I felt honoured last week to discover that “The Ancients” #2 had been awarded a Canada 150 award at a juried show.   The ancient tree in question was probably at least that old itself, somehow clinging to the riverbank and to life over decades of extreme conditions.  The painting is a riff on the gnarled beauty of survival.  I would love to paint its winter face but the chances of locating it at that time of the year are slim.   Only in a canoe am I able to find these great old dames.

Trees, above all other plants, carry a mystique of wisdom and even patience.  Jon and I live in an old area where neighbours value the individual trees which bear witness to the gardeners who came before us.  Although  the loss of ash trees has sadly scarred many areas, our pioneer street is so  haphazard and varied that the canopy has remained intact, especially the back garden above The Credit.  When I gaze out, the botany appears completely native, although I know there is still work to be done.   For one, there need to be even more trees.

Scott, my soul-brother, gave me The Hidden Life of Trees for Christmas.   I am no stranger to botanical literature but this recent publication knocked me out.  I had always thought of saplings as mere competition for established trees. Not so — it appears that all of the individuals within a natural community communicate with one another in order to provide mutual aid.  It is the “specimen” tree, the one planted alone in a yard and expected to strut its stuff, which is literally marooned on a desert island.   Guilt-ridden, I have promised myself to leave arboreal volunteers alone in future.  

Thought for today:  Maybe witches lived in tangled woods because they had acquired botanical wisdom with old age.               

The whole idea of reversals interests me;  it worked for Ginger Rogers, after all.  So yesterday, when faced by an enormous 12 square foot white canvas, I decided to work the image upside-down.  Six hours later I had a grisaille in which wild Newfoundland hangs suspended above a cloudless sky.  It remains to be seen whether tricking my left brain into vacating the field a la Betty Edwards will propel my painting but it is at least forcing me to think in abstract shapes.

Whatever the orientation,  I am frequently inspired by the Newfoundland aerial view.  The greens are lovely and dark.  Often there are low blue mountains in the distance and here and there are patches of brightness - whether bodies of water or farmed areas.  But these vast scenes demand space of their own.  Thus I find myself once again teetering on a step stool in order to reach the top.

So doing, I am reminded why I spent most of the winter doing small botanicals and bird studies!  Large paintings do generate impact and are exciting to build, layer by layer taking form in front of me like a statue emerging from a block of marble, but they are physically demanding and enormously time-consuming.    By way of contrast there is something immediate and refreshing about small pieces.  In the space of a day they take form and reward me for my effort so Wednesdays at group paint days I have gotten into the habit of working small.  There’s nothing much nicer than painting away in a room full of happy artists, tiddly pom.

But the die has been cast.  Today — engaged, apprehensive  — I am peering up at a huge upside-down landscape.   The game’s afoot!  Watch your toes, Fred.

Easter Sunday was windy but with patches of brilliant sunshine.    Everywhere life was reaffirming itself.  Heading over to the college in the afternoon, we trekked up to the woods, hoping to see birds before the canopy opened.  

The best we did was to establish that they were there.  The “Honey, I’m Home” quonks of a red-bellied woodpeckers* were audible, as they have been around the river and in our front yard and we could hear canaries, nuthatches and chickadees.  But the loud hammering had to belong to a pileated and Jon did  finally spot him.  We had brought the long lens and Jon patiently manoeuvred around twigs to find clear shots.  

Equally patient, Theodore and I waited on the main path.  Usually we all walk north and return another way. but yesterday I happened to glance back just as the Easter sun emerged from behind a cloud, and there it was!  I had tried many times to find that scene again but yesterday I was reminded why I had originally taken the shot:  a shaft of sunshine was strewing shadows across the path and highlighting the mossy exposed roots  which comprise the focal point.  I had been starting to wonder if I had made it up but once more the real deal took my breath away and proved that it's hard to improve on the truth.   

Finding the exact spot was like running into an old friend —the same attendant sense of strong recognition. Theodore had no reaction whatsoever.  He was still smarting from the indignity of being forbidden to keep a prize short rib his sniffer had located in the parkland, and there was a bur or two to be chewed out.  I have always thought that shared moments are the best.  But yesterday reminded me that while my primary sense is vision, Theodore’s magnificent schnoz is for him the bearer of most good things and that it is enough to celebrate beauty in whatever form it takes.  Sometimes it will smell like a short rib.  
   
​* see 19/5/16

The title of this post was inspired by a recurring event —   our spring show - which was held last weekend;   Friday morning was, as always, blustering with snow and attitude.  All of us staggered to steer canvases which had transformed themselves into sails;  a few tried to tack into the wind with little success.  Hours later, we tottered back out.  So “going to a hanging” has a desperate air, whatever you deem it it to mean.

But the wind has circled south and today is sunny and hot.   Just as old friends materialized over the weekend to give their precious support, my garden is unearthing its own batch of significant others.  Witnessing the haze of blue scylla emerge is one of my other rites of spring.  Despite my best intentions, I ALWAYS give up and finally lie prone on the ground;  a coat of mud seems to be the prerequisite of nailing a good closeup of these hardy darlings.  While I theoretically know who lives in our garden, the annual miracle is that they return so faithfully.   Like good friends to a show.   Thanks.


P.S. Apparently apologies are in order to those perennials who mysteriously did not receive an invitation this year.  I did send them but wonder if they might have been flagged as spam and are lurking in your dungeon.  I find the strangest things in mine.  I had best watch my wording, lest an invitation read too much like a Viagra ad.  (Too much enthusiasm?)

Remember grade school when someone told you that “So-and-so likes you.”?  Suddenly, old “so-and-so” got better looking.    You will remember that Mouse the House Grouse and I are an item, and that he has equal but opposite feelings for Jon.  In fact, I thought I heard Mouse hollar “Moriarty” in January when he was flying combat missions against Jon (who was on the roof shovelling snow, bless his heart).  So there were great lamentations when, two days ago, my beloved walked in and said, “I’m afraid you no longer have a grouse;  he attacked the windshield head on as I was driving in.  He must have broken his neck”  To his credit, despite feeling a little unnerved by the collision, Jon felt sorry for my loss;  that is not to say he didn’t search for the corpse to harvest the plumage for fly-tying.  But Mouse’s cold body was nowhere to be found.  I searched carefully but finally concluded that my grouse had crawled off to die in private. 

So when Super Grouse strolled towards me the next day, burbling his Selectric murmur, I was overjoyed.  He said that the reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated and that it would take more than an SUV to out-compete a grouse in love.  Then he flew up into a cedar and waited for me to throw out handfuls of shelled sunflower seeds.  An hour later, he parked himself in the driveway so that I couldn’t drive away.  Once again under his spell, I catch myself thinking Mouse is even better looking than he was in the fall.  I hope he’s thinking the same about me.

In the absence of a painting of Mouse, here is a cardinal I saw last year.  He was already married.