This.
This is our wisteria vine just about this time last year, right before a hard freeze zapped the blooms.
We’re hopeful that we’ll see the wisteria go wild this spring, yet the vine’s tender young buds already froze once, last month, and a second set is barely sprouting anew.
This is the time of year when I can’t wait for the weather to make up its mind and choose warm over cold, calm over windy. It’s the time of year when I go crazy wanting to fast-track nature. I’m tired of the color brown and the dull tan of cottonwood leaves and old pine needles. I long to see sumptuous greens and every hue of purple imaginable.
I plant pansies in pots and spend too much money at the nursery. I tempt nature by pulling the geraniums out of the greenhouse, and the jade plant, too. Then nature pulls a punch, with a day of rain that almost turns to snow. And right when I think I’ve once again underestimated how cool these desert mountains of the Rio Grande Valley can be, the sun comes out and a rainbow, too.
That.
April is a windy month in Albuquerque. You can sweep the elm seeds from the porch and in an hour open the front door to an entire elm seed colony waiting to swirl on in and see the place.
But I like April anyway. Good people are born in April. My youngest daughter. My sister. One friend I’ve known since junior high school and another I’ve known since our first job out of graduate school.
And there’s our friend and fellow writer/blogger/traveler “lil,” who recently celebrated a birthday and received an amazing poem from her husband, which she posted on C. Little, no less. Check it out.
Happy birthday to those all you Aries and happy blowy days to the rest of you!
The other.
Obama Peace, gouache on 12×12 canvas, painting © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved. (Trying to figure out if it’s finished.)
My granddaughter was born in April. Today, in fact. That’s one of the reasons I love April. 🙂
Wisteria is one of my favorites. We’ve been coaxing our little vine to grow, but it’s been very slow. I know it can and does do well in this area as I’ve seen some pretty amazing wisteria vines.
I love your Obama Peace.
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Thanks, Robin. Happy birthday to your granddaughter! Em’s is coming up soon. We’ll have a sleepover with lots of tweens. (Which reminds me, did anyone see SNL last Sat? Zac Ephron (sp?) was the host. He’s a tween idol.)
I think the trick with wisteria is they are not very hardy and so they need a pretty linear transition from cold to warm. If it warms, then goes cold, yikes. Many many wisteria plants were in bloom everywhere in the valley last year. Our neighbors, us, yards all over. It was gorgeous to see. And then boom, the one night of the hard freeze. We all lost ’em for the season.
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I would love to be a part of your work. I paint and I do poetry. I have two published poetry books and a third on the way.
Thank you for considering me
jeanne
ps I searched anxiety on google and your beautiful artwork came up and inspired me, in this time of my anxiety.
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Sounds like April in Missouri. Two years ago we had a run of very warm weather the end of March and the daffodils, tuilps, crocuses, and forsythia bloomed and then WHAM! we had a week of below freezing weather. The cold hit so hard that it killed the leaves budding on trees. Some plants never recovered.
This year we have had a more typical April with cool temperatures and lots of gentle rain. Yesterday was cool, cloudy and wet. I needed a sweatshirt and a rain coat. Today was clear and sunny and cool. Who knows what tomorrow will be? We take it as it comes.
April’s arrival means that the warmer weather isn’t far behind.
I too spend way too much money at the greenhouse when I go. I love to buy plants and stick them in my yard.
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Bob, I picture a big garden. Buying a plant each time you stop in or pass by a greenhouse, then planting said plant in the garden—that would result in a lush, accidental, overgrown, colorful place. Those are the best kind.
The other thing that surprises me about gardeners, whether they call themselves that or not, is that they tend to be quiet about their passion. My father was a prolific gardener, although in hindsight, I can’t believe he fit it in to a full life. He must have done it mostly weekends and some weekday evenings. I picture him in his white t-shirt and brown slacks, the ones that got kind of ratty and became his weekend slacks, and his wellie boots for irrigating, and there he was, diligent and quiet, planting dahlias (his mom’s favorite), zinnias, marigolds, snowball bushes, lilac bushes, different bulbs.
He didn’t like messy gardens, as I do. He was organized and neat about his flowers. And in retirement, his small gardens were (still are) amazing, although Mom’s taken them over.
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JEANNE, thanks for stopping by and leaving the comment about finding the artwork in the anxiety post. I should go back to that post and give an update. I tried an anti-anxiety pill, but I am now weaned off of it. I hated how it made me feel, although on the one hand I wasn’t so uptight. But on the other, I was so very tired. I’ll check in with my doctor and find the right approach for me. I am lately practicing being a much more single-focused (as opposed to multi-tasking) person, slowing things down. It seems to help.
