Why Seeds?

A little over three years ago my oldest child was wrapping up his year of a pre-preschool program called Mom's Morning Out. It was one morning a week for them to go and play, listen to a story, do an art project and have a little snack. For me it was one morning a week to devote some one-on-one attention to my baby girl. On one of the last days of class they talked about spring, blooming flowers and growing gardens. To add the visual help to the lesson, their teachers sent home a green bean seed in a small plastic bag wrapped in a wet paper towel. Over the next week we watched it sprout and push out an ever lengthening root. Before it got too big and out of control we ran out to the garden and buried it in the freshly turned soil.

At least a year later I found myself with an opportunity to have lunch alone at one of my favorite local restaurants, The Lincoln Cafe in Mt. Vernon, Ia. http://www.foodisimportant.com/ It was early in March, I had gardening on my mind and seeds sprouting in my basement, so I took advantage of this quiet time and packed a gardening book to read.

I was reading a chapter all about the basic botany of plants and there were two insets. One was called "Seeing a Flower Really" that described the anatomy of a flower and two forms of pollination. The second inset was called "Walking with The Metamorphosis of Plants" which was a very brief description of a journey Goethe made through the Italian Alps to observe plants. In the second inset I read ". . . a seed is the contracted or essential nature of a plant that expands with water and good soil to the vegetative growth of stem and leaf, contracting again in the calyx, or outer protective cup of the flower bud. Expansion occurs again when the petals of the corolla expand and the flower opens into bloom, and the pistil and stamen expand to the produce the fertilized ovary, or fruit, of the plant within which is the completion of the cycle, the contraction of the seed."

The seed is the contracted or essential nature of a plant. My mind immediately flashed back one year to my son's sprouted seed and it just hit me. Everything around me stopped for a moment as I contemplated that passage with the image of that sprouted seed. I paid my bill and rushed home to my stash of seeds. I selected several types and threw them into plastic bag with a damp paper towel and then sat at my bench impatiently, willing them to sprout immediately. I was going to paint the seed in it's first moments of awakening and growth.

I am still fascinated with the shapes and colors of the seeds as they grow and change. I like that a person can look at the image and in one moment it can be all about the abstract quality of the image, and in the next moment it can be a real thing.

Merging Schedules

I've probably mentioned this before, but my husband changed his schedule at the beginning of the summer from a 5 day work week to a 4 day work week. We weren't sure how we would really feel about it. The three day weekends were enticing, but instead of getting home shortly after 3:30pm (which we Loved), he would be starting at 6:30am and going until 5pm. The extra long days were a little intimidating. I sure this sounds normal to most people, but the 3:30 finish time allowed us to have a normal dinner and still spend some good, quality time with the kids before the bedtime crunch.

Fortunately this new schedule has been amazing! Our weekends are usually so full with kidtivities and household catch up that I rarely got to do any of my work during the daylight. Now we've arranged our schedule in a way that gives me a whole work day to paint in my studio and when things do get crazy busy we have an extra day to catch up without sacrificing much family time. Obviously I love the extra time in my studio. It provides the stimulation that I crave, but is often still peaceful and meditative.

The last couple of weeks I have sacrificed painting in order to keep things growing in my garden and put up tomatoes for winter enjoyment. Today I am going to dive back into painting. I was starting to get the shakes.

The windows of my studio overlook our backyard and so one of the great things about being able to work while the kids are awake is that I still get to watch from a distance and listen in on their games and hear their laughter. In this heat we sometimes let them play on their slip-and-slide which is always a crowd pleaser. With little relief from the drought however, we've had to shorten their playtime in order to conserve water. This is a concept that is really hard for them to understand and so I'm not going to tell them that we're not in an official water ban . . . yet.

I love that my youngest monkey is wearing nothing but a tutu as she sprays her siblings.

I love being able to get some work done, but still seeing my kids having a great time. I look up from my work and smile and really appreciate the life that we lead.

Observing Through My Camera

Christmas Lima Beans

With the necessary changes in how I spend my time during the summer months comes a change in focus for my art. My reduced painting time translates into more time in the garden observing the way my plants grow and change and observing the forms and colors. I don't claim to be a photographer, but I do think that looking at objects through a lens is a great way to sharpen your skill set. When working in nature you don't always have the ability to manipulate your subject and it forces you to work with what you've been given.  It requires a heightened awareness for composition, color and the interplay of objects. In the garden this can be challenging. You have to put yourself in the right position to capture the scene since you can't arrange the plants the way you want to, but you have to do it without damaging the plants around you.

Christmas Lima Bean

Cucumber

I love looking at new growth on plants in the cucurbitaceae family. They feel so energetic, twisting and turning and exploding into the world. To me it's the garden's fireworks display. 

