April Spring Happiness

     Nick Groom, writing in “The Seasons: A Celebration of the English Year” says: “The first three days of April are ‘borrowing days’ – that is, they are days supposedly borrowed by March and therefore have very bad weather.” And it was true, but then by midmonth, the north wind and relentless rain diminished, and the signs of spring accumulated to a tipping point. Now temperatures warm daily, the light wakes us early, and evenings stretch out. Plants grow.

     Tulips, an April extravaganza and joy this year, finally grow tattered. Thrilling the senses after a winter of gray and dark green, they thrived in the cold of late March, and looked their best when first opening in such an array of color.

     A cliché and true, spring is a miracle. How can the sodden dismal world suddenly be so bright with birdsong and blossoming? And this year I am particularly “recalled to life.” I spent much of the winter (unbeknownst) in the grip of polymyalgia rheumatica – writing off my increasing misery of joint and muscle as being “old and cold.” Those being true, there was more, and finally diagnosed and treated, I’m giddy with a pain free life – simple things, turning the steering wheel, turning over in bed, walking, opening a jar, typing, painting – are normal again. And I’m without the overwhelming fatigue that accompanies widespread inflammation.

     It is so sweet to experience this along with the arrival of spring. I feel like one should always feel, aware of the blessedness of normal life – grateful for this time, this earth, and all its creatures.  

     Tomorrow, in a celebratory way to spend May Day, a good friend will help me get to Seattle with my offerings for the Miller Library – the paintings, “Pockets Books,” blue and white prints, and all the attendant labels and statement. Having that work installed will really mark the end of winter.

To all you readers, I hope you weathered the winter well and that May may bring flowers, some overdue April showers, and a measure of spring happiness to you and our battered world.

March – an Inconstant Month

     Nick Grooms’s book, “The Seasons: A Celebration of the English Year,” explores old English traditions associated with the seasons. Writing of spring, he muses that we have a notion of spring, warm air and gentle breezes, born often from romantic poetry. But far from the reality.

     This March featured both winter and summer. Nights in the 30s and much wind, then five days of 70° weather, and now, regular Northwest spring – changeable. But it is spring – robins call before dawn, yellow daffodils brighten the island gray, and gardeners prepare, cleaning beds and spreading compost.

     I’ve been getting ready for my show titled: “Earth Apparelled with Plants: Watercolors, Artists’ Books, & Hand-colored Prints.” It opens on May 2 at the Elisabeth C. Miller Horticultural Library at the University of Washington. The show will include large watercolor paintings of four months of meadow flowers. Flowers and weeds gathered from parking lots, roadsides, and garden, posed in jars on my table while I drew. These are the flowers that grow in wild, and gardener created spaces like cornflowers, poppies, cosmos, foxglove, baby blue eyes, lupine, Queen Anne’s lace – self-seeding and sturdy, and so appealing as they grow skeletal in autumn.

     A series called “Pockets Books” is another part of the exhibition – 20 accordion-fold books, with 10 6”x4” pages, each with an obsolete library circulation card in a library pocket, embellished with a line drawing. The research, the relating of book titles to image (and both to the foldbook title, lifted from John Gerard’s charming 16^th century prose), along with drawing 200 images, cutting and folding foldbooks, and pasting pockets to pages, took months of happy work this winter. (Well, it also led to a shoulder impingement from a lot of holding pockets and paper in place – but physical therapy is fixing that.)

     It was really a long, dark winter. I am not sorry to see it leave, though it fights departure. You can always hope that spring might bring better things to the world. And in the meantime, appreciate light evenings, growing warmth, and the world beginning to be even more “apparelled with plants.”

February – a New App and Old Friends

    Embarked on a project for a show in 2025, I’ve been trying to pay closer attention to changes in my natural surroundings, aided in that endeavor by Merlin, the Cornell University’s bird identifier app (a terrific recommendation from the wordsmith).

    When we first moved into this house, a tumultuous dawn chorus woke us early. On the lot behind, an old house with lots of trees and overgrown shrubs provided fine habitat for the singers. No longer. Eighteen tall, crowded houses occupy that now concreted spot with no sheltering blackberry vines. And across the street last fall, construction of a huge development obliterated tree-filled vacant lots, home to so many birds and critters.

