A Month of Orange: Impatiens

Now that it is flannel shirt weather, the impatiens that drooped during hot weather have perked up.  They'll look good until they get zapped by a hard frost.  The older I get the more difficult it is for me to maintain long beds of flowers, so I've taken taken to scattering around large plastic pots of the shade loving flowers in my garden.  An added benefit is that if frost is forecast early in the fall, I can drag the pot into the garage over night and keep the color going a little longer.

Sometimes less is more.

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

A Month of Orange: Mums

The weather is cooling down, and some of the annual flowers have already taken a one way trip to the compost heap.  Cool nights and damp weather agrees with the garden mums and the pansies that have stepped up to take the place of the summer exhausted plants.  I like this cobalt blue pottery planter, but discovered that any old plastic pot can show a pop of color with just some hardware store spray paint.  The blue pot on the left is an example.

October Beauty, Close to Home

There is something poignant about clear blue October days like today.  There is still warmth and color, and everyone knows there is a limit to the shirt sleeve days left in the year. The hummingbird has left for the year, the robins are still hopping through the grass, but are silent.  The monarch butterflies are feeding in preparation for their long journey south.

I decided to take a walk at our local botanical gardens this morning, and take advantage of the sun and warmth.  Many of the annual flowers are finished and have been dug out, but color can still be found in the hardy butterfly bushes, sumac, mums, marigolds, pansies and flowering kale.  This statue of a wood nymph, is a favorite of mine.

I spotted a lazy bumblebee on these glorious marigolds.  They were a splash of autumn color, inter-planted with red and gold coleus.  

I don't always appreciate pots, chairs, and trellises painted in bright colors, but somehow in autumn, they look just right.

The garden features lots of natural wood benches, places to sit and contemplate the flowers and trees, and listen to the birds.  Most have a saying carved into the back, and this one, from Wisconsin conservationist Aldo Leopold spoke in particular to me today:

"We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

One can only hope.

Summertime, Summertime

Recently I took one of my annual summer driving trips north to visit my dear aunt, attend the opening of the yearly Miniature Show at the Paint Box Gallery, and hang out with my husband's sister and her husband.  I took an extra day and spent the night in Two Rivers so I could see sunrise over Lake Michigan, and thanks to a tremendous thunder storm was also treated to a rainbow out over the water.

These are just a few of the photos I took in an effort to bring home some of the beauty I saw during my rambles.

I do love summer in Wisconsin.

 

This was taken just before the storm hit the Manitowoc and Two Rivers area.  I wanted to see the old fishing village, but they were closing just as I arrived.  I was luckier with a lovely private garden, West of the Lake, which was rich in peonies, irises, and other perennial garden plants.

Every year I try to see something I've never seen before, so I took a short side trip to Mishicot, thinking to tour the schoolhouse historical museum, which turned out to be only open two days a week, and not the day I was there.  I also had my heart set on an antique shop/art gallery, but that was also closed when I rolled in town, and wouldn't open until a time I needed to be on the road.  The small town did have a covered bridge, closed to vehicular traffic, but open to bicycles and foot traffic, so the trip wasn't a total wash out.

I adore antique and resale shops, and couldn't resist the classic shape and delicious texture on this 1950s metal lawn chair in Kewaunee.

I've been visiting Algoma since I was a child, and find myself always drawn to the marina area where the fishing boats come and go all the time, though the old commercial fishing boats are mostly painted up and posed for the tourists to photograph.  The red lighthouse is a landmark I revisit every time I go through.

It had been decades since I visited Washington Island, back when my husband and I were first married.  And then we took over our bicycles and toured what I remember as mostly gravel roads.  This time I took the convertible, and covered lots more ground with much less physical effort.  I also visited Nelsens and joined the Bitters Club, something I had wanted to do for ages. This scene was shot at School House Beach, a lovely place with white stones instead of sand.

Luckily for me, I don't have any real schedules to adhere to, so I drive the most scenic routes I can.  This scene was taken at a wayside not far from Fond du Lac, and that's Lake Winnebago in the background.

The trip was fine, so fine I decided I'm returning later in the month for a workshop at The Clearing, in Ellison Bay, another place I have never been before.  I've been feeling guilty that the only art I've been doing is my weekly drive to  Whitewater for figure drawing, but I am hoping that the upcoming one day workshop on intuitive collage will get me going again. 

