“If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens.” 
 ― Grandma Moses

Ain't that the truth.   Or at least its corollary.  Truth be told, my childhood plan was to raise chickens:  I have at least four sets of detailed plans for coops;  I have supported the bid for hens in our city;  I have tried without success to ingratiate myself with the rooster who lived three doors down -   the fact that he chased me home regularly I took as proof of his devotion;  I have a surprisingly complete set of omelette recipes. My dream of hens:  build it and they will lay.   A favourite tactile memory centres around being taken out to the barn to collect eggs;  sliding my little hand  under those warm feathery bodies and re-emerging with a perfect egg captured my heart.  I was two and I knew what I liked.

No luck.  Jon flatly refused to raise chickens in the traditional sense although he did have a tantalizing proposal to hoist them up into the garage every night.  Knowing that I would be the one hoisting, like the mother who feeds the dog, I held out for a more grounded solution.  

So I'm a painter.  By default.  

The sorry best I can manage now is to paint Chanteclers;  I know I would have liked Chaucer.

I remember feeling happy when I finished the first "Reading the River."  Feeling that the portrait had caught Jon, I took it in to him, planning on reaping some well-earned praise.  My beloved's first comment put paid to that:  "Why can't you see more of the split-bamboo fishing rod??"  "And where is the reel? -- it seems to be entirely missing!"  Yes, he did go on to admire the portrait and he did confer on it his highest praise in the form of declaring it his and not to be sold.  But the experience gave me something to think about.  Not just murder, either.

Men are all about the gear.  While I view it as an aesthetic embellishment,  Jon sees fine gear as an expression of reverence towards tradition and fine workmanship as well as the key which unlocks fishy secrets.  I do admit that he makes a handsome, if expensive, sight on the water.  But a portrait doesn't normally choose its focal point below the waist.  I painted that photo because of the light differential between the right side and the deep shadowed skin tones.  He just happened to be holding a rod. The only reason it was at all visible was to make sense of the waders.

My marital experience does highlight the painterly gender gap.  No wonder there are damned few married women represented in the National Gallery.  Any national gallery.  Instead there are thousands of uncelebrated married female painters (Jon calls me his "paintress" when he's feeling reckless) who perished unknown because they couldn't figure out how to add cars, whiskey decanters or fishing gear to their florals.

Which one should I use for the background to the new painting of Baby Rose in her bunny hat?  

*I echoed the rhythm of this title from one of my favourite books of humour - Golfing for Cats by Alan Coren.  In addition to his irrelevant title choice, Coren put a large swastika on cover, counting on the bookstore's having to stock it in four departments - humour, sports, pets and history.  Inspired.

Well, my time ran out.  I postponed it as long as I could but on Sunday I found myself fully decked out in fly-fishing gear and standing in a river for two hours.  To my enormous surprise I enjoyed it.  "Why?", you are most certainly asking.  Glad you asked.

Permit me to count the ways:

 1.  The day was hot but the water was cool.  Perfect.

2.  The gear that I had reluctantly accepted as a Christmas present from my ever-hopeful husband fit perfectly.  I'm less than hourglass-shaped in my waders and wading shoes but for the first time I can stand in a river in comfort.

3.   The river was gin-clear and there were minnows everywhere.  Since I was a tiny child, I have been drawn to the beauty of the gravelly bottoms of puddles, streams and rivers;  the clear water seems to act as a lens which magnifies and clarifies the colours and lines.    Until now, the only fish I have been able to see well have either been unhappily hooked or glimpsed through the scratched glass of an underground viewing chamber*.  Now I can go to them and watch their sinuous grace in 3D.

4.  I was using a classic split-bamboo fishing rod with a Hardy Cascapedia reel.  Even if I can't or won't catch fish, I can pass for a fly-fisher.

5.  Jon was occupied upstream trying to pique the interest of a mammoth trout;   that left me blissfully alone to practise my execrable casting.  I learn best when I'm practising one thing and one thing alone, while alone.  If, on such occasions, wise spouses always headed upstream, the divorce rate would plummet.

6.  I am modestly pleased to report that I didn't get a single nibble.  While Jon fishes catch-apologize-and-release, I would prefer never even to place that barbless hook.  The few releases I've done have been fueled with remorse and panic.  My perfect fly fishing scenario is that of casting well in a clear river on a good day (i.e. looking the part) and seeing nary a fish.  Call me unusual.  Many have.

So - I am actually looking forward to fly-fishing again - not so much that I wanted to brave thunderstorms tonight with Jon but with a new interest in becoming the sissy fair-weather fisher I was fated to be.



*My best painting of a salmon was inspired in Gros Morne, Newfoundland, on the Torrent River where the huge adults mass up before the locks open and they can spawn upstream.  Even through the glass you can sense their impatience.  I called it "Show Time!" and wished them all the best.