    So, on my early morning walk, after downloading Merlin and the West Coast database, I took my phone out of my pocket near the Winslow Ravine, a preserved natural space of tall trees and tangled undergrowth. I clicked Merlin’s “Sound ID.” Magic!

     When the app identified species, bird names and tiny photos populated the screen in a list, highlighting them back and forth as members of the bird chorus took individual turns. From out of sight, high in fir trees or low in brush, familiar birds from our days on the bluff suddenly seemed to surround me.

    In those days, when they were our near neighbors, I always had binoculars and bird book at hand – towhee, junco, crow, song sparrow, Northern flicker! The app revealed old friends nearby – one-way friendships, but meaningful, nonetheless.

    Now on a walk, when I set my mind to listen to birds, the concentrating shuts off my useless interior natterings, and I listen for the purposeful chitterings of nuthatches and chickadees, the assertive whistle and tune of plentiful song sparrows, and the near buzz bzzt of Anna’s hummingbird. Trying to absorb the calls, the names, the different birds is transporting. I love to pass the trees where a house finch warbles the richest notes, and I enjoy guessing birds and checking my answer to learn.

    Temperature matters – high 40s and above means many more birds. On the rainy, windy days with low temperatures, birds are quiet. (Sometimes hard rain falling makes such a cacophony on my hood that I couldn’t hear anyway.)

     Often this month, when cold rain slants on wind, plant growth stalls. But on a couple of spirit-lifting days, unfiltered sunshine flooded the house, raising the temperature midday.  Outdoors, daffodils began their long and cheering trek toward yellow.

January 2024 – A Cold, Wet, Dark Beginning

     We missed the big chill in Washington, left the still growing sweet peas covered with plastic, and spent 12 days in California with Sweet B and her family, where a cold north wind harried the days. And it rained, so much rain everywhere. Back home I found shriveled sweet peas, but the first daffodils and primroses at the grocery store!

     Rainy days and airplane trips call for books, and it struck me that the female protagonists make these four recent favorites most striking.

In Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song,” we find an Ireland beset by a future not too distant from now, when all our worst fears have come to be. As a result of a fascist, repressive government, a mom is left responsible for everything – a “disappeared” husband, a father whose mind is becoming unreliable, four children including a toddler and a rebellious teenage son (literally, he joins the resistance). You can identify with the dailyness, the caretaking in the midst of roving bands of storm troopers and imagine attempting to reassure a child and find food and nappies in the midst of terror.

I had to read “Wrong Place, Wrong Time” by Gillian McAllister in daylight, especially the beginning, because on the first page of the book, Jen, a lawyer and mother, watches her teenage son commit a shocking murder! She then falls through a time warp (I know, sounds impossible but it’s easy to accept), and travels back to determine the cause and prevent the murder. It’s a bizarre experience to imagine going back to watch yourself at various times, committing youthful mistakes, and being tempted to change outcomes. Jen perpetually questions her mothering (as one does), her past decisions and actions haunt her. She’s also loving and resourceful, always puzzled by what is happening to her, always determined to save her beloved son and husband.

Emma Cline’s “The Guest” is a completely different sort of protagonist. This suspenseful, disorienting tale of a young call girl posing as college girl, takes us along as her fantasy of a more secure life unravels. While worrying about her the whole time, I was curious to read of wealthy lives – and her acceptance of a transactional way of operating – specially with men.

Mrs. Hughes recommended Lauren Groff’s “The Vaster Wilds,” with a heroine like no other. An utterly original, slightly archaically told, epic tale of a young woman on a wilderness journey during a time at the beginning of this country. Nature – providing nuts and berries, also bears and storms – becomes a character to wrestle with and be grateful for. We are caught up in the forward movement of the heroine, with her blistered feet in battered boots “her two best friends.” The book contrasts what civilization is in the 17^th century with wilderness, speculating what would happen if the “greatest palest predator” disappeared – “Eden would overtake the world and the mistakes of man would be forgot.” 

