Month: June 2019

Under the Oaks

This past spring in California has been one of the most stunning I can recall.  A long period of rain, extending deep into May, produced a situation in which flowers bloomed, and bloomed, and bloomed.  There are still traces of colors – golds and yellows mostly – on the hills when normally the color is beige and dead.  The richness of the wildflowers made the landscape, whether on the hills or under the trees, in the meadows or alongside the freeway, a wonderland of color.  I am still sorting out photos and memories as sources for paintings.

This is an underpainting for the gouache painting I did today.  Wildflowers under the oak trees along a local trial – lupines, wild cucumber, white and yellow flowers of known and unknown species.  Here, a la James Gurney, I decided to do an underpainting using casein paints.  He suggests casein as the underpainting as it cannot be picked up, as can an underpainting of gouache, once it dries.  It primes the paper, too.  While the smell is rather gross, the substrate it creates is stable and I rather liked using it, not just for what it did for the paper, but to lay in some values as well.

From there, I moved into remembering – thin layers to thick in gouache, building to lighter colors and thicker layers as you move along.  I’ve watched a number of videos on YouTube to get a sense of the process.  In particular, I have enjoyed the videos on gouache by Sarah Burns.  It’s rather strange to me, but it worked out.  Below is a painting of blue-eyed grass and white flowers under the oak trees in this stunning California spring.

Gardening

There is something about the smell of dirt, whether in the form of sodden leaves and dirt in the fall rain, or a pot of soil, or spreading amendment into a garden bed.

For years I had a house with a fenced-off area for gardening.  I grew tomatoes and corn and lettuces and lemons and figs for the most part.  There was a 40-foot tall avocado tree too, but it was old and diseased.  The soil was clay, and if I watered it, I could sink into it up to my ankles unless I put paving stones around the beds.  It wasn’t the best of situations, and had I the wherewithal, I could have rototilled amendment to make a better bed, but it never happened.  Still, going out to play in the soil, plant and weed and pick were some of the best bits of summer.

Since then we have moved.  The guy we bought our current house from put in too many trees, and now we are paying the price of having them removed over time.  About a dozen more to go (that’s down from about 20).  Then, a small back hoe or something is going to need to come in to dig down to get at roots and such – probably 24″ or so – and put in a new watering system and dirt.  In hindsight, I should have done it when we moved in, but that is hindsight!  With foresight, I am planning ahead.  It will take time and money and a bit of thought, and perhaps even a landscaper or professional.

Only one tree is going to be saved – the crepe myrtle (above).

However!  All is not lost as I have a Dog Free Zone (a.k.a the “DFZ” – a side patio where the dogs are forbidden, and is fenced off).  There is also a small flower bed in the front yard, and gardening areas for a fig tree and roses.

We have a couple of tangerine trees in pots on wheels which we roll around on the back patio to collect the sun.  Today I did some transplanting of flowers into larger pots, pruning, and general clean up.  After that, I started some old seeds in starter containers – things like cucumber seeds from 2008, long beans, mesclun, holly hocks, lupines, stock and carnations, pimientos and cayenne peppers.  If they come up, great; if not, at least I tried, right?

Flowers and vegetables and fruit – all are better when home grown!  Besides what I put in today, I also have a couple of tomatoes, odd bulbs, lilies, zinnias, more peppers (about 12 or so), mint, milkweed, lavender, alyssum, sunflowers, marigolds, and few other bits and bobs that attracted my attention these past months.  Front and back are getting spruced up!

Gardening is one of the great joys of retirement, a beautiful spring, and an unfolding summer season . . .