon City, which is a lovely community in itself: historical homes (many on the National register), museums, wide streets, beautiful parks.

The man replied to our answer, “Do you ever feel looked down on because you live in Oregon City?”

My mind raced forward with a lot of come-backs, but I wisely held my tongue and replied simply that we liked being blue collar. (Imagine that: choosing to be blue collar, sipping wine in a run-down store front leased by a wonderful wine guy with no pretentions and sharing that wine tasting at a folding table, on folding chairs, with someone who seems to think that because you live five miles south of Portland City proper, that you’re somehow in the podunks? It was really quite humorous.

THEN, the guy said (he must have been drinking before he showed up at Vinos!), “Has Oregon City ever become gentrified? You do know what that word means?”

I about kicked him under the table, but consideration for my husband (and Bruce and all his employees and the countless other folks who frequent Vinos – without ever prejudging someone else) kept me from doing so. Several comebacks crossed my mind at lightning speed, but I decided to steer the conversation more toward his profession.

Don’t ask me how I did it: I don’t remember. I said something about Sellwood being an old hippie community & back when I was having babies delivered by a midwife, that many of my friends (one, really) lived in Sellwood.

And oh boy, did they love the midwife part. Well, what the loved was the breast-feeding in public part. The being ahead of the times in the early 1980s and breast feeding in public part. Now, midwives are in every hospital. We were suddenly ground-breaking non-traditionalists who were somehow in synch with the gentrification of Sellwood (you figure that part out: it’s beyond me).

That morphed into a short lesson on the Oregon Trail & the struggles of women in child bearing & pregnancy.

So all ended well, but I still couldn’t shake that guy’s remarks. It’s the first time we’ve ever been insulted at Vino’s because we didn’t choose to live the white collar life within the boundaries of the City of Portland. Are people really that ignorant? Are professional people really that ignorant?

(The answer is “No – this one guy was a boor and totally clueless. Probably has never had a callous in his life, except for ill-fitting polished leather shoes.”)

Don’t think I’m upset or angry about it: I think it’s funny.

Then I pulled into our driveway and was greeted by the sun-kissed rhododendron.

Yes. We live in Oregon City. God is good, the sun is shining, and we’re proud to be blue collar folks. And never ask a grammarian if she knows the meaning of a word.

“You’re an ignoramus, right? You do know the meaning of that word?”

(I didn’t say it. I just thought it.)

I find that most people do not pay attention to the little things.

I don’t mean the little things like the molehills we make into mountains in our lives.

I mean the teeny, tiny wonderful things like what grows in the cracks of the bricks.

Oh, sure – we see it there. And our first impulse is to get the hose and use a powerful spray of water to get rid of the moss before it weakens the mortar.

But we don’t bend in and peer closely to really see the moss.

There’s an entire forest of spores growing there.

There are so many colors there! The tiny thread-like shadows and the gossamer white hairs!

Instead of stopping and smelling the roses, maybe we should stop and examine the spores.

Or not.

(At least I didn’t take a photo of goose poop, which is what my walking partner thought I was doing when I stopped to snap these photos! Aren’t you grateful?)