Blue and White Finale

     Final for this year – I don’t suppose I’ll give up painting the blue and whites. There is so much pleasure in gathering a few blossoms and trying to capture their fleeting lives.

     Bainbridge Arts and Crafts has sold many of this year’s 24, but I plan to include pigment prints on cotton paper in my May 2024 solo show at the Elisabeth C. Miller Horticultural Library at the University of Washington. When looked at all together, summer energy and color will stand out – but I also cherish the miracle of Washington’s year-long blossom.

     So, just under the wire, here are the last five paintings of 2023 to wish the world a more peaceful, and you dear readers, a healthy, happy, and productive new year!

 

 

December Light

     What light? – you might ask if you live in the Northern Hemisphere! People who work regular hours go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. Midday the sun is bright – but low and brief. By four in the afternoon, outdoor lights come on, I shut the shades, light the undecorated tree (it awaits little people to work their ornament magic), and turn on cozy lamps – thankful for each bit of illumination.  

On early clear mornings, when outside the dawn-to-dusk twinkle lights still shine, the horizon glows golden – clouds and sky, soft pink and blue – the muted colors of winter like the faded hydrangea blossoms and the last pale pink rosebuds. But the natural world also provides flashes of red and glossy green, festive colors of the season.

To be able to work outside in December seems a miracle. The other day I planted neglected tulips bulbs, sniffed the blooming choisya (some places the blossoms so plentiful they suggest snow), gathered boughs of cotoneaster to cheer up the empty flowerpots on the front porch, strung colored lights overtop white, and made a front door wreath from branches stolen from the Christmas tree.

I slowly make merry here, glad to have the tree and Christmas music. I hang up the red and green wall of favorite old cards, a couple of old New Yorker covers, and my friend Joanna’s Christmas treasures from years gone by. I move a painting and hang our 50 years of Christmas cards and our sons’ families’ cards, and set the cards of my painter friend atop a high shelf. Soon I’ll get red tulips and place them nearby to remember a long-ago gift from my father-in-law.

This year’s cards trickle in – from old friends and a whole new generation of our sons’ friends who thankfully have adopted the tradition of cards! I do these familiar actions with much gratitude for having another year to celebrate the season.

     It’s all preparation of course – for to my joy the Californians arrive on the Winter Solstice. Sweet B and her brother are eight and nearly four now – perfect ages for all that is Christmas! We’ll ornament the tree, make and decorate cookies, attend “The Nutcracker,” visit the huge railway train at the Seattle Center, and walk at winter beautiful Bloedel. And we will read books, the old Christmas favorites.

     It’s impossible not to recognize the pall that hangs over the earth at this time that should be about peace, good will, and hope. Mary Pipher’s piece in the New York Times says everything I would want to say – only better – Finding Winter Light. I include it with the warmest wishes for these treasured days as we celebrate the season and find light in the dark!

For the Record – Blue and Whites

     My diminished once-a-month posting threatens to make the book from blog I make at the end of the year into a pamphlet. So for the record – a third batch of the Blue and Whites, beginning where I left off in the spring:

November – A Tempest-Tossed Month

    My neighbor John, who has lived in Washington all his long life, told me that it is only winter when it rains, otherwise it’s summer. So, by his logic, we’ve already had a lot of winter! From the kitchen window I watched the maples in our circle disrobe during the first two weeks of November. Rain poured, and the wind animated the scene as it whipped off leaves that fell in a shower. Some stalwarts dangle, then give up and twirl down.

     Wind and rain can strip trees these autumn nights, and the next morning, I walk in the aftermath – soggy piles of leaves hiding deep puddles. Eagle Harbor, after a summer of clear and calm mornings, when water perfectly reflected landscape on the opposite shore, is choppy and windswept nowadays, covered with fog, or splattered with raindrops. Some days a heron stands silently on the shore. Puffer jackets and wooly hats appear on walkers, adapting to a November bitter wind, the sky gray and underdone.