Mother's Day 2012

 

It's Mother's Day, the unofficial kick-off to the gardening game in southern Wisconsin.  The gift of choice for moms is often something from the local garden center, a fact I forget when I headed to my local nursery for impatiens and sweet alyssum yesterday.  It was a mob scene, only lacking tailgating in the packed parking lot to complete the image I had in my mind of football.  

 

I have cut back on the numbers of annual plants I purchase.  For one thing I have many shade loving perennials, hostas, ferns, bleeding hearts and the like, enough to divide and share.  Like loaves and fishes, I never seem to run out.  I do buy pansies as early as I dare for a splash of spring color after the snow drops and before the lilacs.  I also enjoy planting impatiens for midsummer color in the shady parts of the lawn, and alyssum for the front border, which gets a but more sun.

A good example of a perennial that bring lots of pleasure each year is the honeysuckle vine growing on the garage.  It's there mostly because our yearly hummingbird visitors like it so much.  We can count on the tiny birds arriving just in time for the showy orange and yellow trumpet-shaped flowers.  I like this time of year, when everything seems to be orange and purple.  This photo shows the purple pompoms of the allium plants, a visual complement to the honeysuckle.

The east side of the house is most colorful now, when the oriental poppies, gifts from a gardening friend, bloom.  Because they are in a place I don't see too often, I have to remember to take a walk around to see them.  There's a honeysuckle here too,  and a purple border plant to should know the name of but do not.  Soon these beauties will be done, and the pink peonies will take their place, and when they finish, they'll be replaced by bee balm.

These iris were also a gift from a friend, and this is the first year they have really done well, perhaps because of our unusually gentle winter.  When I was digging out the despised bindweed and creeping bellflower yesterday I accidentally broke off a stem of the iris.  I brought it inside and discovered it has a wonderful sweet scent.  Getting to see its delicate petals and smell its scent went a long way toward easing my sore joints and muscles, the result of digging, planting and watering. 

Happy Mother's Day to all of you who are mothers, have mothers, or had them once.  Enjoy this beautiful day.

Red

It has been too warm lately for me to want to work upstairs in my little studio.  I'm feeling too lazy to do anything much, except maybe take some photos, so yesterday I went looking for red things around here.  I like red.  It's hard to use in the house, even though it's is sometimes thought to be good luck, because it's so strong.  My favorite coffee cup is red, just like the one Greg House has on the television show.  I have red flowers, bee balm, impatiens, geraniums, planted to attract hummingbirds to the yard.  My favorite fountain pen is red, and we have an older red Cavalier convertible that we use in the summer. My front door is painted a sort of raspberry red, though the sun fades it so much that it turns lavender pink, and I have to give it a fresh coat.  In summer I have my toenails painted red, though I give it up in colder months when shoes and wooly socks make red toes irrelevant. I like using red when I paint, though I tend to warmer reds, earthy reds like Indian red or vermillion. I love the scent of rose madder genuine, but like the roses from which it is made, the pigment fades, so I rarely use it.  There is an interesting website about pigments which discusses the symbolism of red here.

A Sunday poem, featuring a red-breasted robin -

Morning Talk
By Roberta Hill Whiteman

        —for Melissa L. Whiteman

“Hi, guy,” said I to a robin  
perched on a pole in the middle  
of the garden. Pink and yellow  
firecracker zinnias, rough green  
leaves of broccoli,
and deep red tomatoes on dying stems  
frame his still presence.

“I’ve heard you’re not
THE REAL ROBIN. Bird watchers have  
agreed,” I said.”THE REAL ROBIN  
lives in England. They claim
your are misnamed and that we ought  
to call you ‘a red-breasted thrush’  
because you are
indigenous.”

He fluffed up. “Am I not
Jis ko ko?” he cried, “that persistent  
warrior who carries warmth
northward every spring?”
He seemed so young, his red belly  
a bit light and his wings, still
faded brown. He watched me
untangling the hose to water squash.

“Look who’s talking!” he chirruped.  
“Your people didn’t come
from Europe or even India.  
The turtles say you’re a relative  
to red clay on this great island.”
Drops of crystal water  
sparkled on the squash.

“Indigenous!” he teased  
as he flew by.