My mother's birthday falls in the middle of June.  She's been gone for seven years now and I especially miss her when the prairie roses bloom.  

Mom hated this painting with a passion.  I can't blame her.  Her wrinkles were there to see.  But Jon and I both loved it because her joie de vivre was equally visible.  She had a tremendous sense of humour, though no ability to tell a joke, usually working backwards from the punchline ("Bill - what was that joke about Pope Sicola?");  her merriment was shared with a legion of friends.  Jon adored her and happily called her "Mary Jane," her mother's name, rather than "Stella,"  which she disliked.  Her paintings were signed "Stelle."

Mom and Dad were deeply in love, and set an example of what marriage should be.  Less and less a conventional wife, she volunteered with church work until at first painting called her, and then a degree in art history.  She lapped up her English and art history courses.  However, no science student she, it took the whole family to get her through the astronomy course which she chose as her final degree requirement;  Mom thought it would be about planets and possibly predictive hints  and was horrified to find mathematics at play.  Jon sent her a series of helpful notes deciphering powers of ten and so on but nothing stuck.  We were pretty sure  that it was a mercy pass, gratefully accepted.  She was radiant at convocation, and I treasure the photo of her in her mortarboard, saucily tipped to one side.

This painting celebrates her 80th birthday, four years later;  Dad had died six years earlier and life never again had the same savour but she did find joy in our family.  Jewell and Mom were besotted with one another, often sitting and simply gazing into one another's eyes;  when Mom died, our wee girl was sitting in her lap;  Jewell remained there for some time.

The prairie roses are blooming now and I remember how lucky I was.  Her example of how to laugh easily and long remains one of the most precious gifts she shared with her grateful daughter.

Irises are in bloom here as I write this.  Some years, if buffeted by rain and wind, they last only a few days;  this year we've been lucky and I've been able to photograph them to my heart's content, and file them away for a winter's day. 

I blush to confess that I wince at receiving cut flowers, knowing what's to follow.  Unwilling witness to their inevitable demise, I simply can't bring myself to trash them until they are demonstrably, horribly, dead and thoroughly smelly. 

This bias used to be a big problem.  In the process of teaching myself to paint in watercolours, I seized on flowers at first, as do we all:  everything else was overwhelming.  Now this was before digital photography.  If I saw and photographed a beautiful flower, it might be some time still before that print was developed, and patience has never been my strong suit.  I didn't feel I could cut it either, so if I wanted to capture that loveliness, I would have to sit down and paint there and then.  And paint fast!  Some flowers only bloom for a day or two, and shadows are always moving.  

Talk about pressure.

At the time I saw this iris, we were living on Galiano Island, sixteen miles from a store, and with no transportation but shank's pony.   A lack of options does encourage decisiveness.  I hauled my kit outside and started to paint the black bloom:  though it reflected deep tones when the light was shining on it,  rose and mulberry undertones glowed transparently when the sun shone through it.  I didn't begin to do it justice but hope that the painting conveys a bit of that glorious iris and that happy time.  Irises are so tough and long-lived that it's even possible it bloomed again this year.  I hope so.

When a painting of mine was juried into the Oakville show, a friend came over to me at the reception and complimented me on the work;  then she held up a 14 inch specimen and said:  " I hope you don't mind, but I removed the hair."




Jewell, our beloved girl will live on in every work I did in oil.  Even five months later, a hair will drift by as I'm working.  But I am getting dog-hungrier by the day.  I go walking mainly for the opportunity to touch a dog.  There is a photo circulating which purports to be that of me in a dog crate.  Well, maybe I was trying to make friends with that dog.  And maybe she left the crate immediately.  And maybe I was having a bit of trouble exiting.  For any of you women who might have mistakenly walked into a men's washroom, you will recall that it is a lot easier to walk in than to walk out while maintaining one's dignity.  Dog crates are no different, it turns out.

So here I am, a pathetic "dog-slut," as my beloved affectionately calls me.  We're looking, but Skye terriers are so rare as to be endangered as a breed.  Admittedly, Jewell was murder to paint (because you could never find her eyes, which are the key to a portrait) but we had faith that they were under there somewhere.  Her Mickey Mouse ears still enchant.  Their nickname "The Heavenly Breed" was true.  How lucky we were to know and love her for eleven years.  But another Skye may not be in the cards.

So if you hear of a medium-sized terrier - a cairn or a Westie or a mix, for example - with a calm temperament, make us your first call.  PLEASE.  

