Hey, Cucumbers!

 

This was the latest harvest of cucumbers -- never had so many on a single day.

 Although the plants are looking wilty in the morning sun (they'll perk up again once they're in shade),  you can see this variety called "Party Time" from Burpee's Seeds has climbed its string nearly to the roof. Sets a lot of cukes, and we'll grow it again and again.

 On the other side of the sliding door is variety Merlin -- also from Burpee's, off to a slightly slower start thanks to the snails and birds. On the left of Merlin is some kind of bushy cuke, but even though they said is a bush variety, it's climbing, too. That one is NOT from Burpee Seeds. 

 We're loving having such a great crop of cucumbers, for panzanella salad, for tomato and cuke sandwiches, and for tomato and cucumber in garlic oil with feta cheese. Best cukes we've ever grown, courtesy of https://www.youtube.com/c/TheMillennialGardener and his gardening tips.

 

 

Campari? Close Kin, at Least

 

Last winter I bought a pack of Campari tomatoes at Trader Joe's. Well, we'll be honest, I bought quite a few packs over the last year -- the outrageous heat of last summer killed all my garden plants, so Camparis from the store were the only tomato I was going to get. Fortunately, they taste really good.

Even though Campari tomatoes are a hybrid variety, I'd heard on the net that the store-bought tomatoes would produce seeds that are viable, and close enough in taste and behavior that growing one's own is a possibility. And so I saved some seeds and planted four of them this past spring. All four sprouted, and now are climbing up a trellis.

What I got grows in lovely clusters, and the plants are polite -- not jungly like the Sun Golds I used to plant. Some of the clusters are prodigious.

The plants get morning sun only, and are shaded for the rest of the day. There was no problem getting fruit to set this year, as our temperatures have been in 80s and low 90s, which is good for us. In this picture the sun was a little bright, but you can see how many little tomatoes are just waiting to join me for a salad. 

The nice thing about this trellis is that I can access the tomatoes from both sides without having to fight through the vines. Behind the trellised plants is a little wooden deck, which makes for a beautiful sitting spot from which to admire one's tomato pets.

I've already picked out which of the four vines I'll save seeds from for next year. Or maybe I'll try buying the hybrid seeds from a reputable store. Or both!

 

There are the four vines in Planter Box 10. I need to get out there and pick some of the tomatoes tomorrow morning, for a breakfast of cucumber and tomato cubes, tossed in garlic-infused extra virgin olive oil, with herbed feta cheese crumbles all over it. 

Our First Real Planted Russets

 

Today Bernie harvested his russet potato crop, grown in a half-barrel from one sad-looking russet potato that had languished in the fridge.

 

Not bad for one potato. 

2024

 

I didn't really think about 2024 being The Year I Turn 70, or think of 70 as much different than 60 or 50. Maybe I thought once or twice, "Wow, I really should have had my books out ten years ago," but I didn't lose sleep over it.

That is, until NFL coaches Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll got fired, and the word on the pundit TV sports shows said it was because they were just too old. 

Too old? They're only a couple years older than I am.

Does that mean I'm "too old?"

No, I didn't start losing sleep over it, but it did make me pause and think about age and mortality. And whether I should be running the Piker Press at my age.

Then I thought about what it is I do. I read, I edit for grammar and spelling. I do simple formatting. I decide what I think is worth reading and what I think is not. What has age to do with that? Especially the grammar and spelling. Who knows how to do that these days? Not a majority, by any means. But I do, and part of the reason I do is that I am over 70 -- spell check wasn't invented when my grammar and spelling had to be perfect in order to get a perfect grade.

So here it is, 2025, and in a few months, I'll be 71.

Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick have already been hired to be head coaches again, and they sure didn't have to go begging for opportunities. Good for us, guys.

The Real Fruit -- Definitely Eat Them

 

We've been having some good luck growing potatoes in containers this past year. This is the take from two half- wine barrels in the front yard this morning.

