One of the classic signs of geezerhood I’ve always been told is that time speeds up when you get older. I really hoped that would only be an urban myth but egads… it’s coming to pass right before my very eyes!! Already the weather has turned cold long before I wanted or felt the urge to pull out my winter clothes. 2024 is rapidly approaching its grand finale much too soon with all the holiday pizzazz that comes with it. They just don’t make years like they used to anymore. I think you only get five or six months at best. And then winter sweeps in like a cheap popsicle from the school cafeteria… cold as blue blazes and not terribly enjoyable. But on the positive side I somehow managed, despite all odds and expectations, to make 2024 AD a productive one. Hooray for me!!
It’s been a few months since I last wrote and I want to apologize for that. I’m happy to say that all is well on my end if you’ve been wondering. Between the window work, tackling a couple of book illustration projects that went into overtime (with more book jobs in the works), volunteering my time and my hunky body for various local organizations, catering to my bonsai addiction, while managing all the responsibilities of life in the twenty-first century, it has been a challenge to find the time and energy to sit down and pen my thoughts. Some days writing is a lot of fun which makes my writing time seem almost like playtime; enjoyable and rejuvenating. I love days like those! Other days I can’t seem to string two coherent sentences together. My writing mojo comes and goes like the weather and is heavily influenced by how much work I’ve got on my docket and how urgent it is. Being overloaded isn’t much fun and I’m not nearly as creative when I’m stressed. That’s probably one of the key lessons I learned this year. I love staying busy and preoccupied but I do not like being overwhelmed which was part of my problem this year. When I get myself hip-deep in working several creative projects at once my urge to write just flies out the window. I want to correct that and spend more time writing next year and I want to be more consistent about it. I think from here one of the habits/changes I want to cultivate and continue with my life is to do my writing and blogging first thing in the mornings before I get distracted with the business of the day. That’s easy enough to do and I’ve found that I typically do my best writing in the mornings anyway.
In addition to writing I want to spend more time making art which got shortshafted this year. To help with that I’ve rigged up a cheap backpack into an art pack that holds my art supplies which I can tote along with me when I’m out driving around or I’m on one of my hikes. Sketching and painting is one of the great joys of my life but the logistics of carrying around my sketchbook and art supplies to record things for posterity does complicate things. It’s been an ongoing experiment trying to figure out what mediums I like to use and need to carry with me while still traveling light. I’m also trying to push myself to draw and paint faster which is pretty important when one is sketching scenes with people and action involved. But I’m loving the art I create under such circumstances. As an extra perk, it’s a quaint and novel way of meeting people who take an interest in seeing a street artist in action. When people see an artist at work out in public their curiosity often gets the best of them and they will stroll on over to see what I’m doing which makes for some really fun conversation. This year I’ve been experimenting with various ways of sketching and lately I’m coming to love using watercolor pencils. They are handy things as you can lay down some quick line work and establish a composition pretty fast just as one would do with with regular pencils. But watercolor pencils lets me draw in full color and I can add a dab or two of water to dissolve the pencil lines since watercolor pencils are nothing but watercolor paints in pencil form. With a wet brush and water I can render some very nice effects that way or even turn my drawing into a full painting if the spirit leads me. Pretty handy things, those watercolor pencils. I’m becoming more and more a fan of them every time I use them.
The fall weather has been long and pleasant this year, if uncomfortably dry. Rainfall has been hard to come by for most of this year for some reason and, coincidentally or not, has been running warmer than usual too. For what it’s worth, I’ve noticed whenever the weather stays warmer than it should the rainfall just doesn’t materialize. I’m not a weather guru but I’m certain there’s a fine and intricate balance between the temps and rainfall levels. I’m certain each influences the other in multiple ways which makes me wonder how climate change will affect the Virginia climate later on this century? For some years now I’ve been seeing subtle changes in the natural rhythm of things compared to years past which gets me to wondering whether it’s a fickle, cyclical thing with the weather or something more permanent? What the future holds is hard to guess but if it means less snow then I’m all for that!!