     Weather and food share descriptors it seems – raw wind, deliciously hot, toasty warm, and mostly we have raw now. Many plants that have lasted so long succumbed to the first frost, but occasional shocking bursts of sunshine light up the orange leaves of the two dogwood and one cherry tree (round clump of foliage like an orange lollypop) in the front garden.

     When we turned the clocks back, evenings that had begun to draw in, collapsed. I’m shutting the shades and turning on lights just after four o’clock dusk and glad to see the twinkle lights click on outdoors. (And really thankful for the seven-a.m. daylight for a few weeks.)

     For all of October I could pretend the stalk of a long-gone lily on the porch was a bronze statue but now, leafless, it looks sad. Rain falls and wind blows with such force that cedar bits and wet fir needles clog gutters and felt roads and paths, turning them the color of fir flooring. Rose hips knock against the house, a thunk, thunk with each gust, by the kitchen, by the living room.

And I learn something I should have understood a long time ago: leaves don’t “change” color in autumn, but their chlorophyl factories close down in preparation for winter and reveal the yellow and red that have always been there.

     I’m going to post this early so I can wish you all a warm and happy Thanksgiving! Our family will be all together – and for that and much more I am grateful. And for you readers – for all these years – thank you!

Observing October

     Do you know Susan Orlean’s “The Library Book?” A physically handsome book – bright red cover embellished with gold lettering (including a small flame) – it tells tales of libraries, most particularly the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library and the devastating fire of 1986. I loved how Orlean weaves libraries, arson, LA, readers, and writers into a mystery story and a library love story. If you have fond memories of the libraries in your life – this is a treasure.

     Orlean lives in LA and spent years interviewing librarians, patrons, and firemen. She speaks of wandering the spaces of the library – looking anew at the familiar. She writes, “Sometimes it’s hard to notice a place you think you know well; your eyes glide over it, seeing it but not seeing it at all. It’s almost as if familiarity gives you a kind of temporary blindness. I had to force myself to look harder and try to see beyond the concept of library that was so latent in my brain.”

     That’s true of all kinds of observing, and letting her words echo has lately helped my early morning walks – instead of chewing over and over the truly horrible news engulfing us – I’ve tried to appreciate autumn.

     Color for starters – at the edge of roads, purple crocus pool beneath trees, rosehips turn green, then orange, then red, and the khaki lawns of August and September revert to spring’s verdant green. Blue sky, bright sun days illuminate the orange of nasturtium still rampaging in the pumpkin patch, and this year’s meagre pumpkin harvest on the front porch.

     And best – maple leaves – the change beginning high in the huge trees with flashes of red, gold, orange, and yellow, then single leaves fall, ranging from two inches to 10. So many years I’ve watched them drift, stepped through crunchy ones, and negotiated wet slimy ones – but not really paid attention.

     This year I catalogue leaves as I shuffle through the crispy ones in clumps and drifted piles and spot the golden coins of poplar or aspen in a scatter beneath a diminished canopy. Oak leaves turn a somber brown immediately, but other leaves fall in patterned arrangements of lime green, cherry red, and gold.

     I puzzled over three geese flying north but still signaling with their distinctive honk – a walker passing me said, “the voice of fall.” Golden brown toadstools, large enough to shelter a mouse or a fairy, appear overnight at Moritani Reserve, fir needles carpet paths, and somedays, an autumnal burnt sugar smell hangs in the air. (Seems redolent of fall, but might be morning pancakes.)

Each year a stack of alternating squash, pumpkin, squash, pumpkin appear on a pole by a driveway, and this year, a really tall and elegant ghost looms eerily above a flat rooftop. Its arms barely waggle as I pass on still days, but on blustery days it struggles, and overnight, collapses in defeat.

     Halloween today – may you have some princess and superhero visitors!

September Past the Equinox

     From where I sit to type, I can see a sliver of our back garden and the looming gray shape of one of the houses behind. As the wind tosses blackberry vines, I realize they have found their way from the 12 inches of disturbed earth between our fence and the development’s to climb up and drape the rhododendron!

