Our Anniversary...Number Fifty-six

Our anniversary is November twenty-second.  This year the date was the day before Thanksgiving, just as it was the year we were married.  That year we didn't have Thanksgiving Day dinner to prepare for but this year we did.  It was wonderful to see all the Ohio clan except Jacquie who had to work.  ( She is a manager for a restaurant.)  Twelve of us are below.  Three more arrived later in the day.  The other six live in North Carolina and had Thanksgiving there.

Tom and I decided to celebrate our anniversary the following Wednesday.  We went to Schmidt's German Restaurant in Columbus and then to the Columbus Museum of Art.

My dinner.  Tom chose the buffet but I enjoyed having my food brought to me.

Our waiter, Dave.

Looking out the window.

First new item in twenty-five years.  We didn't try it.  We have our old favorites.  Next time I plan to try it.

Afterward we took a short walk in the village.  Normally this time of year the weather would be unpleasant but on "our" day, the sun shone and fifty degree temperatures felt like early fall.

The homes and businesses were decorated for Christmas or in the process of being decorated.  If you look closely, you will see a black and white dog behind the gate enjoying the day.

We stopped at The Book Loft and bought a Christmas CD which included Christmas songs sung in German.

Our next stop was The Columbus Museum of Art where we enjoyed comparing many Pointillist paintings. in the Post Impressionism special exhibit.  There were also prints done in a variety of techniques.  

Painting at the Little Mader Farm

Marsha arranged for our painting group to paint at the Little Mader Farm for the second time.  The weather was perfect, sunny, cool enough to need a light jacket but warm enough after a lunch snack to take the jacket off.  Jerri made  a delicious blueberry coffee cake for us.  There were five of us painting, half of the original plein air group from five or six years ago.  It was good to see everyone.

I painted and sketched, sketched and painted using the Micron pen and watercolor technique I have been playing with the last couple months.  When I looked at the painting after I came home, I realized I had painted a chair with only three legs.  I painted one in.  The rest of the painting is as it was when I laid down my brush for the final time at the farm.

Tom's Garden, 2017

I took this photo about a month ago.  (Life has been unusual lately).

Tom planted his usual crops...red beets, Swiss Chard, and green beans.  In other years the pole beans have grown to the top of upright two by fours.  This year Tom found a fabric meshing through the Internet which he draped over a frame from the uprights to the Northern White Cedars.  The vines had a way to twine and they did.

We bought the seed from the local Seed and Grain elevator store.  I asked for Stringless pole beans and that was what we got.  The beans were the most tender and tastiest we have ever had.

A Listening Walk at Charleston Falls, October 3, 2017

I needed a break from life so I took a walk at Charleston Falls.  First I hiked through Octagon Prairie.  Grasshoppers hopped across my path, too fast for me to catch them with my camera.  I saw an Orange Sulphur Butterfly.  It was too fast to catch, too.  Then I noticed the sounds.  They were not too fast to catch... insects in a loud chorus of varied musical notes and the breeze adding intermittent swirls reminding me of violins.

When I walked into the woods, the insect chorus was not as loud but then I heard the clatter and plop of walnuts as the breeze blew them down through the crispy leaves of the trees. They hit the ground with loud thuds.  I was glad none fell on my head.

The stream above the falls flowed along quietly.

There was just enough water flowing over the falls to tickle the ears with a swishing sound accented by splashes as the water hit the rocks below.

Flower Sketching Experiments

I have all sorts of excuses for not losing myself in artwork recently.  Ignoring painting and drawing is not good for me.  I am happier even if I spend only a half hour a day creating.

I've been doing flower studies to get art back into my life.

I've already posted the bouquet I painted when I painted with Marsha in August.  These are three sketches I've done since then.

I like to work from a still-life set-up.  I found a few weigelia flowers still blooming.

The vase is one I bought years ago when my sister and I were shopping at a Mikasa store at an outlet mall.  I used a Micron pen which was a little low on ink.  There was enough ink for me to draw some guidelines but not enough to create firm edges.  Afterward, I laid in some watercolor washes.  The paper is bit thin so I had to be careful, not have much water in my brush.

After Labor Day Marsha and I painted at her house.  This time it was simpler to work from photographs than from a still-life.

I still used basically the same technique.  I chose to sketch only a few of the Purple Coneflowers in the photo.

I had time to do a second painting.  Marsha said she had seen an interesting painting on-line in which the artist had started with a wash of colors and then gone back and drawn shapes.  I decided to see what I could come up with.

The photo is of Ironweed.

Here is the result.  I decided I liked the sketchy lines so I didn't redraw them more precisely with a fresh Micron pen.  I think this technique could make an interesting background for a collage of some sort.  I also plan to try it on a paper that is more suitable for watercolor washes.

All of these pieces are small, about seven  inches square.

Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 2017

Henry came again to visit because Sonja was in the process of moving from one house to another.  I know Henry had more attention from us than Sonja had time to give him.