Summertime, Summertime

It was a cool and wet spring, but summer is turning out to be nice so far.  The other day my friend Lyn, visiting from Florida, emailed to say she is visiting her mother in town and to ask if we could meet for coffee.  Of course!  I drove us to nearby Milton, where an old church and former daycare has been transformed into a coffee shop and garden center.  I couldn't resist sharing some pictures.

This is Lyn, partially hidden behind a summery display of plants and garden art.  Everything is on sale, but, alas, my plantings all require shade, and my hostas have pretty much taken over the yard.  So, I enjoyed just looking and taking some photos.

The garden center is called Patty's Plants, and one of the things I enjoy is how nicely she displays her flowers and veggies.  I like the way she uses wheelbarrows,  garden seating, and rusty tools in creative and artistic ways.  Inspiration abounds!

Friends in My Garden

Spring is the nicest time in my shady backyard.  I love the yellow green of the new ferns, and the way the hostas and lily of the valley quickly grow, maybe as fast as corn in July.  These hardy plants grow where grass refuses to grow under the dry shade of the maple trees, which further endears them to me. But perhaps more than their hardiness and willingness to thrive despite lack of sunshine, I love them because my friend Kathy gave them to me, oh, maybe in 1992 or 1993, not long after we bought this house and decided to make a woodland garden where the thin grass used to be.

Kathy was an art teacher who lived up the block, and who used to join our little group for Friday morning breakfasts.  Little by little we got to know and like each other better, and part of that was because she had many hostas, ferns, beds of aggressive but fragrant lily of the valley, and was willing to share them with me.  We soon learned that digging in the soil was just one thing we enjoyed in common, and a friendship was born.

She and her husband Dave had a rustic cabin near Rhinelander, a simple A-frame place with no running water, an outhouse, a fire ring, set in the woods by a lake.  Heaven.  One spring she surprised me with a plastic pail of trillium taken from her property.  One or two still survive in my garden, hidden in the leaves of bluebells, but blooming to remind me of her friendship, even though she is no longer with us.

 Another neighborhood friend, Marcia, heard that I was looking for flowers that I could add to my shady beds, and she generously let me dig out a few bluebells.  Now, a couple decade later, I have drifts of the spring ephemerals, so many that I yank out fists full of volunteer plants that sneak into the grassy area where they are not welcome.  In a month they'll die back, and the area will only show Ehglish ivy and hostas, but in May the sea of blue never fails to remind me of the generosity of my neighboor friends.

All these plants are native, so they thrive despite punishing winter cold, summer heat and drought, and general neglect on my part.  Plants that aren't tough simply die out and are not replaced.  Because of their hardiness, I love to share them with other people looking for cost effective ways to landscape.  My school friends and ladies I've met since retiring have hauled away buckets of hostas, ferns, bleeding heart, buttercups, and yucca, and it makes me happy to be able to pas along the bounty.  Perhaps when they see their plants blooming they think of me, as I think of the women who have shared their bounty for my garden. 

Thin little leaves of wood fern, ribbed and toothed
By Frederick Goddard Tuckerman 1821–1873
from Sonnets, Third Series
                      IV

Thin little leaves of wood fern, ribbed and toothed,
Long curved sail needles of the green pitch pine,
With common sandgrass, skirt the horizon line,
And over these the incorruptible blue!
Here let me gently lie and softly view
All world asperities, lightly touched and smoothed
As by his gracious hand, the great Bestower.
What though the year be late? some colors run
Yet through the dry, some links of melody.
Still let me be, by such, assuaged and soothed
And happier made, as when, our schoolday done,
We hunted on from flower to frosty flower,
Tattered and dim, the last red butterfly,
Or the old grasshopper molasses-mouthed.

Crowds of Daffodils

Cool weather has made lots of our spring flowers a little late, but it has also kept my front garden colorful for two weeks already.  This is just a small patch of my daffodils.  They cheer me up every time I see them, and I planted about a decade ago so that I can cut with no hesitation.  This little garden has also been infested the last couple years with some purple flowers on stalks, and creeping charlie, but I'll worry about the invasives once the daffodils are done.  For now I want to just enjoy the exuberance of bloom.

BTW, these were taken with the camera that got wet on my last outdoor painting excursion.  Apparently it still works, though it doesn't make the "click" noise when I take the shot. I guess I can live with that.