I haven’t been able to get out in the woods much this year but the fall fireworks have been quite pretty in spite of the hot and dry weather we’ve had. My own tree collection put on a respectable show for the most part even if many of my trees colored up a little later than expected. I have one good sized red maple that’s a favorite of mine which I’ve so been looking forward to seeing it do its fall thing all year but the rascally tree had a prank of its own for me. It started to color up in mid-October with a few yellow and orange leaves to titillate me. But things never progressed further than that. All thru October and November a few leaves here and there would color up and fall away, then a few more would change color and so on. That maple never did go all-out in color, opting instead to stay green the whole time as it slowly killed off a few leaves at a time. I just did pack it away along with the rest of my tree collection in its winter quarters earlier this week where it is has now finally achieved “full” color; all a dozen leaves or so! It would have been a marvelous show had everything colored at once. I think I might have watered it so much and fertilized it so heavily during the year to get it to make wood that it messed with the growth cycle a bit. Who knows? I had another red maple that I found a couple years ago as a seedling in a cemetery and it has the rubiest-red leaves in fall that I’ve ever seen on any species of maple. But this year it went straight apricot in color. Still quite beautiful but how odd I thought? The natural world never ceases to surprise, amaze and occasionally befuddle me.
I’ll share one final funny with you before I send you on your way. About a couple weeks ago I collected some Japanese wisteria pods from the Bedford cemetery for the purpose of harvesting and planting the seed. As I do with a lot of things, I brought those seed pods home and set them on my basement counter with the intention of cracking them open and collecting the seeds within for planting next spring. Wisteria make some very interesting seed pods if you’ve never seen them. After blooming, wisteria form and grow these hefty chocolatey brown pods that have a curious velvety feel to them. Wisteria pods are good sized things; probably five or six inches long and thick as hotdogs. I collected a handful of pods, brought them home and set them down on my counter for several days with every expectation of getting to them at some point . But, as I often do, I set some papers and other rip-raff on top of them which effectively hid them out of sight and put the pods (mostly) out of mind. Then one day while I was drifting off to sleep for my afternoon siesta I heard a loud noise that I couldn’t identify but sounded like a cap gun going off. Ordinarily I would’ve gone and looked to see what it was that made that noise but I couldn’t think two ways by that point as I was almost asleep. My last thought before I zonked out was ‘What was that?’ I didn’t give it another thought until a couple days later when I heard another loud “pop” which instantly brought to mind the first incident that happened a couple days earlier. It kinda startled me as it sounded like a fuse blew but we still had lights and power. When I looked around I saw some strange looking seeds on the floor, seed I’d never seen before and had no idea where it came from. It looked sorta like a big raisin stomped flat but it was some kind of an odd bean. And that was when I discovered what was happening. Apparently wisteria pods aren’t benign things that quietly break up and drop from the vine as they age and weather. Wisteria pods, like the vines that create them, are rambunctious and literally blow themselves open with force when they get dry enough. And when those pods split open they literally go with a bang! Well, more like a good pop at least. I had no idea about this odd bit of wisteria trivia but I now have a newfound respect for this plant. As I say, nature can wow you…… even inside your own home! Wow!!
My art journal is getting packed with my art on the go. Here are some of the snapshots of the people and places I’ve seen over the holidays.
Here’s a watercolor painting I made of an old and abandoned tobacco barn in my area. Its seen better days. This is really only half done but I don’t know that I’m too motivated to finish it.
Some local musicians that were playing on a cold Friday night which were part of a larger ensemble, but I got the best view of these two rabble-rousers.
A watercolor pencil sketch of my brother Will snoozing on the sofa after the turkey gorgefest of the year.
A quick pencil sketch of Bruce paying rapt attention to our speaker of the month at a local writer’s meet.
And our illustrious speaker, Ed Falco.