They are so pretty, and finding them in the dirt is better than a childhood Easter egg hunt.

If someone says to you, you have to buy seed potatoes to grow potatoes, they are wrong. If you want a special variety, then yes. But all our planted potatoes are from bagged ones from the grocery store. Wash them before you use them, and maybe some of them will sprout.

It sounds funny, but getting potatoes to sprout is called "chitting." We have a chitting tray on the windowsill in the living room that gets just enough light to encourage the dark red chits, or sprouts from the eyes. 

In the pots, we dig holes, and put the taters in the bottom of the holes. Cover them with a little dirt, and as the chits become green leaves, tuck a little more dirt around the stems. 100 days later, potater!

Potato Fruit -- Don't Eat Them

 

Aren't those the cutest little tomatoes, you may think.

No, as a matter of fact, they aren't. They are poisonous fruits of a potato plant.

Potatoes are members of the plant family solanaceae, which includes tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and tomatillos. Those are the friendly solanaceae, but you have to remember that the family also includes deadly nightshade and datura, which are poisonous.

I'd never seen this on a potato plant, but an internet search suggests that potatoes will set fruit like this when growing conditions include long daylight hours and a cool temperature.

Well, that would certainly be here, in 2023, when we were still building a fire in the woodstove in May (ridiculous) when normally we'd have our last wood fire in February.

They say that if you let the fruit mature, and use their seeds to plant potatoes, that you can come up with some interesting new varieties. Maybe one day we'll fence off a fruit-producing potato and try that.

But for now, we trimmed the fruit off and put it in the city composting cans -- we have toddlers in the neighborhood who know that we grow sweet little Sun Gold tomatoes and are not above making expeditions to our front yard to view the goldfish pond and sample the veggies and fruits.

NFL Football Season Will Motivate Me

There is a certain angle of sunlight that streams in the southern windows during NFL Football season. The windows are on either side of the 65-inch TV, and the glare from the bare upper part of the window makes it dreadful to watch anything, let alone a tiny image of a football doinking off a goal post to ruin a kicker's life. 

Some years ago, I made canvas panels from a dropcloth, thinking the custom window covers would reduce if not eliminate the glare. I don't remember what year it was -- I think it was pre-Covid, but it was the same year that someone had smeared some blue food coloring on one of my white dish towels in the kitchen -- that would have been somewhere around Easter -- and the blue stain was still there for autumn.

Long-lasting stain + natural canvas panel = Idea/Experiment/Creative Itch

I wet the canvas panels with a spray bottle, then painted a little scene of autumn leaves in colors of food coloring: red, yellow, green, and blue. It was cute, and did cut the glare.

Lo, these several years later, the greens and yellows had faded from the harsh California sun, but the blue and the red were still there. (Think about that the next time you eat red velvet cake.) And in these same several years, I've grown more bold with painting with color. 

Taking the old canvas panels outside, I wet them down with the spray bottle again, and then attacked with lots of food coloring, no more little cute dabs -- and then set them upright against a sawhorse for about two minutes. The colors ran together in a riot! I laid them flat again and let them dry. This is the result:

and

I asked Bernie if he wanted me to use a Sharpie and do something more representational with the design, but he liked it better as a more abstract image. I think I do, too.

More fun than making curtains.

Back Out Into the World

The summer after Covid hit, only businesses that were essential were open. Groceries, pharmacies, doctors' offices. By fall, there were limited openings for other things, and the number of Covid cases began to rise almost immediately.

It was still January of 2020 when I last had my hair cut. In August, I was using little clips to keep the hair out of my eyes and off my neck. I could have gone in for a "safe" haircut, but to me, getting my hair cut in a salon (when I'm not going anywhere anyway) is not an essential need.

Over the winter, the longer hair was kind of nice. Warm on cold nights, and when I washed it, I could dry it in front of the woodstove.