     It’s an end of a glorious summer sight – in our bubble. Some guilt and worry creeps in about the summer with an acknowledgement of worldwide disasters – fires, earthquakes, floods, one following another, presenting an unwelcome climate change series. And conflicts – big and small everywhere – domestically and abroad.

In a recent essay Robin Wall Kimmerer acknowledges but also poses more questions. And what one person can do isn’t clear. An English friend told me about World Central Kitchen, and I watch them as they circle the globe from one hungry disaster to the next and send another check to be a drop in the bucket of need.

     Growth in the garden slows now. Some things have finished, but others carry on – in the pumpkin patch self-seeded nasturtium, heartsease, and poppies, a bird gifted yarrow from somewhere, the pumpkin vines still flower. On the trellis by the patio, beside the dried seed pods of this year’s sweet peas, grows a surprise flowering from last year’s fallen seeds of burgundy and purple sweet peas on green thriving vines. Roses still arch overhead, but their petals crunch underfoot.

     The umbrella has stayed open for weeks, and I have appreciated every lunch outdoors. Tree frogs, at least two, croak their creaky comments. A chickadee bathes in the fountain, shivering and flipping its wings in the water trickling down three levels into shallow dishes – then flies off to preen and dry while sitting on the overgrown rosemary. Beginning as two 12-inch plants five years ago, the rosemary engulfs the path into the patio – we walk around gladly, loving the green bower it’s formed.

     Eating outdoors at September’s end, catching a few moments in the sun’s warmth, won’t last. Rain begins soon, lamps already glow morning and eve, maples turn red, and when it blows, the north wind speaks of winter.

August Days

     Such a long August we’ve had – perfect hot summer weather, meals outdoors, abundant flowers, only a few days of smoke (a miracle), and, best of all – in early August Lord and Lady B came to stay.

They flew to Seattle with the California family who were heading home, and I met them at the arrival gate. Sweet Brother had just time to make his pronouncement, his fact, the note about life he always presents when first encountered – no hello or small talk, just, “I saw 12 turtles on a tractor trailer!”

     Puzzling over that, we said goodbye to the Los Angeles bound, rode the train and ferry home and began a few days of Legos, books and more books, playgrounds, beach, burgers, corn on the cob, and ice cream.

On a hike in Alaska, Sweet B had narrated the first book of Swallows and Amazons for her cousins. So we began “Swallowdale,” where things are exciting but never really scary, and competent, resourceful kids sail the waters and set up camps in a lakeland of valleys and caves. Each child in this group can find a character to identify with, from Captain John to the Ship’s Boy.

     And we had a project. Lord and Lady B (and the staff of course) are leaving Downtown Abbey and moving to a new and perfect house they’ve built nearby. Deciding to memorialize it, we gathered photos of the house, and interviewed a few people. Lord B provided the first question: “What has been your relationship with this house?”

Responses came from family, friends, a neighbor, and the architect who worked on various remodels over the 51 years that Downtown Abbey has been in the family – memories of the house, the cozy and quirky upstairs rooms, the lights and cheer of winter holidays, and the recent elaborate outdoor Halloween decorations.

     The kids worked hard, they pasted photos and the interviews into a large accordion fold book, uniting it all with outlines in colored pencil. From an old linoleum block of the house, once printed as a Christmas card, they made rubbings with crayons to decorate the cover and title page.

     And we all began to say farewell. So long ago I spotted that little house, while pregnant and on a bike ride, and rushed back to our tiny apartment saying, “I found a house!” (my good-natured husband didn’t know we were looking for a house).

It was good to spend time thinking about the past, but I am most excited about their beautiful new home, which will absolutely suit this family’s active life. And the old house, always a lucky house, will welcome a new family.

     So, August ends now – plants bereft of natural water for weeks, begin to shrivel. The pumpkins suffer. Only a few turn orange, one with bite marks from a critter. Coneflowers, in colors from dusty pink to rusty orange, cadmium yellow to near white, thrive best as summer days dwindle.

July – Real Summer!