Cucumber

Butternut Squash

Butternut Squash

Butternut Squash

Butternut Squash

The Harvest is Beginning

For the next couple of weeks I think that painting is going to take a back seat to gardening and harvesting food. I was trying to divide time equally between the two activities, but I can no longer pretend that I have the time for both. Since I am charged with the full time care of my three kiddos, painting, gardening and food preservation used fall into the cracks in my days and often lead to late nights. Due to my husband's recent change in work schedule to four work days/week however,  I have one full day each week to work on rebuilding a little professional niche for myself. I was hoping that with this new schedule this summer I wouldn't have to compromise as much as previous years. I still consider gardening and harvesting a big part of my contribution to our family and so far painting, although deeply satisfying, has not been as lucrative as a freezer full of food.

I had plans to paint on this week's professional day, but within the first hour of the day I had a big pile of fresh, beautiful tomatoes staring me down. 

I ended up spending a good portion of the day converting them from raw fruit into canned goods instead. I have never canned tomatoes before. I usually puree and freeze them, but last fall my husband decided to take up deer hunting after a 13 or 14 year hiatus and filled our freezer to the brim with venison. So this year, most of the tomato preservation will have to be in a form that doesn't require electricity to store. 

I have to say that I find canning incredibly satisfying. I love the idea of having shelves full of food that I started from seed and nurtured through high heat and drought. I don't have to question if pesticides were used, but I don't have to pay extra for organic. I don't have to calculate how many miles the food travelled, how much oil was consumed in the production of my food, or worry about all the waste from the packaging. Nor do I need to worry if workers were maltreated at any point during the production of my food (read Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook for some alarming insight). Yes, I love canning, and if I do it in the evening I treat myself to a glass of wine and some good music while I work. 

Trouble in the Garden

When I returned home from our last vacation I wasn't surprised to see that most of the plants were struggling. I had given the entire garden a good soaking before I left, but the heat and the pests took their toll.

All of my zucchini plants were dead, very dead. The thought of a garden without zucchini makes me sad, very sad. 

I have some lovely blossoms on my cucumbers, but so far none of them have actually become fruit.

There is a lot of new growth on the cucumber plants though, so I'm still holding out hope.

Most of the leaves on the green bean plants are curled up and many are a little crisp around the edges from heat and drought. (I still think the pattern on the leaves is beautiful though.)

My butternut squash plants are still putting out new growth too, but most of the sections of plants look wilted and the blossoms look droopy. 

Hopefully with a little TLC and some consistent watering I can bring some of it back, but I know I have to say good bye to the zucchini. I may try to plant some new seeds and if the fall is uncharacteristically warm, perhaps I will get a few fruits for zucchini bread or for a delicious sauteed side at dinner.

This time it was a family reunion

My family and I just returned home from an eight day whirlwind trip to Colorado. We visited three different family groups and had loads of fun hiking to waterfalls, climbing rocks, playing on go-karts and bumper boats, going down water slides, visiting the zoo and ofcourse eating.

The kids ran everywhere they went at full speed. 

They became "expert" rock climbers.

The waterfalls were stunning.

The mountains were majestic.

The Henry Doorly Omaha Zoo was our final stop on our way home.

It did not disappoint.

I deliberately left all of my art supplies at home on this trip. I wanted to give myself some distance from this latest series of paintings and take any spare time I might have to read the stack of books I have been neglecting. 

I only had time to indulge in Patti Smith's book "Just Kids". It is her memoir about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. It was wonderful. I was captivated by the way she wrote about the devotion that she and Robert Mapplethorpe shared for each other and their art. It was fascinating to read about the way in which their talents evolved over time. It is written without any hint of pretension.  

Coming home from this trip was exciting this time. Instead of dreading the mountains of laundry and clean up and schedule readjustment, I was anxious to get back to work. I missed painting. It was great to have had a little distance from them so that I could come back with fresh eyes. And Patti Smith served as a motivating force through her passion for her own art to fill my head with new ideas and to look at my old ideas from a different prespective and most of all to simply make time to work every day. 

Kentucky Wonder Bush

5 1/8 x 4 1/2 x 5/8"

Oil on gessoed wood

I love sprouting bean seeds because the way the roots emerge and grow usually produces shapes and forms that I really enjoy working with. The last time I was at the gardening store I bought several different packages of beans for planting in my garden and sprouting for my art. The great thing about both activities is that each one is always an experiment. This year I am trying to plant a few varieties of beans in my garden in case they react slightly different to this crazy up and down weather we're experiencing and I kind of enjoy doing taste tests with the different beans. For my artistic purposes each variety of bean has a slightly different color and size, the color however is usually white, a shade of beige or black. When I opened the Kentucky Wonder Bush package I was delighted to find these lovely purply-pink beans. 

It was fun to vary my color palette a little and work with a lighter background. I look forward to playing with these beans some more and to seeing how they taste in a few weeks!