Studiology

And there they sit...

A few spooky things floating around, as it should be on Halloween!

String Lights

Before a final freeze, before the garden leaves me for the season, I thought to put up string lights. Down the center of my raised beds, I strung some strands and it's the simplest, most amazing thing. Wish I had thought of it for the summer nights.

At the end of the garden I have a small cement grotto or shrine where various flowers have been laid thru the summer. Now it's my "Day of the Dead" ofrenda with marigolds, candles and pumpkins. I've decided that orange marigolds are the best, so next year I will drop the yellow and white varieties and grow lots of orange types. In fact this garden is so full of tender plants from Mexico, it's like a little slice of Mexico here in Virginia.  Marigolds are the flower of choice for the "Day of the Dead" celebrations, and so it will be here. 

Photographs don't do it justice, the experience is sensory. Knowing that freezing nights are almost here, is depressing. This night extrvaganza makes this gardener happy.  With spring the planting will begin again, the string lights used much earlier. I might just have a little party, or a really, really big one. Keep that in mind for next August.

Adios my Friend

Some of you knew, but many did not, my dear friend from High School in Mexico City has been battling breast cancer for 8 years. On Monday the 20th of October she lost the fight. At the young age of  59, she leaves behind her mother and father. 

The back story is how we met and ended up friends in 1970. She was a year ahead of me in high school, we entered the American School in Mexico City, mid-year. Her father a perfumer, my father worked for the CIA. Few things can solidify a friendship more than being deposited in a new school, in a different country. Along with our friend India Johnson from Omaha, Nebraska, we became a threesome. A band of friends in one of the biggest cities in the world, and I like to think that Mexico didn't know what was coming! We hitch-hiked everywhere. Sometimes with India's great dane, a giant beast named "Brandy". We rode horses in the country, shopped in the Zona Rosa and ate donuts at "La Vaca Negra".

After high school I would visit her in New York City. She was a perfumer like her father. Her office was wall to wall oils, herbs and sundry other perfume ingredients. I watched her make top secret perfumes from a recipe. She moved to Chantilly after visiting Virginia, I think the move was one she was very happy with. Mona and Jerry (her husband) helped me a lot with the nursery. Her favorite thing to do was make a great big dinner, complete with a fabulous cake and bring it over to my house so we and the kids had a home made dinner after work. We would chatter long into the night.

 As a treat to ourselves, myself and Mona revisited Mexico City in March of 2013. She was well enough, we saw our old houses and went to Tolantongo. We even stayed with Elin, our friend from high school (and Iceland) that still lives there. Close friends knew she had breast cancer, but I was told to keep it secret.

When her husband died 9 years ago, she moved from Chantilly, Virginia to buy a house where she could care for her mother and father in Maryland. She was their caregiver. Mona was a good soul. A caring, dear friend. Adios mi amiga! Besos y abrazos.

Persimmons

There are persimmons this year, unlike last year. The trees around the pond are loaded with the soft round, orange fruit, which is officially a berry. Yes, a berry. Now you may find that an odd fact, but I also want to point out that you can eat the fruit before frost. And that really did catch me by surprise since everyone says they're too astringent to eat unless we've had a freeze or frost. As of today,  I've eaten 3 delicious persimmons, picked directly from the tree, pre-frost. 

The official name for our native persimmon is Diospyros virginiana, a tree that grows from Florida to upstate New York. The champion tree is 94' tall, located in Yell, Arkansas, which is much taller than our average 20'. The tree will either be male or female with entire groves of only females, which I suspect have suckered. We had the most beautiful round grove at the nursery (in the day), all were female, which made for quite a mess in the fall as the fruit fell. Although I was happy to have the subsequent foxes who love persimmons and may have inadvertently eaten a few of my marauding voles. Quail, raccoon, squirrel, deer and possums also eat the fruit so I'm encouraged when I see trees loaded with food for wild animals, they need it late in the year.