Please consider submitting something to us—a piece of poetry along with a pdf file of your work. Check out our Submission Guidelines [LINK]. QM and I have been meaning to simplify them, but we haven’t. You’ll get the gist, and if you have any questions, just drop a line to info@redravine.com. We have some guest posts in the queue, but we welcome submissions at any time for future posts.
p.s., Sorry for the delay in approving your comment. For some reason it went into the Spam filter, and I only stumbled on it late today when I checked the filter.
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thanks for the welcome. Most of my poetry is kind of dark and gothic, because of the anxiety. I am seeing the doctor tomorrow to see what I should take. I will submit some poems and artwork.
Jeanne
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Gardening belonged to my mother. On the quarter acre of ground where the house sat, she had irises of every color planted along the south side of the house and dotting the lot to the north. She had peony, lilac, snowball, and mock orange bushes throughout the yards. She had peach and apple trees and a raspberry patch which I hated because we had to wade into in the late summer and allow the chiggers to eat on us while we collected the berries. Despite the variety of plants she maintained an order of things. I tend to the disorganized, plant-it-here-see-if-it-will-grow school of gardening.
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yb,
Are the yellow chairs vintage or new? They remind me of my Grandmother…
It was very windy here today as well. My Hubby is supposed to be keeping busy, sanding the house, making it ready to paint. I started thinking he wished for the wind so he could get out of it but… since it’s your way too…I’ll not nag him.
My buddy Jamie and I are going to paint a mural on the garage door of “the Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa” by Hokusai, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Japanese artist. We going to omit the boats and the signature box, but keep the balance. Jamie is a professional muralist. I just do what she says…kinda.
Hokusai – http://cse.unl.edu/~bkell/Tsunami_by_hokusai_19th_century.jpg
I like it very much because the Tsunami wave faces the “Mac Mansion House” eloquently named by QM. It’s my own subliminal message to the owner 😉
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I believe they’re the real deal, Heather. They came with the house. Maybe the former owner got them from the first owners of the house.
Ah, those winds in southern California. They can be so dangerous, too, if it’s dry, yes?
Lovely morning here, but the winds often make their appearance in the afternoon.
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Heather, wow, that’s an ambitious project with the Hokusai wave. I hope it rolls right over the Mac Mansion next door! 8) How long do you think it will take you to paint the mural? And do you draw it on first? What do you draw it on with?
Those yellow chairs of ybonesy’s are so cool. BTW, the light in that photograph is fantastic, ybonesy, and with that rainbow. I was drawn to those chairs when I visited ybonesy that summer after she moved in to that house. I think they are quite old. Great shade of yellow. Kind of comforting.
ybonesy, how’s it going with the painting since you posted this? And your deadlines that are coming up. I like the graphic quality to these pieces of work. And the bold color that is in most of your work.
You know what draws me about your process with this Obama piece is the way the shades of orange and green changed in each process piece. How did you land on that final lime green? And where did you land on whether or not it is finished?
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Oh, Heather, one other thing, I don’t think I ever looked closely at the boats in the Hokusai wave until I checked out your link. Those long boats and there are people in those boats, too! Hey, I meant to ask you, you are going to keep your blog going, right? I sure hope so. And to see more of your great photographs. I still can’t believe your gallery is closing. I think about that often and how hard things are for a lot of people right now economically. 😦
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The wave is great. I can’t wait to see it. Heather, you should photograph it in all stages of the process.
Also, I have a wall outside on which I’d like to paint a mural. I was thinking earlier tihs week that I’ll paint the mural instead on a large wood canvase, very large. Jim asked me why not paint directly on to the wall. It’s intimidating, committing to a relatively permanent structure like that. I might still do it on to the wall. I have a friend who does murals, and I’d like to get her thoughts on it.
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QM, the painting is going well. I am having a lot of fun with my second in the series. Right now it’s my youngest’s 10th birthday party, and she and her friends are back in her bedroom and the playroom. I’m catching up on the blog but in a few minutes will pull out my painting and work on it.
Also, on the bright colors…in my mind I had this idea of the two layers of background behind Obama’s face being something other what it turned out to be. I won’t go into it because I still want to figure out a way to get across the core message, but this particular idea did not work. And instead it morphed into a peace sign. And I guess my natural attraction to bright colors kicked in. Esp because I felt his face needed the contrast in both hue and tone.
