Loading the bottom 2/3 of the 10 foot Kick for its trip to the mold maker required teamwork. Tom and Walter already proved their teamwork skills this fall, when they helped rescue flood victims trapped outside their car, just before it was swept away. Here they are at work again, showing that their teamwork has other uses. Thank you, Walter and Tom!
I had a new, for me, sighting of striking beauty last week. A male Thomas’s two striped grasshopper (Melanoplus thomasi). We like to leave our road vergers un-mowed until all the wildflowers have had their say for the year. To some it looks a little rough and neglected but there is beauty there for those who look. I was collecting ripe seed heads of Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) for use in pepping up an area where it had a weak showing. There on a seed head was the grasshopper. His neon colors a striking contrast to the dull tans and browns of the seed heads I was clipping. It’s turquoise blue topside, with coral red legs and a lime green undercarriage, made it looked more like a gaudy item from a souvenir shop, than a bug in a field.
In a moist, lower meadow where I often, walk the blooming of the Goldenrod (I am pretty sure Solidago gigantea in this case) is a harbinger of shorter days and the coming of fall. Its flower is one of the strongest yellows of any flower because it has just a hint of red mixed in. This flashiness trips up Goldenrod’s reputation, for few notice the Ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) blooming nearby. Ragweed puts all its energy into creating pollen (of hay fever fame), so it has a very inconspicuous flower, leaving poor Goldenrod to take the fall.
What Aesop did not say – fallen grapes are quite tasty.
The back story:
When Clayton designed our house, he wanted a lot of light, which of course meant a lot of window space. At the same time, he didn’t want to waste energy cooling a house that was being heated by the summer sun.
Having an engineering type of mind, Clayton measured the angle of the sun in the summer, and decided to plant grapes which could be trained up a pergola which would be constructed on the south and west sides of large plate glass windows. This way, the fully grown summer grape leaves would provide shade from the top of (and spilling over the edge of) the pergola. In winter, the grapes leaves have died back and the sun pleasantly warms the room.
What Clayton didn’t anticipate was all the animals which would appreciate the sweet grapes: birds, especially catbirds, raccoons and possums (which have climbed up the grapevines, sometimes with their babies in tow) and now, apparently, teenage foxes.
I have a maxim: Always have time to pick the wine berries. It originates from the fact that if wine berries are ready to be picked it is best to do so now. Waiting until the next day will not do, as the birds will have taken care of the job by then. Plan you day with time for a spontaneous act or two. And do not allow boundaries to get in the way.
There are options on how to shop for food, just as there are on how to create a painting. When shopping A) One can just go grocery shopping and buy what strikes one’s interest once there. B) One can write a shopping list before going shopping, and then zoom all over the store looking for those items. C) One can write the list according to the layout of the store and pick up the listed items in an orderly fashion. D) One can make the list knowing the store layout, and still deviate from the list as inspiration strikes.
In painting, as in grocery shopping, planning and inspiration combined can produce the most interesting results.
A solitary bit of red. This reminds me of the rivalry between John Constable and J.M.W. Turner in the early 1800’s. The rivalry broke into very public view at the Summer Exposition of the Royal Academy in 1832. Their entries to the show were hung next to each other (in this post, Constable’s Opening of the Waterloo Bridge is above Turner’s Helvoetsluys), setting up a direct comparison in style and technique. At the last minute (on Varnishing Day, when artists are allowed to make adjustments to their already hung work), Turner took it one step further; he added the red buoy to his seascape, thus overwhelming all the red on Constable’s canvas.
I have always though the single red buoy greatly improved Turner’s painting, even if it was done to needle Constable.
One never knows when or where a plant combination idea will strike. Sunday, while out on my bike, I noticed some of the verges were occasionally peppered with the red poppy Papaver rhoeas – just a sprinkling here and there, nothing in your face or over the top. It struck me that their red would be a great foil to Phlox divaricata ‘Blue Moon’, also blooming now. The question about that grouping is: since the poppy basks in the sun, while the phlox dallies in the shade, could they be coaxed into co-habitating somewhere?
Camellia japonica
We teeter on the edge of how far north Camellia japonica can be a successful indulgence. The best possible location we have for growing camellias is in the micro-environment of our walled-in Japanese garden. Nature, however, was not so sure. For a number of years we battled back, nurturing the camellia along, pruning out the winter kill, hoping for a better result next year. Then this spring – zap! I turned the corner in the garden one day and there it was – in full bloom. The camellia seemed to think it had been sojourning in Georgia or at least North Carolina for all its boastfulness. My thought was, nice try, but I am sure the mild winter deserves the credit. It is similar to the color in a painting trying to claim the glory, whereas tonal value is really doing the heavy lifting.
Last winter The Morgan Library offered an opportunity to see the results of a master craftsman at work. It was remarkable to be able to see everything – from Sargent with all his flourishes at his grandiose best, to Sargent the insightful portraitist, to Sargent the hack just doing the job he’s been paid to do. All of these versions of Sargent’s charcoal drawings were spread across several galleries.
The drawing of George Meredith was the most instructive of the drawings, where it was easiest to see how Sargent worked. Everything Sargent did is still clearly visible – he mostly stuck with the lines and tones which he originally laid down, not obscuring them with further work. It’s similar to the old exercise of doing a painting with seven strokes of the brush. The artist must pre-plan (thought of as the artist’s style), using intuitive choices along the way.
The portrait of Gertrude Kingston was Sargent at his most flamboyant. Mentally, one could see this charcoal drawing as a portrait in oil. One could feel that famous, unhesitating, sweeping Sargent stroke of the brush. Indeed, it’s more luxurious to see that stroke in a drawing, than in an oil. When using oil paint as his medium, Sargent would survey his day’s work, and, if dissatisfied, he’d wipe it all off and start afresh the next day. Thus, in one of his paintings, that stroke we all admire could have been the result of a dozen or thirty attempts. In a charcoal drawing, no such complete wipeout is possible. When a line/stroke is laid down it’s final.
My favorite drawing was the one of Moorefield Storey. The drawing caught me unawares: the character that radiates from the drawing was as mesmerizing as the drawing itself. Storey was one of the original civil rights lawyers becoming ahead of the in NAACP in 1910.
Every artist has their share of work that misses the mark. I always study both the successful and the un-successful, since the latter teaches me about what doesn’t work, what not to do. However, I am going to leave all these Sargent’s drawings on the uptick.
