High Flying Color

Wow!~ Out in my front yard Spring has Sprung! I have been so busy enjoying wave after wave of color that I have not posted one colorful thought. Let me change that and go the visual route.

                                                       

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Did you know that Iris is the Greek Goddess for the Messenger of Love her flower is the symbol of      communication and love.

                                                           Iris had the duty of taking     women's souls to the Elysian Fields.   

Greek men planted  her flowers on the graves of their beloved women .

                                                                                 

Hues of Brown/ Rootbeer.

                Here is to colorful memories / painting / planting on this Memorial Day weekend.

Anticipation!

New crayon boxes at the beginning of the school year were filled with anticipation. All those cool colors, did you want to have magenta and teal crayons or a red! The fun of looking forward to all the possible pictures that would be produced in the future. I actually, must confess to looking forward to using brown.

Why!! because when I used brown the most, it meant it was time to draw Pilgrims and practice making mysterious reaching tree branches. Did I mention I got to make Turkeys. I loved designing their feathers.


Now I have seen " Wild Turkey!" by James Audubon and my multi-colored birds need a little more refining.

When I finally saw Claude Monet's "Les Dindons" I thought them beautiful but he was
definitely missing my
brown crayon. Monet's turkeys are living the cultured life on the lawn of his pink home in Giverny.

These lovely brown birds are the type that could make Ben Franklin believe they should be our National Bird.  Here's to BROWN and childish anticipation for we are beginning the season of family fun, hope and dreams!

One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato More!

I'm getting ready for Thanksgiving and thinking of a Menu. Of course potatoes are in the mix and lucky for me I have plenty of potatoes after my trip to the San Luis Valley in early October. Now I know that Colorado is the third largest producer of potatoes in the USA, also that they grow a variety of potatoes, Russets, Yukons, Butterballs and a host with Colorado placenames. http://www.coloradopotato.org/

The San Luis Valley is at 7600 ft and is surrounded by mountains which reach 14,000 ft. Its a beautiful valley and potatoes were grown as a crop starting in 1875. This makes it one of the earliest potato growing areas in the States. The whole time we were being toured through potato fields and observing the sorting and processing of the potatoes I was recalling Vincent Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters".

It ran through my mind like a melody which gets stuck and won't let go.

In 1885 Van Gogh painted "The Potato Eaters", this was 10 years after potatoes were grown as a crop in the San Luis Valley. When I got back I looked again at this painting and discovered the blog, http://www.vangoghsblog.com/ which I have listed in my blog list. The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam has been posting these blogs with regularity this year based on Van Goghs writing. The last three posts have been especially interesting, one on color creating change,drawing etc.

As I roast, mash and cream my potatoes I will be both thinking of Van Gogh and remembering a beautiful high mountain valley.