the shrine of spring

here i am.  still worshipping at the shrine of spring.

some of my epiphyllums are blooming in all of their shocking pinkness.

i stood for a good 10 minutes under this climbing lady banks rose celebration.  trying to figure out how i could lay down under it and get all the petals to fall on top of me and cover me like a crepe papery sheet that i could spring up from, then fall back into.  over and over.  no reasonable way forth presented itself so i just imagined it and thus it happened.  exactly as i described.

i finished the very last page of my tiny moleskine.  now i must order another.

in one of my mini-moleskines i found this picture i made of the house across the street.  i can barely see it anymore through the tangle of  trees gone wild in my front yard that stretches a long way down towards the street.

presenting her majesty matilija poppy.  ta da!

can you find the duck in the photo?

logging some sketchbook miles.

i paint directly then if i don’t like how it comes out i go over it with some dark inky lines.  they help decipher the dried puddles of watercolor somewhat.

now listen to this from tuck everlasting:

for the wood was full of light, entirely different from the light she was used to.  it was green and amber and alive, quivering in splotches on the padded ground, fanning into sturdy stripes between the tree trunks.  there were little flowers she did not recognize, white and palest blue;  and endless, tangled vines;  and here and there a fallen log, half rotted but soft with patches of sweet green-velvet moss.

i regret that i never read it aloud to another class in the last 23 years.   henceforth it will be the FIRST book i start the year with, not the last.

i hope you’re doing well.  better than well!  planning your great summer voyages across the seas in your sailing vessels, sewing your new summer bonnets and aprons which you will don when you head outside into your vast english gardens to take cuttings for every room of your house,  sitting on your wrap-around porches with a basket of kittens at your feet;  reading of course, or staring into space, or watching the kittens mew.  soon you’ll bend down and pick them up!

if you have time in your schedule to climb into a time machine and visit paris then do so at once.