Buenos días, ¿cómo amaneció usted?
Good morning, how did the sun rise upon you?
Can you consider it plein air painting, if you paint through a window? We do. My youngest and I love to greet the day before dawn, and her easel is perfectly positioned to paint the sunrise, next to an east facing window. I switched the light on to take her photo, but we painted in the dim light and quiet of dawn, she at her easel, and I, set up in the windowsill.
The Old Ruins
by: Mary Dow Brine (1816-1913)
If ye could speak, old ruins,
That rise in stately pile,
As tho’ ye longed to boast the power
That ye possessed erewhile;
If ye could tell the grandeur
Of the old days long past,
Ere Time, with his destroying touch,
Came ruthlessly and fast,
To level all the glory
That clung to your proud walls–
Ah! grand would be the story
Of those ancestral halls!
What tales of high-born maidens!
What tales of Cavaliers!
What comedies and tragedies!
What tales of hopes and fears!
What stories, too, of triumphs,
And tales of wrong and right!
What histories of the clouds of life,
And of its joys so bright!
But solemn is the silence
That reigns about you here;
Your secret hides in the deep heart
Of the old forest drear,
And Peace is ever brooding
Above your crumbling walls,
And heaven’s sunshine dances thro’
The space of vanished halls.
This old rock wall is on our farm, oh that these old rocks could tell their stories. I love to imagine the life that took place within the walls of this old house a hundred years ago. As I painted the fireplace I wondered what might have been stuffed into stockings hung by this mantel Christmases past. I painted in plein air, but I had to remember the lovely apricot light, for it never lasts long.
We don’t really have Indian Summer in Texas, we have cold snaps. Nevertheless, after a long, hot summer, a few warm days feel like a gift. Even in Texas, our barefoot, sundress days are numbered. We try to make today count.
INDIAN SUMMER
Emily Dickinson
These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.
These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, –
A blue and gold mistake.
Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,
Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!
Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,
Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!
The Harvest Moon
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A touch of cold in the Autumn night
It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.
4×6 study in pastel on abergine sanded paper
Fall is the reason to live in Texas. We spent a wonderful weekend camping, and much to our delight we stumbled on the Dogwood chapter of the Lone Star Dutch Oven Society. These chefs had amazing Dutch oven set-ups, and were making the most delicious smelling food. I received a crash course in Dutch oven cooking, and an invitation to join them for lunch! Camp food never tasted so good. For more information visit the Dogwood Dutch Oven Society
If you are a Dutch oven chef, I would love to hear about your favorite recipe.
Today is the last weekday I will have to savor the changing light in the mornings for a while. I love to sit with my coffee and watch the sun rise from my kitchen or back porch. Big giant pink sun peeking over the trees, and then the light show: pink, to peach, to yellow, and then to see what color blue the day will bring. Instead of savoring the light change, I painted fast this morning, for Monday will have me urging kids to stay on task and get out the door for school. Trying to capture the changing light, I was aware of how fast things change: the light of sunrise, or the growing up of kids. I am grateful that every now and then I can stop time and savor the moment.
paintandsimple 