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud   
  That floats on high o'er vales and hills,   
When all at once I saw a crowd,   
  A host of golden daffodils,   
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,      5
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.   
 
Continuous as the stars that shine   
  And twinkle on the Milky Way,   
They stretch'd in never-ending line   
  Along the margin of a bay:      10
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,   
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.   
 
The waves beside them danced, but they   
  Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:—   
A poet could not but be gay      15
  In such a jocund company!   
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought   
What wealth the show to me had brought:   
 
For oft, when on my couch I lie   
  In vacant or in pensive mood,      20
They flash upon that inward eye   
  Which is the bliss of solitude;   
And then my heart with pleasure fills,   
And dances with the daffodils.   

                                       --William Wordsworth

A Thursday Picture and Poem

Photoshopped photo taken in Colorado last summer

Summer seems to have arrived early here in southern Wisconsin, and I have been working outside digging in the flower beds and borders, and scrubbing  a year's gunk off the deck.  A word of advice - never build your deck around a maple tree.  Between the staining from rotting leaves in the fall, to all the little red flower-bud-thingys in spring, to the little brown seed helicopters that litter everywhere and sprout in the eves, it's just once darn mass after another.  I am whupped.  Tired.  Sore.  And I still need to get a flat of pink and white impatiens planted before they die in their little black plastic six-packs.  I'm headed to Door County tomorrow to see if I can get a watercolor juried into the Hardy Gallery, and to visit my aunt and sister-in-law.  So, I need to plant this afternoon.

But - I have been wanting to share a poem that a member of the Thursday painting studio gave me.  Here it is:

Monet Refuses the Operation

by Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no halos

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, and affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as an-

   gels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don't see,

to learn that the line I call the horizon

does not exist in sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of be-

   ing.

Fifty-four years before I could see

Rouen cathedral is built

of parallel shafts of sun,

and now you want to restore

my youthful errors; fixed

notions of top and bottom,

the illusion of three-dimensional space,

wisteria separate

from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you

The Houses of Parliament dissolve

night after night to become

a fluid dream of the Thames?

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don't know each other,

as if islands were lot the lost children

of one great continent.  The world

is flux, and light becomes what it touch-

   es,

becomes water, lilies on water,

above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow

and white and cerulean lamps,

small fists of passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that is would take long streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

To paint the speed of light!

Our weighted shapes, these verticals

burn to mix with air

and change our bones, skin, clothes

to gases.  Doctor,

if only you could see

how heaven pulls earth into its arms

and how infinitely the heart expands

to claim this world, blue vapor with-

   out end.

Getting Out: Rotary Gardens in Bloom

magnolia tree, Janesville's Rotary Gardens

Today is one of those perfect spring days in the Midwest, cool, sunny, calm.  Spring flowers are bursting into bloom all over the neighborhood, including my yard (along with the creeping violets and dandelions).  But I talked Dick into a walk to Rotary Gardens.  I had to find our membership card, buried in the desk over the winter, but I located it and we set off.  The local botanical garden is about a mile from our house, so walking there, wandering through the various gardens, and walking back is a bit over two miles.  It was a perfect walk to walk off our breakfast.

an early blooming hellabore - I think it's a Lenten Rose

some sort of weeping tree - a cherry?

a robin at the base of a forsythia

spring tulips and daffodils

Reminder

by Barb Cranford, in the Wisconsin Poets Calendar

If you don't stand idle at the study window

on a chore-laden spring morning

filled with bills, laundry, and house-cleaning,

you won't see a fat old woodchuck

ease around the bottom step of the porch

or four deer skip through your greening woods

just beyond the chickadee-busy birdbath.

Blooming Bowl and a Poem

Altered photo, from a trip to the florist

April has brought my daffodils up out of the ground, and the lilac leaves are the size of mouse ears.  We could use some moisture in the back yard to green up the grass, though.  Today we're planning a field tip to Racine to see the Watercolor Wisconsin show.

April Rain Song

by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you.

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.

the rain makes running pools in the gutter.

The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night--

And I love the rain.

Tea With Lemon?

