Up Too Late Again

But I have an excuse.  Well, a reason, really.  I went erranding today and, as has become

my habit, popped into the locally owned furniture store next to the postal outpost to look at side chairs.  The one I have was Mother Malcolm's, I had it recovered once about 25 years ago, and it's seen better days.  I called around last fall looking for someone to reupholster it but didn't find anyone and it kept getting more bedraggled with every visit from one of my assistants.  Every other time I've either not found anything that I remotely like or the prices on the ones that I'd consider are over the moon.  This afternoon I found a chair.  I looked in the Clearance room and saw one faded red tie-dyed one that I really liked but it was a wing chair (not my preferred style) and it was nearly $600... ON CLEARANCE. (I know!)  It was out.  I walked around the floor looking at chairs and found this one.  It's bronze, gray-ish teal, and white so it blends with the gray loveseat and brown carpet, but look at it.  This chair makes a statement.  I love it.  It's bigger than the other one but that's okay, it's comfortable to sit in and it's crazy looking. And it was $329.  Sold! Oh, why I'm up late is that I asked DS if I could borrow the big van and him to go get it from the warehouse this evening because delivery would add $75 and I figured that we could handle a chair.  Well, the good daddy had to stay home for bedtime, so we didn't leave their house until about 8:15 pm which meant that it was after 9:00 when we got the legs on the chair and he got to take his yawning self home.  I had to sit and knit for an hour or so to admire the chair.


I finished mowing the lawn/weeds this afternoon.  I probably should have had a baler although for the most part the mower mulched the dickens out of them so it doesn't look like a hay field out there.  Once that was done I repositioned the birdfeeders and filled them all, including the ones up on top of the retaining well.  One of these days (next week) I need to go down the retaining wall yanking out all of the lush weeds that are growing up there.  I have some bulbs to plant up there and plan to cruise the parking lot greenhouses etc. for closeout day lilies.  I figure if I plant one of those every few feet they'll spread over the next couple years so it'll be pretty self-sustaining.  And LC requested that I plant more raspberries so I'm thinking of talking to LJ, the neighbor because the raspberries on the near corner of his yard escaped from our raspberry patch.  Maybe I can repatriate a few, thin his out a bit.  It'd be like doing him a favor.



Speaking of berries, I picked three blueberries this morning.  I don't get many but I really savor the few that grow.  I don't know what I'd have to do to make the bushes grow bigger and make more blueberries, probably dig up the pots, buy bigger ones that I'd have to bury in bigger holes, and maybe do a berry dance, if there is such a thing.



The purple coneflowers are starting to bloom.  Lala said she found some orange ones but they didn't survive.  Too bad, I'd have liked to see those.  I need to plant some Black-eyed Susans.  Hm, maybe that's what I should plant on top of the wall, Black-eyed Susans and Shasta Daisies.  Those would fill in that space, wouldn't they?  I'll think on it.



In the spirit of buying things for the house today, I went down to the carpet outlet this afternoon and found some vinyl flooring to replace the 41 year old yellow stuff that I chose when we built this joint.  I'll have it put in the bathroom and the front and back entries.  It's only about 80 square feet so the installation will probably cost more than the flooring but I gotta say that I'm so tired of that yellow stuff I could spit.



I got the cuff of the Virgo sock knitted and half of the first repeat of the leg stitches.  I think it's going to look fine and I'm relieved that there's as much brown in there because if it was just green and gold I would not have bought it and for sure wouldn't be knitting it up.  Nosireebob.




23 July--Barbara Malcolm, Horizon. 

I walked down to get my mail.  It was a perfect sunny, spring afternoon.  I admired the way the new plantings around the mailbox were filling in.  The Scarlet Cardinal Vine Abel had planted there was growing fast.  I loved the lacy look of its leaves and couldn’t wait for the red  trumpet-shaped flowers to appear.  Looking through the handful of mostly junk mail I’d pulled out of the box, I glanced into the woods.  I was thrilled to see that it was carpeted with trillium.  The forest floor dappled with sunshine and the white trillium glowing like pearls gave me an idea.

I hurried into the house, grabbed my board to clip paper to and my paints, zipped into the basement to unearth a campstool and a TV tray, and headed right back out.  I hauled my things down into the woods and found a fairly flat spot to set up my tray and stool.  I made a trip back to the house because I’d forgotten water, but finally had everything arranged.

            It was cool with a light breeze, perfect for sitting in the woods and painting.  My hands were clumsy with excitement as I clamped a piece of paper onto the board and dug a pencil out of my basket.  I took a couple deep breaths to slow myself down a bit and try to achieve the calm center that Jake said is the best place to paint from.  I had to laugh thinking about how I had resisted Jake’s teaching at first.  Now it was sort of funny to remember how angry and hurt I’d been during those first few classes when he’d pushed and criticized and forced me to paint better.  I didn’t regret having blown up at him, because in just a few weeks after our talk, my painting had improved tremendously.  Now I was grateful for the way he had pushed me.

            I was about to paint outdoors for the first time.  I sat quietly on my stool for a few minutes, drinking in the serenity of the woods and letting my eyes roam over the landscape.  My eyes kept stopping on an area where a fallen tree had made a bigger opening, letting in a large shaft of sunlight.  The trilliums in the light were incandescent in their whiteness and the trees looked almost black.  Once I had my subject in view and in my mind, I carefully roughed it in with my pencil.  Then I took another breath and really looked at what I planned to paint.  How many colors were there?  How many greens?  What was the color of the shadow under the blooms?  What color would I use for the background?  I made notes on the small spiral pad Jake had recommended we keep with our painting supplies, dug out the tubes, and squeezed a few blobs of paint on my palette.

            I had been painting for an hour, trying to capture the exact feeling I had in that place, a cross between nature appreciation and the reverence I feel sometimes in church, and I just wasn’t getting it.  I had decided to start again, for the third time, when I heard a car approaching.

That’s one good thing about living on a gravel lane; you can hear your company coming before you see them.  I hoped it wasn’t some Jehovah’s Witnesses looking to save me.  Spring brings them out in droves and I hate being abrupt with them.  Their earnest pleading eyes remind me of stray dogs that show up on your back steps hoping for a handout.  But I was determined to spend this glorious afternoon painting, not listening to someone spout Bible verses at me in an attempt to save my soul.

             I couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or frustrated when the approaching vehicle came into sight.  It was Abel’s faded red pickup truck.  What more does the man want? I thought.  I let him help me put in the flowers and plant that area around the mailbox.  I’d thanked him for the Cardinal Vines.  Now what?

As you have probably surmised, my grand plan to write for an hour a day in July has failed.  With all of the emotional upheaval doing physical things like walking, working out, and sewing has been much more my speed than cerebral things like writing this month.  Don't worry, I'm not giving up.  But for now, it's good night.  *yawn*  I'm bushed.
--Barbara