A chapter opened and a chapter closed

Here is the acrylic painting wedding gift I was working on for a couple of weeks before Christmas. This is the beautiful young woman my son married yesterday. We have just returned from their wedding in Fredericton, a happy bright respite from the grey of winter, to telephone news of the passing of my husband Jim's father. Kind of a roller coaster couple of days from top of the loop to a sudden grounding. Jim is good at finding blessings in all situations and points out that both of his parents got to spend their entire lives in dignity in their own home. His mom died in late november in her dining room rocking chair.

Its an odd thing to be juggling two sets of emotions from each end of the happy/sad spectrum at the same time. Like holding two books, one open at page one and one with the back cover closing....

Jim, Mom & Pops Walsh , family home in PA. Watercolor 2001.

Art all around us

Nature has always been the finest artist of all. When I was small I had a sort of vision of Nature pouring from a multicolored paintbrush in the hand of God. I'd wake up, go to the window, and there would be a brand new beautiful day like a lovely picture I could run into, just waiting to be explored and experienced. I was blessed with a childhood lived outdoors with freedom from electronic distractions of any kind.
And still the outdoors calls far more insistently than all the backed up chores inside... I came upon this beautiful arrangement of apples just as they fell from the tree near our back door. No carefully staged artists still life could rival its balance, design, repetition with variety, light and shadows, and complimentary colors. Design by Nature....
or Nature by Design ?


So today Ive been gathering up all these free gifts from the sky. Its a very tall ancient neglected apple tree that still bears heavily every second year. The perfect apples go to the cellar for eating fresh, the bruised ones get cut up for baking and frozen, still more go to the juicer for cider and apple jelly, and finally theres a potful turning into applesauce. The kitchen smells richly of apples and cinnamon.


Jimmy has been digging the carrots, a marvelous crop this year, plenty for us and the horses too. Here he is being rude with a bunch of them...


The horses get all the tops, all the small and misshapen carrots, and the ones with grubs in them. The rest get layered with damp peat moss in a big plastic tote box in the cellar where they keep beautifully right through to the next crop.






The horses lined up at the garden fence for the carrot harvest, the best show in the country for them.