One year I attempted to make persimmon cobbler and the recipe required 1 cup of persimmon pulp. You may have an inkling of how the pulp sticks to the seeds if you've eaten a few persimmons, but to acquire a full cup, well let's just say it's almost impossible. I now understand that you can peel them first and then work the fruit into a collander or potato ricer to harvest the meat of the fruit, leaving the seed behind.  Based on the taste of the cobbler, it's worth trying a few persimmon recipes. An internet search reveals persimmon pudding, cakes, breads, cookies and jam. 

 The word persimmon comes from the Algonquian word "a dry fruit", derived from their drying the fruit like prunes. In fact this can lead to fermenting fruit and a persimmon beer or brandy, both of which I'm sure are delicious!  

Mixed Media Artwork from Art and Soul

The Art and Soul retreat allows the artist to take a class a day and another at night.  You can be in class from 9 A:M to 9 P:M. In years past the event was held in late April in Virginia Beach, which all changed this year when it was moved to late September. At the urging of a frequent attendee, I was finally able to attend, only because the retreat didn't coincide with spring, my busy time. 

Designed for the mixed media artist, you work with many, many forms of medium. Metal seemed to dominate, but there was certainly plenty of painting on various surfaces and 3D assemblages. Since you change teachers for each class, the idea is that you finish your project by the end of the day (or night), so that you can take it home. 

My first class was with Susan Lenart Kazmer and involved 'Ice Resin'. The next day I worked with soldering and the same teacher. 

Mica was a class taught by Erin Keck and she brought the most glorious compressed mica, mined in North Carolina. We created little books.

A night class with Jen Crossley was over the moon! Small, old metal fuse boxes make these small necklaces. 

Real tintype photographs were supplied by the teacher (and the fuse boxes). 

Mid-week was a class titled "Stone Cold Journals" with Erin Keck. This will definitely be a prototype for many more. I have already been at work in the studio with alternatives to this sample.

Possibly my favorite class was taught by Jean Van Brederode called "Gruesome Griselda". Metal work and soldering with copper produced this layered necklace. Jean is the source for many of the tools we used all week in various classes, so in this class we had all of her tools to test. Let's just say my tool box is now too small.

I made the metal hanging parts with a bailing plyer, who knew such a thing existed?!

A full week of inspiration and meeting wonderful people made for a great time. An awesome time!

 

Guinea News

Today's News - momma guinea hatches 9 babies. In the overgrown vegetable patch, 14 eggs become 9 keets and today is their birth date. The first time this has happened with this kind of success (usually some vermin gets her in the night and eats all of the eggs). So what will become of these little ones? Well, they already lost 1 and I had to retrieve it and return it to mom. Not good!

These babies were hatched by the only female I had left in the tribe. Sadly, the one I called "the old lady" died last week. She had taught all of these how to survive as well as the 40 or so before them. She was not doing well and we found her dead in the garden. Too soon for her to meet the 8 we have in the house, her babies, or "the hoodlums" as my husband calls them. The result of the eggs we took out of her nest to incubate. 

I don't have high hopes for these little ones, although I'm surprised at the attention they're getting, even from the dominate males. I have been told they might die from fungal problems related to wet grass, or scooped up by a hawk. Let's hope this isn't a sad story because I'm the one that decided to let them be, to leave them alone. 

 

Da Bomb

The week at Art and Soul has come to an end, boo hoo! I will miss those ladies, their tutu's, pirate hats, fabulous jewelery and big artistic attitude. I learned to solder, and I mean the real stuff, with silver. I lit shellac on fire and watched it burn my wax painting till it crackled. I learned about micro screws, marvelous new tools and riveting. I met the most incredible teachers, most of which are authors of books on specialized art and patient with a capital P. Just a little example - Susan Lenart Kazmer, recently featured  in "Elle" magazine, taught 4 classes.

She is not only the founder of the product "Ice Resin", but fearless as she gave us torches to learn soldering. No one's hair caught on fire, just a little incident with a kiln door and a square burn in the carpet. Oops!

My daughter visited with little Miss Felicity and I was proud as a peacock as I showed them around. A grandson is due in early December, in case I didn't tell you.