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.