11x14 inches, oil on canvas board

painted for the Inspiration All Around Us challenge

I have painting pretty darned fast lately because I have been participating in several online art challenges, with the idea that I will write an article for a regional art magazine.  Painting fast is a new thing for me, the former perfectionist, now going for quantity and hoping that all the practice will pay off.  I actually think it is.  For years, when I was teaching. I'd get a couple things done every month or two, and spend so much time slaving over them that I couldn't possibly let them go.  My sketch books were labored and perspired over too, hoarded, saved, left half empty.  No more.  I am cranking things out.  And guess what? I'm feeling pretty good about the results.

This little still life was painted for a challenge at the Inspiration All around Us blog.  The original teapot was shorter, and it had some sort of flowers or berries stuck in the spout, but they did not speak to me, so they were edited right out.  I am not wildly happy about the sort of orangy/beigy surface in the painting, but the blue under painting saves it from being too blah, or too similar to the lemons.  What attracted me to the reference photo was the strong light reflection on the fruit, and I think that shows in the final painting.

I'd probably be more critical in the dark cold days of winter, but spring has sprung here in southern Wisconsin, and people are outside in their yards, taking walks, riding bicycles. Daffodils are blooming and the robins are going wild in the flower bed.  I won't even say what the rabbits are up to.  In short, I am feeling happy and looking forward to longer warmer days.  I even went out and got some pots of pansies.  They go in clay pots that can be taken into the garage.  Sometimes it snows in April in these parts.

First Signs of Spring, and a poem

This was the week that I first heard robins when I woke.  This was the week that snowdrops replaced snow.  This was the week when the smallest of crocus bloomed in the brown grass.






Struck by Glory, by Alyse Rall
in the 2010 Wisconsin Poets Calendar

The plum blossoms are already fading
this year the rains fall
again and again.
One night last week
we were surprised by lightning
and ran out into the storm
bareheaded, laughing
we were struck
by Glory.

Rivulets of spring run through my body
and ache in me --
I know a place where melted crusts of snow in March
chatter down the gutters, and I remember
prancing barefoot in Wisconsin
across a lawn through snow-slush patches
to reach the sun-steamed sidewalk
feet burning ice cold
in the warm spring sun.

Anderson Gardens, Rockford

On the way home from our overnight stay at White Pines State Park, we stopped in Rockford to see the Anderson Japanese Gardens. I had hoped to see the gardens on a sunny day, but this visit was overcast and threatening rain. Luckily, these gardens with all their rocks, streams, pools, structures, trees and shrubs do not depend upon sunshine or blooming flowers for their beauty.

The paths meander. There are sculptures, shelters, bridges, all manner of beautifully crafted things to capture one's attention. There are benches and chairs scattered along the way, inviting the visitors to sit, observe and reflect. It was fairly quiet on this day, with only a couple school groups listening to explanations by volunteer docents. The ducks and koi loved these children with their hands full of treats.

Our local Rotary Botanical Gardens has a smaller Japanese Garden with many of the same elements, though there are are themed gardens as well. I was pleased by the single theme here, and hope to return to see the place in other seasons.

They have a nice web site you can visit here: http://andersongardens.org/

After Visiting the Garden

On Tuesday I visited a local painting group. This is a congenial group of women who meet each week, and who often paints flowers. While I don't particularly want to paint flowers, they are lots of fun, and always trying new techniques. Tuesday they were painting sunflowers, and I realized that most of my personal reference photos bit the dust this summer when my hard drive crashed, so I decided to trek over to Janesville's Rotary Gardens to take some new photos. It wasn't a sunny day, so no dramatic shadows, and also no sunflowers. The gardens are beautiful in any light though, good in visit any season. If you are a painter and want to adapt these for your own work, feel free. I'd love to see what you do.

There are formal French and Italian gardens, but I have a special fondness for the Japanese garden, with its paths, waterfalls, and statuary.

I actually prefer the Japanese bridge in fall or winter, since the contrast of red and green is very strong. When there are autumn leaves the bridge integrates into the scene more pleasantly, I think. Still, it's fun to stand on the bridge and watch the fish and turtles swim under.

There is statuary everywhere. This lady stand in an herb garden.

A carved head, rescued from a demolished building, peeks out behind flowers, adding a little delight to a stone wall.

Of course there are flowers everywhere. These begonias cascaded from a hanging basket.

There are lots of benches in the gardens, inviting the visitor to sit and enjoy the colors of the season. Most feature quotes, and I jotted down this one, which applies to all sorts of artistic endeavors:

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true.

William Inge