By the following spring, my hair was long enough to put up in a clip, and even looked nice.

But enough is enough. Warm weather in front of summer of 2022 found my hair too long for a clip. The same time period, Lillian's curly mop was getting too big to stuff under her uniform cap. She came striding through the house, calling, "That's it! I'm getting this junk shaved off!"

I grabbed my purse, my mask, and hitched a ride.

The hairdresser, when it came my turn, grabbed as much hair as she could and just scissored the whole clump off. She showed it to me -- looked like road kill -- and then tossed it in a heap on the floor and proceeded to shear.

What a relief!

I know I am a 68-year-old woman, and being a beauty isn't in the cards any more, but dang, this is much more madly me.

Seder 2022

 

The last time that tablecloth graced my table was in the spring of 2019. 

2020 rolled in, and the quarantine made celebrating Seder a thing of the past. We did an impromptu mini-Seder that year, and I cried through the whole thing, missing the camaraderie of the Table Friends, the Haverim. We did a family Seder in 2021, and I blubbered through most of that one, too. Would we ever be able to sit Seder with the table fellows again?

 This year, we were able to have a small Seder with our friends the Vierras, who are more like family than most of our families were. There were only nine of us, compared to the sometimes 27 there used to be; it was wonderful, and I only choked up once or twice. (I did my blubbering earlier in the day.)

We sang, we prayed, we recounted the Exodus from Egypt, we laughed, we lamented Haverim who have died since the last Seder. We broke matza, dipped it in horseradish and haroset, munched parsley from my garden, and thanked God for our fellowship and our freedom. 

It was beautiful, and most deeply appreciated once again.

On a silly ending note, it was the first time that Ep and Kermit were allowed to be out in the company. For the most part, they were two gentlemanly dogs, even during the singing. 

Thank you, God Most High.

Eagerly Awaited Beauty

 

It's that time of year again, one I used to dread long ago before my body adjusted to the fragrance and pollen of almond blossoms. Now, I begin to long for it in January, watching the buds on my almond tree swell, then show tiny white tips, then turn pink, and voila! open in luscious splendor.

The scent from the blossoms is incomparable, better than any perfume. The sound of the bees working the tree is a natural music that gives my heart rest. Knowing that a wild bird planted the tree in exactly the right spot is a prayer meditation on the providence of God.

Yesterday I planted my tomato seeds. Six little pots of Summer Girl (delicious flavor) and nine of Bush Early Girl, (abundant yield). Oh, I'm sure I'll find places for a few more weirdo tomatoes in the next month or so, I always do. But for now, I'll wait and see if the seeds sprout, and feel like a new young mother if they do.

Life is nice, and I'm still masking up any time I go to the store. When the weather was chilly, the mask was pleasant. I have not been sick EVEN. ONE. DAY. since the beginning of the quarantine, and I'm hoping my masks will keep it like that. 

Milestone Weekend with Dog

 

Recently, Kermit has become camera-shy, for no particular reason. He'd been lying in the light of the back door, watching the birds, but when I raised the phone to take a picture, he gave me this sidelong look that has more annoyance in it than I would have thought he had in his whole body.

But that's not what this post is about.

Last weekend, Kermit and I went for a walk around the block. The very first time we've done this since the broken wrist episode.

The day of the broken wrist peccadillo, I'd begun training Kermit to walk in a Gentle Leader headstall, and was taking him out on a walk (on a regular collar and leash) as a reward for how well he did with it. Well, we know how that reward turned out. Seven weeks later ... maybe more ... I revisited the headstall training, walking through the house with him in it, rewarding him with kibble, then walking in and out the back door, then back and forth through the side and back yard, then out the gate and onto the driveway, etcetera.

