Dahlia Field

Last Wednesday our local Plein Air painting group headed to Frey's Dahlia farm NE of Jefferson OR. I enjoyed an opportunity to paint with watercolor, which isn't usually my first choice when painting plein air. Normally I work in pastel but leaving my stack of canvases on a chair put a stop to that. Luckily I brought watercolors, and a nifty new watercolor journal I'd just made the previous weekend. I also enjoyed the company of two good friends that were playing in watercolor too, so after touring the dahlia field we settled down to see what we could accomplish. Here's a glimpse of some of the beauties vying for our attention.

Snow Fun

While out on a photo shoot this third day of Spring, admiring all the snow that had fallen the night before, I came upon this area where I set up to capture some of the lovely weathered rust and snow covered roof reflected in the melting snow on the ground. After this first shot I moved to try another view and at that moment the snow on the roof decided to dump part of its load! Lucky me, I captured the fall, and then the last shot shows the "after". True serendipity!

Technical info - these were shot TTV (through the viewfinder) of a Kodak Duaflex camera with my Canon DSLR camera.

Snow Scenes

Earlier this week, we enjoyed a few snow days - a rarity for our town. While out for a walk on Monday, we met up with my oldest daughter and had some fun collecting photo images together of some familiar scenes made new with the dusting of snow. Here are some of my favorites: 

This just doesn't look like a street in our town...but it's Jefferson, looking west towards campus. 

Roses in the snow - still colorful, even in January. 

These two photos are of the art installation at OSU by Patrick Dougherty. In the photo below, you can see how large the sculptures are in comparison to my daughter - if you can find her - the curved bench is pointing to her.  

So glad we made it out while it was snowy - warm rains arrived yesterday and we're looking at a very wet week ahead. Personally, I'm hoping this isn't the last of the white stuff for us this winter! 

Frosty December

This is what caught my attention this afternoon when I took off to the gallery to switch out some paintings. Once I was back home, I had to grab my little camera and see what I could capture of the lingering frost from the thick fog that's enveloped our valley this week.  Beauty discovered during these dark days of December. 

Happy Fall Y'All!

Two photos taken this week 

Two trees in our yard

Two brilliant leaf colors

Two weeks into November.

Happy Autumn!

TTV - Through the Viewfinder photos and friends

This past Wednesday we had our last plein air adventure of the season at Paradise Springs event center outside Monroe Oregon. Instead of painting I wandered and collected images with my digital camera and my vintage kodak duaflex camera, shooting images thru the viewfinder of that camera. Below are some of my favorite TTV photos from that morning along with some regular digital photos.

Does anyone have any idea what kind of plant and berry this is below? Yes, they are bubble gum pink.

I'm also wondering what this plant is below. The leaves are quite large and they change into many different colors this time of year - purples with burgundy, yellow, and orange!

A day at the Oregon Coast Aquarium

A couple of weeks ago our plein air group enjoyed a day at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport where I shot over 350 photos, painted a small pastel of the tidal flats, and enjoyed an hour of having the place almost completely to myself! Our aquarium connection used to work there and she was able to gain us entrance an hour before it was opened to the public. After that we had to work around the crowds of people jockeying to see the exhibits. 

Here are some of my favorite photos from that day: 

And last, but not least, the otters---I have a ton more besides these three, but thought I better post just a few this time. The silver faced otter in the first two photos is Aialik, he's 13 years old and weighs 82 lbs. 

From the Garden

Last week, I spent some time in our little garden harvesting some of our bounty, and was blown away to be picking ripe strawberries still in September! These are not everbearing strawberries but are Hoods, a variety that produces amazingly sweet strawberries, but just during a few weeks, usually in June. This is an example of what an odd season we've had this year for growing produce. There were more strawberries than what you see in the photo below, but they never made it inside for some reason...

Another oddity, but maybe less so, is we still had pea pods to pick! Considering how it was probably July before I planted the seeds, that's more my fault so I can't really blame the late season. Time to pull up those plants now. I wonder if it's too late to plant peas for a fall crop? Anyone know? If you're thinking those littlest tomatoes look really small, that's because they are! They're current tomatoes, and are about the size of a small blueberry, and bursting with flavor! There are more than 150 current tomatoes in that bowl---just from one plant.



This is summer to me: home grown tomatoes.

New favorite flower photos

These beauties were from a bouquet I purchased at Trader Joe's. Not to sound like an advertisement, but they lasted almost 3 weeks! I LOVE flowers... Here's three of my favorites from a photo shoot earlier this month---straight out of the camera:

Family!