Transitioning

 

 

                        Under Cover

 

Grumbling about winter seems to be a universal chorus that I have trouble understanding --- until the last two weeks in March, that is; then cold March winds seem to have more bite than a January snowstorm, without the beauty of snowdrifts piled high.

During winter months, when the thought of frozen paint on the palette keeps me indoors, I hunker down in my studio  like a tiny mole snug in his underground burrow.  This is when I paint the quiet colors of winter and indulge in the longer process of painting on canvases too large to drag along on plein air excursions. Come April, however, when the robins start chirping me awake at 6:00 AM and the first green buds appear on lilac bushes, I can’t wait to don my mud boots and join the robins outdoors.

My country neighbors have cut their teeth on  planting trowels, and my friend Don is no exception. He has gardened for most of his seventy plus years, and still cultivates two vegetable gardens, whereas  I muddle around trying this and that, hoping to find my gardening voice. When Don talks about his gardens, my ears perk up and my attention rivets to his words, hoping he’ll drop a few pearls of gardening wisdom.  

The other day he told me he’s testing his pea seeds by sandwiching them between damp paper towels to see which  ones will sprout.  Saves time, he says.

Even though this April has been unusually cold, our conversation spurred me to take a look at my own garden where I found, much to  my delight, new raspberry canes and bright red rhubarb poking up through left over dried leaves.  The garden is not waiting for me and I love that about perennials --- they have an internal clock and know when it’s time to get to work.

And where are my pea seeds?  As an experiment last summer,  I purposefully left some pea pods on the vine to dry in the hot summer sun. Their beautiful pea green color bleached out to an insipid pale beige, and the pods turned tough and leathery; inside the peas shrank and grew hard as tiny marbles. Not convinced they were beyond redemption, I stuffed them in an envelope along with a small prayer for a miracle next spring.

History Counts.

 

 

                                 

                                    Michigan Street Bridge

Generations have passed since Joseph Dart built the first grain elevator in here in Buffalo, NY. Little did he know in 1842 that the elevators  he envisioned would spawn a radical new architectural vocabulary that continues to leave us in awe of their magnitude. Bypassed by alternative marketing routes, these beauties fell into quiet decrepitude.  Folks seem to never tire of conjuring up reincarnations for them; everything from five star hotels to ethanol plants, is fair game for the imagination.

Along the south shore of the Buffalo River, in the heart of Buffalo’s grain elevator territory, the Swanie House Tavern  remains alone guarding the corner of Michigan and Ohio Streets; neighboring buildings have long since disappeared. As planned, I meet several friends there on a crisp morning in September. It is our first time painting in this industrial neighborhood, and we wonder what secrets it holds.

Down by waters edge, as we purposefully unpack our painting gear, our eyes automatically shift to the looming grain elevators across the river.  Their presence is palpable; we sense their weariness, see their vacant eyes.  Each of us will see them differently; each of us will tell a different story.  We begin. 

Stocking Up

 

           

                 Waiting

 

Twelve Mile Creek passes by our property on its meandering way to Lake Ontario, and is the inspiration for many of my oil paintings.  Morning walks along its banks keep me in tune with the seasons, clear my head of daily chatter, and deepen my appreciation of nature’s ways.

Every once in a while I run into my neighbor, Sam, working in his wood lot, working at keeping things tidy. Neatly stacked fresh cut cords of wood dot the area waiting, to be called into service.

Although in his early eighties, Sam talks passionately about his trees and manages his woodlot with the attention of a micro-manager. Most likely sometime this year he will cut the ancient box elder tree in this painting, and use the wood to heat his home next year. The tree is dying, he says, and must be cut. It will leave a deep scar along the creek bank, but  . . . irrationally I plead silently for Sam to spare this tree, for to me, because if it’s magnificent size,  it speaks of days gone by when human hands were not always a threat.