I had to think we were both ready to move out into the world again. He was eager to have the headstall put on his face, and I chanted a mantra in my head that went, "If something comes up, drop the leash. Drop the leash if something comes up," over and over again. We went out the front door, and I suddenly realized that I had on the same shoes, the same clothing, the same sunglasses as I had when we went out and broke my wrist. Briefly, I considered going back in and changing clothes, but instead, cast superstition aside, and down the street we went.

At first, Kermit tugged a little. But by the time we'd rounded the second corner, he relaxed and accepted the limitations. By the time we were two-thirds of the way home, there was no pressure on the leash at all. 

Both of us have been unhealthily inactive since the Wrist Wreck, so it will take a while for us to get back up to the daily 40 minute hike we used to do. But we're getting there.

Healing

 

Gorgeous sunset the other evening. If I'm out and about in the house, and see the light change, I rush outside to see what's happening in the sky. We don't often get the spectacular colors like this; more often than not, we have creeping fog occluding the sky at this time of day and season. 

It's very pleasant not to have my hand in a brace or splint. For a while yesterday, I even wore my watch. The freedom of movement has made my hand swell a little, so I left the watch on my bedside table today. But nothing hurts. I like that.

I talked to a woman who was at Radiology in the hospital yesterday when I was. I encountered her first in the waiting area; she tried to rearrange her body in the (very uncomfortable) chair, and yelped in pain as her left wrist contacted the arm of the chair. "Careful," I warned her, knowing just how a damaged wrist can hurt.

Encountering her again in the line for x-rays (more uncomfortable chairs in a different area), I queried, "Did you have a fall?" and held up my left arm with its stiff black brace. At her nod, I told her, "Me, too."

She told me she had just had her cast removed from her arm, and that it still hurt like hell. I didn't tell her it was going to hurt like hell for a couple more weeks, but we chatted about falls and breaks and getting older until I got called in for my x-rays.

That was the first stranger I've talked to since the start of the quarantine in February 2020. 

Her story was so important to me -- I would have gladly had the wait in line go longer to hear about her life. It's why the Piker Press is something I don't want to give up. What people's lives are all about -- that's the most precious thing I get to experience.

Tell me your dreams, tell me what last week was about. Tell me about the things you lie awake at night and imagine (skip the porn, though) about the world. 

 

Tell me the story of Who You Are.

It Only Takes a Second

 

Back in the 80s, when I bought my horse Crow, I was taught to never, ever loop a lead rope around a hand. NEVER. If the horse bolts, you can be dragged, injured, or even killed. Instead, you hold the rope in your hand, so that it gets pulled out of your hand, you don't go with it.

Guess what. The same thing applies to a dog leash, in spite of the fact that makers of leashes always include a loop to go around your hand.

Out for a walk with Kermit, I had him on his goat lead -- essentially a loop that attaches to a collar. I looked up and down the neighborhood, saw a woman with a dog at the end of the street, headed away from us, saw a cat cross the sidewalk about half a block away, and before I could complete the thought, "Hope Kermit doesn't see that cat," Kermit leaped in front of me to intersect my neighbor's dog, who had darted out their door to come give Kermit a beating.

I was spun around, tripped on the curb of the sidewalk and fell. Impact, left hand, right knee, left knee, right hand, right forearm.

My God, how could I have been that stupid? 

Any other time a dog has accosted us, I've just dropped the leash. But every other time, I saw the dog coming. This time I didn't. She didn't bark; she was on a mission: her owner and newborn baby were getting into their car in the driveway, and I was approaching them, with a dangerous-looking beast at my side.

After an hour or so had passed, I had to admit that it wasn't just a tumble. My left hand was swelling in an unusual way, and I was still very much in shock. Fortunately the emergency room at the hospital wasn't too busy. They took x-rays of my left wrist and right knee, diagnosed a fractured wrist, and immobilized my arm from the elbow to fingertips with a giant splint.

A week later, an orthopedic doctor removed the splint, checked the range of movement, and gave me a brace to keep me from doing any further stupidities. I'll go back for follow-up x-rays in about five weeks.