Because Jon is allergic to cats, we became dog people;  most of our friends also had dogs.  But that canine adoration and in-your-face congeniality can present itself elsewhere.  Our neighbours (not the ones with Mea and Culpa -- see April 27) have always had one dog and a scattering of cats.   While the dogs were always sociable, the cats, predictably, were not.  Until one spring.


Somewhat predictably, I was on my hands and knees in the garden when something warm brushed against me.  To my astonishment it was a cat who, when I tentatively patted it, purred and once again brushed past.  After that, I was treated to regular visits, all of which demanded that I stop my silliness and pay full attention.  Jon was welcomed into our magic circle, and when she walked into our house and thoroughly inspected it, despite Jewell's manifest objections, it became clear that Cat needed a name.

You may or may not remember that Jewell, our beloved Skye Terrier, was built long and low -- Skyes are described in the literature as medium-sized dogs with very short legs. One neighbour described her as a "stretch limousine of a dog."   In sharp contrast, Cat had long elegant gams, so the obvious name for her was Betty Grable (although Mary Worth was another possibility, given the way she worked the neighbourhood).  Betty became more and more a daily fixture in our routines.  But one day when she rolled over in the grass, we realized that Betty was not a suitable name, and so he became Legs.  Legs continued to enrich our lives for three years (three long years in Jewell's opinion).  He was gone for several months when one of the boys moved out, but I guess his social needs could not be met, and he reappeared one happy day.  Frequently he was the first to greet us in the morning and the last visitor at dusk.  

Dusk proved fatal, we think.  He disappeared one late summer night and all of us who miss him have concluded that Legs was killed by the coyotes who roam behind us.  I had already painted his portrait, which serves as a bittersweet reminder of a delightful friendship.

It's the height of gardening season again, not that I plant much any more.  When we moved in, over three decades ago, our little stone Craftsman looked like an abandoned farmhouse :  aside from a few hostas in a tight circle, the entire quarter-acre was bare, street to foundation.  There were  beautiful trees around the outer edges sheltering multiple generations of garlic mustard in their heedless plenitude.*  Otherwise nothing but grass, and not even particularly healthy grass.  

But now?  I march out in May and June, armed with clippers, secators,  and a hand spade, saying brief hi to returning friends but delivering a definite goodbye, farewell, auf wiederzehen, adieu to the few remaining garlic mustards and dandelions.  In some sections, a machete wouldn't be out of place in my kit.   All the planting I really do any more is to move the players around. I'm blissfully happy, cultivating my garden, as Voltaire recommended, and while I admit to affecting a somewhat neandrathal lope in the spring, it's worth it.

My tardy epiphany about gardening hinges on the concept of happy volunteers.  Green ones.  For years I sincerely but hopelessly tried to cultivate a sun-drenched paradise.  I dreamt of a kitchen garden whose bounty would spill into my kitchen.  The fact that our multitude of mature trees pretty well all top seventy feet should have told me that tomatoes and their ilk are not on the menu.  Looking back, it now seems totally obvious that sun-loving plants wouldn't make a go of it.  

For me, the slow learner, gardening has revealed itself to be the practice of learning through failure but, by default,  embracing happy accidents.

So who did want to come out and play?  At the beginning, just more hostas  (thank you, Myrna and Marilyn).  But we let the ferns,  trout lilies and violets move in and reproduce.  Eunonymous thrived, even when the deer grazed it late each winter.  And when Jon created acid beds for rhododendrons, azaleas, hydrangeas, and holly, the garden seemed to gain faith in itself.  Smaller trees like the elegantly-shaped cornus alternifolia (pagoda tree) started to show up and some young walnuts have volunteered to replace the post-mature black locusts in the near future.  

There was one particularly wonderful surprise.  When my spade hit a something big and hard under the treeline (where nothing ever really grew for twenty years), I suddenly realized that we had a long-buried rock garden.  Bonanza.  It's the original dry sandy soil, but miniature sedum does splendidly.  And in our precious sunny patch right at the street, I planted a good-sized perennial garden with successional flowerings - daffodils and violets give way to labium, dead nettle, bleeding heart,  and wild geranium,  with Mute's blue irises hard on their heels.  Now the peony buds are swelling.  And the billets-doux of passing dogs don't matter at all to plants we don't intend to eat

This elderly painting records a summer moment in our back garden when I was teaching myself to paint in watercolour.  Where there was grass there is now a stone patio shaded by a large sugar maple.

*Re:  weed seeds:  a Cornell study dating back to the 1860's involved burying glass jars with seeds in them.  Every year they dig them up and plant a seed or two;  the vast majority are still viable.   Wow.  Good in many many ways for Earth, but profoundly discouraging for those of us who inherited a weedy property!  On the plus side, both dandelions and garlic mustards are edible -- I have a dandy spring soup/salad combination I have dubbed:  "The Gardener's Revenge."