Steve came to visit, too.  

One Saturday, Steve and I went to the Fort Rowdy Gathering in Covington.  This was the twenty-fifth year for the event.  Years ago I took Steve's brother to the gathering.  The gathering is a little larger now but still uncrowded and easy-going.

The gathering is on two open grassy areas surrounded by trees, one area on either end of a bridge across the Stillwater River.  The bridge is rebuilt every year for the weekend and then taken down.

Close to the shore, Steve spotted a school of several hundred tiny fish swimming fast and away from us.

Life in the encampment is old style camping.  There is a native American encampment as well.

Arts and crafts are demonstrated and sold on both sides of the bridge but they are somewhat different.  On the near side there are painted gourds and fine needlework and other crafts that a person finds at a typical craft show.  On the far side are the craftmen and women who make the kind of crafts Daniel Boone would have found useful.  One craftsman we talked to was making a water jug from leather.  The crafts are laid out on blankets or tables or hung on racks.

There was music on the tents on both ends of the bridge as well.  The old, old songs the settlers brought from Europe were sung on the far end encampment.  The listeners sat on straw bales.

As Steve and I headed back to the bridge because we were hungry and the food booths were on the other side, we saw a boy fishing.  He caught a little blue gill and threw it back in to grow larger.

View from halfway across the bridge.

 On the near end, the music was more modern country music.  There were amps set up as well as bleachers for the listeners to sit on.

This festival is a money making event for local non-profit organizations.  Steve and I bought lunch from the boy scouts...brats and kraut and mashed potatoes.  For dessert we had homemade apple dumplings and ice cream from the booth next door.

A Bouquet of Prairie Flowers, August, 2017

Earlier this month, Marsha came to paint with me.  I was pleased to see her.  I haven't been painting much for several years.  I needed a jumpstart.  Marsha, bless her, seems to have done that.

The flowers in the bouquet are from our yard...the smaller yellow ones with the graceful thin stems are Tall Coreopsis, the bigger yellow ones are Oxeye, and the orange are Butterflyweed.  The pitcher is one we bought in either Williamsburg or Jamestown, Virginia.  I remember Williamsburg.  Tom remembers Jamestown.  I received the tatted star doily in a Christmas gift exchange when I was co-oping at Landers Corporation in Toledo my senior year in high school.

This is how the painting looked after the painting session with Marsha.  I started with a rough sketch using a Micron pen, then laid in watercolors.  I was hoping to keep the painting as a sketch, an impression, not a photographic image.

I always need to make frequent stops to "think".  This was the result of my thinking.

Another day to "think".  I decided to lighten the fabric on the right side, also to redarken the leaves at the pitcher edge.  I had wiped out a lot of the color.  Then I went bolder with the watercolor.  The very last strokes I made were a few with a white gel pen to bring back some reflections on the pitcher.

The Brukner Nature Center Butterfly Transect, August 13, 2017

Joy and frustration. The day was hot and sunny. We saw ten species of butterflies although we didn't see many of any of them.  My biggest frustration was that this was the best picture of a butterfly that I took...A Silver-spotted Skipper.  The warmer the weather the less likely it is for a butterfly to sit quietly for a portrait.

First the joy...

Molly, who is good at identifying moths and caterpillars of both moths and butterflies walked with us today.  Because of her I saw this beautiful caterpillar.  She told me it was the caterpillar of an Eight-spotted Forester, a moth.

When Tom and I were looking at prairie flower sites last month, I took this photo of the adult Eight-spotted Forester.  It is a showy moth which flies during the day.  It has showy tufts on its forelegs.

And now the frustrations...

This is a Hackberry perched on the wall of the Interpretive Center.

A little better photo of an Eastern Tailed Swallowtail.

But then here is one of a Monarch.  We saw two.

A Summer Azure looking worn.

I drove into our drive hoping that Jim got some better photos.  On the garden phlox beside the drive was this butterfly.  I took a few photos.  Butterflies move faster when the temperatures are in the eighties (Fahrenheit) so I took a lot of photos to get these two that enabled me to identify it as a Spicebush female.  I was happy to see one more species of butterfly.

Beautiful Day at Charleston Falls, August 12, 2017

Come with Jeanne and me on the walk we took at Charleston Falls this morning.  The day was perfect...sweater weather and sunny.

Black-eyed Susans

And the smaller Brown-eyed Susans

Ironweed

Spiderwebs sparkling with dew in the sunshine

Not sure what this plant is.  I plan to take more photos and post them to the Ohio Wildflowers and Flora Facebook page.  I discovered when I started searching my field guides that I hadn't looked at the plant as closely as I needed to for ID purposes.  The little black row of "buttons" fascinated me.

Bright orange fungi on a rotting log

Doll's Eyes ( White Baneberry)  The fruit is far showier than the delicate flowers.

And an enormous Prairie Dock