     Ann Patchett, in a recent Guardian article addresses accusations about her optimism, and says “I don’t need to be lifted up. But I would like the kindness of humanity that surrounds me to have a moment.” Her new novel, “Tom Lake,” is a lockdown novel (“every writer gets one”), and she wanted to portray that “in a world and a planet that is going to hell, there is still so much beauty and so much joy.”

     Watching the PBS news the other night about the climate – the ongoing dire reporting of heat and flood and fire – felt like the beginning of the pandemic, watching something unfold about which you can do nothing significant. And feeling guilt, because, for the moment, and only for the moment, one is escaping the worst.

     But then there is the wonder of beauty-filled summer days – blue sky mornings or early cloud cover clearing to midday heat. Lunch in the tiny patio under the umbrella with blooming foxglove, coneflower, and zinnias outgrowing their pots in vivid color. A hummingbird visiting the little fountain to dip its beak in the stream dripping from one basin to the next.

     And best of all, summer means visits from grandchildren, and for a week Sweet B kept us company. She made a friend last year at mountain biking camp, and this year they attended another together. Our days were filled with eating corn on the cob, watermelon, and cherries, sleeping in for Sweet B, and most of all, lots of reading.

A kindred spirit for me, Sweet B (like Ann Patchett) loves books – everything about them. She diligently filled out her summer reading record from the library – counting her own reading of the Boxcar Children books and the hours we read together. In the summer world of Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons,” (portraying a simpler time when four children could sail off on their own to an island, pitch canvas tents, and cook over an open campfire), we learned unfamiliar sailing terms – thwart, halyard, and jibing – and had the deep pleasure of being together in a shared book.

Her granddad is a docent at the local history museum, and on a visit, having quickly learned the welcoming patter, she joined him behind the desk, greeting visitors and writing down zip codes. Before and after dinner for days, a Monopoly game spread out in the living room engrossed the three of us as we all suffered financial vicissitudes – we had property but couldn’t pay each other rent. On a walk in Bloedel, Sweet B drew meadow flowers in a little notebook, carefully writing names (and asking me to look up unfamiliar ones).

Life was empty when she left – of course. After I took her to the airport to join her parents going north, I retreated to painting the meadow of June flowers – lupine, poppies, calendula, cornflower, flax, and corncockle.

So much beauty, so much joy.

Post-Solstice June

     We are home now to a full blown June garden, after two weeks of looking at other gardens, the ones at castles and museums, in public spaces, and tiny front yards in London, York, and Edinburgh. It was, as Lord B put it, “the best trip ever.”

My mind keeps travelling back to the trip – seeing the children sleepy at breakfast, standing in awe in museums, and full of energy in playgrounds. Intrepid travelers, curious and interested in everything.

In London, well-prepared with plot and character, the older three were rapt at a matinee performance at the Globe of “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream,” adventurous on a top-of-the-trees experience in Battersea Park (they tiptoed swinging bridges high in the canopy above us in full climbing gear and harnesses, with carabineers to slide along the cables). They asked questions of docents at the Horniman Museum (a true cabinet of curiosities in south London).

Sweet Brother visited the Transportation Museum in London, the National Railway Museum in York, and traveled on real trains between cities (trains being top of mind for him these days). All of the children were quick to spot the ever-present British ice cream trucks, and days were full, often ending at Pizza Express, followed by a playground.  

     I’m the during-the-winter planner – but the family executes, figuring meals and transport on the go. And it’s all a complete privilege, the being together day after sunny day, doing and seeing unfamiliar things.

We loved York – walking the walls, seeing the slightly strange but engaging Jorvik Viking Center with recreations of Viking life in York, and visiting the DIG Centre, a place to learn about the archaeology that leads to knowledge of the past. We explored the Undercroft Museum below the York Minster – two thousand years of history. On the train from London, Lord B had read about haunted York and was prepared to ask questions and search for ghosts in narrow “snickleways.” None spotted – although in the most haunted room in the historic Treasurer’s House, Lady B felt unsettled, and Lord B watched a smile on a portrait come and go. The guide said that in that room such observations were common.