And I guarantee you, I will never again put my hand in the loop of a leash.

Why the picture? Well, no one promised me life would be a bed of roses. And I like the colors.

A Strange Sound Outside the Window

 

Kermit had been napping on the chair. Suddenly, the sound of a strange animal screaming rent the air, bringing him to his feet, ready to protect the household from ... the neighbor's recently adopted pot-bellied pig.

My dog still doesn't know what a "pig" is, but he is quite suspicious. He sniffs the fence when the pig is in the yard on the other side, and raises the hackles on his shoulders, hips and tail. 

Considering how powerfully Kermit reacts to seeing a cat or a possum on the fence, I'm in no hurry to introduce him to a pig.

I myself was ambivalent about neighbors taking in the pig, but I must admit that the pig is quiet (mostly) and I have not had to chase any cats out of my yard since the pig arrived. For that alone I am grateful.

The 2021 Summer Vacation

 

Cement, with river rock to the right. Dirty cement, with caked dirt to the right of the door, where the slab was originally laid unevenly, where any amount of water pooled, holding dirt. 

River rock covered the soil by the chimney, wrapped around the corner, and stretched aaalll the way to the brick patio off our bedroom door. 

A tree to the left, out of sight at the moment, decided to take matters into its own -- branches and roots, and lifted the slab on that side this past winter, cracking it in two places. I had two choices: get rid of the tree and hope that the roots would rot and subside, or re-do the patio. Oh, on this patio, along with Eperis, Alex's dog, is that tree's shadow. 

Shadow. Tree. Tree wins.

I had a contractor come in and remove the Most Ogly Cement. We removed the river rock, pretty much stone by stone. (In a really astonishing coincidence, our next door neighbor on the other side of that fence, was xeriscaping their back yard to conserve water and to correct a drainage problem they had with the slope of their lawn. And they wanted -- river rock!) When we would take a break from picking rock, we used that outdoor carpet, and the patio chairs to keep us out of the dusty dirt. It was a mess, but Kermit loved the dirt, and the hours of following us around outside. That's his chewing stick on the carpet.

When I thought of what I wanted the patio to look like, I knew I wouldn't be happy unless it was brick, to tie into the brick patio outside our bedroom. I could see it in my mind, could imagine the feeling of it under my feet. So we went around to find brick we could integrate into the older patio. One place was charging two dollars a brick, and that was the low end of their products. Lowe's clay brick was the worst quality I've ever seen, scratchy and uneven. To my disgust, Home Depot had common clay brick of good quality, and in the store, after I put my hand on the brick, my hand tingled for an hour. It was The Brick.

With the arrival of three pallets of brick, we began, weaving the new brick into the same pattern of the dusty older brick. Naturally, the newer brick was not as thick or as wide as the older stuff, which had come from Orchard Supply Hardware (a now-defunct chain of stores.)

The little garden scooter was my platform, a drywall taping tool my earth mover. A bucket of sand followed me as I wet the soil with a mist of water, leveled, set a brick. The herringbone pattern anchors the bricks in place without any kind of mortar, but the nature of that pattern is such that you have to weave it one row at a time, back and forth. I set bricks, Bernie hauled them from the driveway in front of the house on a dolly, and when I would come to an edge, he custom-cut the bricks to shape with a masonry blade on his saw.

Slowly we came around the curve. A milestone, when there was enough patio built that Bernie could move his camp stove out of its temporary storage and back into service. 

Plum season arrived, and our little tree out-did itself again. We would work in the cooler mornings from 8am until taking a break at 9:30, drink a pint of cool water, then work again until 11, and after a shower and a rest, take plums around to the neighbors.

You know, the first day of brick-work, I thought I was gonna die. How the hell am I going to do this? But by the third day, I felt -- fine. Tired, but fine. And waking each morning eager to feel the richness, the organic harmony of the clay in my hands again. 