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Heather, I’ll want to hear how Ronald (McDonald, being as how he live in a McMansion) gets along with the wave. I wonder if he’ll be scandalized by it. The thought makes me smile. 8)
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Great post. I particularly like the writing in ‘this’…….ps I’m an Aries 🙂
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[…] to posts This, That & The Other, The Making Of A Painting Painter, and haiku 2 […]
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Coming into this a bit late — thanks so much for the birthday wishes and link to Buzz’s poem, “Pulse to Pulse.”
I love it. My blog C. Little No Less is an Aries too, born on March 21, 2003, the dawn of the war in Iraq, shock and awe.
I posted a poem by Mary Oliver, Wage Peace – and a photo of my grandson playing in the bathtub. It is hard to believe that 6 years has passed, and the battle goes on. All we have that seems real is our poetry and photos and each other.
Here’s hoping your wisteria blooms anew – ;>)
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Thanks, lil. How ’bout you? Do you grow wisteria?
Yes, hard to believe six years have passed. I told someone recently that I can’t seem to get politics out of my psyche, as all that *stuff* is coming out in my art. It’s been a long time building, I guess.
And blogging for six years plus. Wow, ‘lil. You were a pioneer blogger, do you realize? Did I even know what a blog was six years ago? 8)
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I am doubtful about the wisteria, because the tiny buds look pretty much fried and crumble at the touch. There could be new but fewer blossoms, or might go straight to leaves. Hard to tell, now that it is suddenly hot.
I first read about “weblogs” maybe 10 years ago in the New Yorker. I was fascinated – reminds me now of the attitude toward twitter, it was considered an urban-yuppie kind of exotic communication. (Recently I read an astonishing article in the New Yorker as well, about “cell phone novels” being very popular in Japan. Seems crazy.)
Then I discovered boingboing.net and started finding out all kinds of wild stuff. I corresponded now and then with Cory Doctorow, and I would send him things I came across to post.
Once I sent some sad thing about the imminent war in Iraq. He wrote back, I don’t blog about war. Hmmmm. I thought then, how about blogging for peace? I followed his suggestion to go to blogger.com and just do it, start somewhere. Wage peace.
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‘lil, our wisteria sounds like your wisteria. The little buds are dry and shriveled. But oddly, there is one grape cluster sprout today. One little bud, a late bloomer, that must have still been asleep during that one night of freeze that zapped the others. I looked all over to see if there were any other late bloomers, but I found none.
BTW, are you dead-heading the dead blooms? I started to but then worried that that make things worse.
boingboing was one of my first favorites blogs. Funny, I never stop by there any more. It’s all so random, and I have so little time for just random, if you know what I mean.
Glad you decided to wage peace. Do you ever go back and ask yourself how things have changed in six years?
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I am way behind, it seems everytime I try to type a comment I get interrupted…anyway, as for the wisteria – I have a few purple clusters, but that’s all, and it looks, here and there, like the buds are trying to come through the dead ones. I assume we will get leaves, eventually.
I don’t know that enough has changed in six years. As far as the wars, despite Mission Accomplished, we are still there.
At least we can be grateful that Bush is gone.
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lil, you really were a pioneer blogger. There from the beginning. Liz was telling me last night that she once participated in a survey on gadgets like iPods years before they came out. It was one of those things where you showed up and they asked you what you would buy in a gadget that stored music (at the time only one or two songs could be stored), what you wanted them to look like, etc.. Look where we are today.
I have to agree about how slow change is. We still seem to be there. In listening to Obama last night and the way he handled the Press, I was impressed. Yet when the question was asked about being a shareholder and business owner of major corporations and financial institutions in this country, it really struck me when he said he wanted to unload his business interests because he had to manage two wars. Put that way, the task seems so daunting.
ybonesy, I originally came back to this post to say you should link it to your The Making of a Painter post so you can keep your “process of painting” posts linked together! Off I go now!
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Oh yea, QM, I meant to do that. Will have to do it after the show, when I can take more time.
I saw the Q&A where Obama mentioned not wanting to be in the banking and other business because he had two wars to manage. I wouldn’t want to be him right now, but I am glad it is he who is at the helm. Such an intelligent man.
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[…] of weeks later the finished project appeared here – scroll down to ‘The Other’: https://redravine.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/this-that-the-other/ …and a few days later a variation on the theme: […]
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