Edinburgh is irresistible – a manageable, walkable size, the Royal Mile stretching from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood House Palace. On a memorable day for me, we climbed Arthur’s Seat, discovered a pub built in the 1300s where Mary Queen of Scots played bowls, and walked through the unassuming and perfect Dr. Neill’s Garden. History, charm, color everywhere, with the friendliest people imaginable, full of enthusiasm for their country. A day trip to the countryside and Stirling Castle, the Highlands in the distance, gave a taste of how beautiful is Scotland.

Now back home, a return to reality in green and lush Washington. Rain and cool weather while we were away left the garden an overgrown jungle! Self-seeded nigella, poppies, nasturtium, and heartsease rampage in the pumpkin patch. I cleared big clumps to make a path for the pumpkins to stretch out but left enough to please the pollinators buzzing the area all day.

     Cosmos, roses, sweet peas, jasmine – what a welcoming committee!

Blue and Whites

     The little blue and white patterned vase I’ve painted so many times came from a secondhand shop below Pike Place Market a long time ago. About five inches tall and two inches wide at its fullest point, the vase’s pattern caught my eye right away.

     For many years I made occasional series of paintings with blue and white in the title. The whole process appeals to me: spotting the flowers in the garden, cutting paper and setting up, then working quickly to capture the little bouquet. I use my technical pen with indelible ink, so the line that goes down can’t be changed, but won’t be smudged by watercolor. I have to concentrate on the drawing. The painting part is pleasure – trying to capture flower color – watercolor’s transparency often so much like petals.

     At some point I realized I didn’t have to be literal with the vase’s shape and began to enjoy changing the shape. Drawing on the pattern is meditative, and I often wonder about the first person who painted the swooping line and strange baubles – perhaps freehand? – on many vases. The letter A appears on the bottom, with tiny ovals added to letter’s top – the artist’s initial or the pattern identifier?

     Because I started right out this January making blue and whites, I plan to do the whole year. The garden has already provided so many subjects!

     Bainbridge Arts and Crafts has featured “Blue and Whites and Spring I-IX” in their front window this month, and because “Her spirits rose…” is often a record of work for me, I’ll post them here. Now past Memorial Day, we move on to late spring and summer flowers!

It’s May!

     A character in something my brother reposted says – “I know why May is called May, because there may be frost, there may be heat, there may be rain, there may be sun!” Right, or, in the case of this particular May, all of the above!

     Still, day after day I’m bowled over by the flowering shrubs and trees. The whole tiny back yard out my workspace door would delight the gardener who planted here 30 years ago. The white lilac explodes with bloom and the gnarled crabapple tree and agreeable-pink rhododendron form a canopy over a corner of the tiny space. Two juncos rule this terrain – they burst from the canopy to hector me at my slightest intrusion.

     After winter walks of mostly unchanging green and gray, I relish the daily differences. I list the blooms (sometimes needing to look them up on PlantSnap). I’m not sure why I want the names – to tell you, to hold on to them, to make it all last longer by paying attention? I pass azalea, laurel, lilac, viburnum, wisteria, ribes, choisya – all ablossom – and often fragrant. And fruit trees, a thick layer of pink petals already carpets the ground beneath some cherry trees.

All that winter rain must have encouraged this year’s extravagant show. When preparing the mounds in the pumpkin patch, I dig down to move some of the self-seeded nigella and heartsease, and the soil is still cloggy and wet. To my delight I found a tree frog in a pile of black plastic pots next to the garage door. In the tiny “meadow,” bunnies have eaten the leaves but not the blossoms of bellis.

Perennials race ahead with their renewed lives – the rosemary is thick with blooms and bees, I’ve seen columbine, wallflower, forget-me-not, and the straggly clematis climbs high on the patio fence. In the neighborhood circle, delicate white blossoms cover the blueberry bushes. Hard rain, and then heat abruptly ended the tulip show, and daffodils shrivel – both reminders of the whirring rush of plant life and the inevitability of endings.

This article, Let the Post-Pandemic City Grow Wild, is a story of humans as accomplices to nature rather than enemies. It made me think about what I want from this small city garden space, what I need, what nature needs – flowers to please pollinators and to paint, to be able to watch the whole progression, and to enjoy every stage.