Like a wave of red, the pattern crept forward. Another milestone: now we could step out of the kitchen and get to the pool without putting our feet on dirt. The shadow of the big tree looked beautiful on the bricks, exactly as I had imagined it would.

Not long after this picture was taken, Alex insisted that I teach her how to work the bricks' pattern. You could say that she wanted to help out her old mother, but I think she was just jealous of the scope and beauty of the project. And of that endorphin rush you can feel when a brick slides into place with a shimmery clink and is level in all directions. Nothing like it.

 

Nearly there, and this was what I had in mind when I looked at that ugly concrete and knew we had to address the drainage issue.

And of course, it would make too much sense for a clay brick to be exactly half as wide as it is long. If that were the case, the herringbone pattern would be the standard for all ground brickwork, and the mortar industry would be out of luck. Instead, the bricks are about 3/8 of an inch longer than the width of two bricks side by side. That's where a top coat of sand comes in, to fill in those irregular gaps.

Today, it was done, except for the custom cuts Bernie can take his time about doing, in the cool mornings, after his morning coffee. I don't think I'll take on an art project of this magnitude again in my life, but I must admit that I loved it. Alex finished up the hard-to-reach corner this morning.

This afternoon, Bernie asked me if I am going to miss setting bricks. My answer, "More than is rational."  

And now you know why I've been slacking on emails since the end of May. 

Five Months Went By? Ridiculous!

 

Winter in Central California. Tule fog. Wet air, cold and clammy. After a couple weeks of this, I was glad that today turned out sunny and unseasonably warm.

It won't last, of course. By this time next week, I'll be wearing sweatshirts and huddling in the kitchen to be near the woodstove. But today, I took Kermit out to the side yard and threw a ball for him until he stopped bringing it back to me. Let the clement breeze dry my just-washed hair. Admired my almond tree, the buds of which are already showing tiny white tips.

Simple. Prosaic. For some, boring.

Not me, though. Along with meditating on the signs of spring in the tree, I saw a red-tailed hawk go sailing past the neighborhood. In the planter box by Lillian's window, a plant is sprouted that looks an awful lot like Alex sneaked a celery root in there. Bernie's calendula are blooming like little campfires on the back patio. A pansy plant (!) has volunteered its beauty by Planter Box #7. Kermit dropped the tennis ball on cue, finally, after five years of inability to recognize the command "Release." All those things give me a warm and peaceful feeling.

That beats the hell out of the Dear God, Deliver Us year that is past. 2021 is going to have its sad days, trying days, painful days, I know that. But today was beautiful, and I'm grateful for that.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

 

Last spring, I was cleaning up the recordings on the cable DVR (?) and I found a new recording of a horse race that I didn't know was there. When I viewed the details, I discovered that one of the sports channels was covering horse races.

This is unusual, because horse races are among the most obscure of sports on TV, and I rarely get to see more than the Triple Crown (Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes). But this year, of course, thanks to COVID-19, sports were kind of shut down -- except for a couple tracks where the managers had their ducks in a row, had quarantined the hell out of everyone, had stringent rules about who could or couldn't set foot on the premises, and so the horse races at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas and the Tampa Bay Downs were being televised. Run without fans in the stands, but running races nonetheless. I began spending my Saturdays watching horse races.

By the end of April, I'd had about enough of television and internet news. Everything revolved around the corona virus. Close it all down! Open it all up! Make kids go back to school in the summer to catch them up! I have a right to open my business! Masks make you smother! It's a pandemic! It's a hoax! On and on with the self-righteousness and accusations and worldwide protests, why isn't someone saving us from this disease? Why are you making us suffer by 'sheltering in place'? I have a right to party! Don't we have a right to health care? 

The race season shifted to Belmont Park in New York, where they put the proper protocols in place to allow racing again. I've always loved the big, sweeping track there, so I began to watch that track on the weekends. Then the reporting team said that when the Belmont meet was done, they were going to Saratoga, and that the channel would carry ALL the Saratoga races.

That was that. I let the family know I was heading off to Saratoga Springs, the oldest and arguably most beautiful track in the USA. On Mondays and Tuesdays, I'd feverishly catch up on all the in-house chores I had to do, and then Wednesday through Sunday mornings, off to Saratoga by 10am and stay there until the last race was done, studying my racing forms, listening to the racetrack team chatter about bloodlines and past performances, history of racing, tack and horseshoes, condition and temperament, jockeys' riding abilities and the strengths and weaknesses of trainers, the hopes of owners, the eerie feeling of the big track without spectators.

I don't have a 'bucket list.' And even if I did, it wouldn't have had on it Go to Saratoga Springs for the Entire Race Meet, because that wouldn't have been possible. I never thought in my life, that I would be able to spend a season at Saratoga. That was a luxury beyond my imagination.

But this summer, I was there. And it was wonderful. I've now done something I never thought I could do.

A stack of racing forms sits beside my work desk, shrouded by a dust cover to keep the ash and harvest dust off it. On the forms are scribbles of notes, names of horse sires circled, names of really proficient jockeys and trainers underlined, what the track was like that day. Maybe this winter, when the rain and wind rattle the door of my garage studio, I'll pull the stack out and look through it, day by day, and remember the shadows of the trees on the track for the late afternoon races, and smile.

The Low-light Morning

There are fires all around us, close enough that everything outside is sprinkled with fine gray ash.

When the dog woke me up this morning, at 6 am, it was dimmer than it should be. The sun wasn't yet up, but instead of a lightening blue sky, it was ... gray. Not clouds, smoke.

A couple mornings ago we had an unseasonable thunder storm roll through the state, and although we love the sound of thunder and the spatter of rain, the lightning set off wildfires in the baking August heat.

I took this photo with my camera at about 10 am. Yuck, right?

The air stinks, burns our noses, makes us sneeze and cough. No outside exercise, no sitting on the porch, no swimming for the dog, no working in an open studio. No barbecue, no gardening, and forget 'social distancing' -- 'environmental distancing' is the order of the day.

What You Can Do While Watching Horse Races All Day

This coming weekend should have been Kentucky Derby day, but it won't be, thanks to the pandemic. Most horse racing venues have been closed down to halt contagion, so all the prep races for the Kentucky Derby were cancelled, also. Only a couple tracks stayed open, and Fox Sports 1 has been having horse races televised from Oaklawn Track in Arkansas, and Tampa Bay Downs in Florida. And since the only prep race for the Kentucky Derby still open happens to be the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn, I've been watching horse races on the weekends -- bingeing, so to speak, from 10:30 am until 4 pm.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, and since I was going to watch horse-racing in front of the TV in my studio, I cleared a spot on the work table and indulged my latest craze: cadmium red oil paint. Same palette as the last painting, but I added a little touch of ultramarine blue and the very slightest pinch of alizarin crimson.

Enjoyed the races, loved seeing the paint go down onto the canvas in rich swathes.

Sheltering in Place (SIP) and Painting Party

Last evening, Alex caught me during a suggestible moment and invited me to a Painting Event with her and her daughters. "We can drink wine and paint," she said. "Come on, it will be fun."

I knew they would be doing watercolors and acrylics. "Do you mind if I use oils?" They didn't mind at all, and so this afternoon, I hoicked myself off to the studio to join them, cleaned my filthy work table, and set out a palette of cobalt blue, cadmium red light, cadmium red medium, cadmium yellow medium, and titanium white.

"The theme is 'cactus,'" I was told. Fine. Cactus it is. Howabout cactus in Red Rock Country?

Oh, yes, and every time I accidentally got my hand in my oil paint, we had a ... sip. (*SIP*) This made for a very agreeable afternoon, and since we were in the garage studio, my solvents and paints did not bother anyone at all. This is the result: