summer's bounty

Tree down with power poles and wires across the street from my apartment June 30th

Day lily sketch July 12th

Summer is really here in Washington DC. We had a storm at the end of June that set records for our area. Power was taken out by downed trees and power lines by a rain storm called a Derecho that began in Chicago and swept by WDC like a hurricane with 80-90 mile per hour winds and heavy rains and lightening strikes. More than half of all homes in the city lost power and many more in the suburbs north and south. Thousands many went without it for a week, my place was powerless for four days and the temperatures went soaring. In the garden in spite of the heat setting records with 12 days above 95ºF and a consecutive run of 4 days with temperature over 100ºF. I measured 114º on our back porch in the shade one afternoon as the outside temperature only rose to 105º. I escaped the heat and the lack of power by taking our frozen foods and driving out to Manassas for a few nights. I took a walk round the neighborhood and took a few pictures before I left to get an idea of how bad the storm was before I left.

Still the flowers grow and they bloom even in this amazing hot air. It's a bit of work to get out each day and take my walk and water those many patches of plants and trees in our gardens front and back yard. Some grand flowers bloom this time of year in our gardens. Many daylilies are reaching peak and then the Asian lilies bloom most favorite of all the Casa Blanca white tall lily which has numerous blooms.  The storm blew some of them into slanting postures but they are still pretty and with the heat outside I felt it was wise to bring a few in the house and give some to friends and neighbors to enjoy.

The one tree that I have and was most excited about blooming began this week with it's first flower in it's new home on the curb side. It survived the winds and storm and hot days to look pretty happy in it's new spot. I am looking forward to more and more flowers as the month progresses. My red crape myrtle thrives.

red crape myrtle is the same read as the stop sign at the corner across the street!

I worry about the changes in the weather but there isn't much any one person can do other than try to vote for changes to policy makers in the coming elections and live a greener life with all the choices we make. 

retreat with a hurricane

Molly's red house is down under the hill in a valley that leads directly to the bay side beach. 

I have had the most wonderful two weeks full of fun creative and colorful experiences. My pal Molly Ruppert and her big family have a few homes out in a community called Fairhaven Cliffs, Maryland very close to Washington DC on the Chesapeake bay. She asked me late last spring if I wanted to come have a few weeks artist retreat in one of the houses that is normally a rental that was vacant this summer. I responded that I would like nothing better! When and what were the conditions. She wrote and said I could have a house with three bedrooms and all we might have to do in return was to mow the grass once and I could bring whom ever I liked to my retreat.We choose the last three weeks of August since Keith was out of town much of July and was very busy in June. August suited me too because this time of year in the city is typically very hot and muggy and mosquitoes are king. The garden is tired and dry grass is brown and dusty but I also have my annual birthday and what better way to celebrate than a retreat to make art at the beautiful bay.
 We packed up two Sundays ago and took food, pillows, sheets, art supplies and all sorts of exciting ideas to the bay house. I even took mom's feather weight Singer sewing machine to see if I might have space to make some fabric art. I also bound a special book for my daily sketches at the bay of large pages from the spare papers I have been saving for years for other projects that have accumulated in the folios in our studio. It was a perfect beginning. We ate a big dinner at Molly's the first night after we got keys and settled into our Red house. The folks in Fairhaven call the houses by their colors not addresses. The Rupperts call them by the family member's name that owns them. 

So we had the red house the place is an old beach house that was just perfect for us to make art and not worry about messing anything up. It is more space than I think I have ever had to work for more than a few hours at a time. I had a whole bunch of rooms to live in and a yard and the bay .... it was ideal. Nature is all around the house the hills behind are covered in a vine called Kudzu which is kind of creepy but also sort of magical in that it makes everything very green like topiary trees of mysterious shapes. 

from the end of the pier looking back at the cliffs and the beach and in the distance the red house.

looking at the house and the yard and bay beyond from the roadside above. 

Kudzu grows right up to the roadside and covers everything including dead tree trunks...

at dawn the sun showed me a kudzu bear and elephant at the edge of our yard!

 first Wed. afternoon a regatta of sailboats appeared on the bay

the first crab skeleton I found on the beach 

Our resident spider named Charlotte, naturally worked on her web daily. 

Keith worked every day on amazing arrangements with materials he collected right there in Fairhaven. Gardener neighbor Juanita Foust was very supportive and offered us anything we wanted from her garden and several other yards of vacant homes up for sale. 

butterflies were abundant and posed for my camera nicely. 

dawn on the bay was spectacular as the half moon hung over head and the sun came up red as fire

Not only did I enjoy making photos and drawing and painting each day but I also undertook a big quilt project inspired by the bay windows and the many colors and patterns of the experience of being in this great place for two weeks. I saw exciting patterns and colors and went right in and added them to make up a bay window inspired work. I worked almost every day a few hours if not longer on the sewing in a room that was intended for guests none of whom ever came. I used the empty single beds as my work tables and sewed on mom's machine until it gave out. Had to drive it to the sewing machine doctor this past Monday and there I found another one older but more valued by collectors. Who collects sewing machines I wonder? Anyway I could not resist using my birthday gift money to buy the sleek 1935 Singer featherweight sewing machine to get right back to the bay and work on the project that I was so deep into by the beginning of the second week. Now I have my own and I can leave mom's at her house for projects out there... it's perfect.

my birthday gift the singer sewing machine in perfect working condition. 

for my birthday I also got these beautiful antique plates like one I had to eat on as a child. The chocolate raspberry butter cream with brown sugar whipped cream was also a real treat but tasted even better on the depression era crackle plates. 

Then Tuesday morning while eating a delicious breakfast one of my teeth broke off! It didn't hurt but I was concerned it would so I called for a dentist appointment and had to drive back to the city very early Wednesday for a walk in visit. Then later Tuesday you all know that we had a 5.8 earthquake that shook up the east coast. It didn't stop us for long but we were really scared when the oil tank alarm went off in our red house. We found it and turned it off and rushed to the land line phone to call Molly but neighbor Juanita saw us and asked us if we were OK before we got the call dialed and explained that the shaking was an earthquake not an oil tank about to explode! What a relief it was to learn that our house and this wonderful vacation was not going to blow up all our fun. I got my tooth fixed and got back to work on my bay windows project soon as I got home and settled but we had to start getting ready for the weeks next disaster headed our way. Irene a hurricane was on the way. We decided to stay as long as we could to see what it was like if the neighbors were safe we figured we could be too. We shopped for supplies, cooked frozen meats and made ice to keep things cool... filled up big bottles of water for when the power went out and we had no well water to flush toilets. It was kind of exciting but not nearly as alarming as watching the news broadcasts full of doom and gloom about the terrors approaching the east coast would be had we been able to see them. We took all needed precautions and worked to use our last hours of power before the storm.
Irene arrived on the Atlantic coast miles from the bay about eight and the winds were strong, the rain fell in sheets all afternoon and into the night. We tried to ignore the sounds but the crash of a branch through a window and the flickering lights were alarming. We fixed the broken window with a little duct tape and a black plastic bag and one of those old fashioned window screen devices that held it in place. The lights went out right after we got the glass swept up from our broken window. The next part was sitting next to the open windows listening to the wind blow the trees soggy leaves and crashing branches falling & splitting. I suggested we read by our hurricane lantern in the bay room and we did for a few hours then about 10:30 we went to bed. It was black outside so we couldn't see anything and it wasn't safe to go out to look to see what those crashing sounds were. As long as they didn't land on us we were good. We woke to lighter rain and softer winds a tree had fallen and a few branches were broken. Fallen leaves were everywhere the car was waiting and the roads were soon open. We took a last walk on the beach then a tour of the little community of houses and checked on our neighbors. Then packed up our studio and the food and headed home. The trouble is there won't be power back for days if not weeks. No water, no power and only charcoal to cook with is too much of a hardship to give us time to be creative. We had a great two weeks with some really high drama moments but many more fun hours of simple walks on the beach or visiting with Rupperts and each other. I spoke to Molly this afternoon when we got home and she says we can come back when the power is restored for the third week she promised us. I said Hooray, that is just what I was hoping we could do because a retreat this much fun is very hard to give up for any reason. So hurricane Irene wasn't so bad to us after all.

the night before the storm arrived a beautiful view of the bay. 

cliffs before the storm at low tide. 

the tree that fell by the red house covered in ivy is barely visible but the root ball shows in the mud at it's base.

Keith standing in front of the fallen tree this morning 

 cliffs at the end of the beach after the storm 

 bay after the storm

at the base of the clay cliffs leaves and balls of various colors of clay rolled in balls upon the sandy shore

across from Molly's house a real broken maple tree 

sail boat that washed up on the big beach across from Molly's house

friday: storms on the way

Gustav comes to New Orleans

flood waters of Gustav

Storm flood water nears the roof line. Seeing a stop sign about to be 

swallowed up by waters from Gustav was very alarming. 

Andserson Cooper

Barak Obama 

In Brookland the wires for electricity, telephone and cable TV are all up in the air suspended by those old fashioned oily brown poles that once were fine trees. That means anytime the storm clouds form and the winds pick up, we are in danger of loosing power.  This past weekend we watched a lot of the storm coverage between the political party conventions on cable TV. I enjoyed watching Anderson Cooper on CNN standing in New Orleans' deserted French quarter. Just after Keith went to bed I thought to myself "what about trying a snapshot of the TV screen?" Our new flat TV allows me to get a decent, if not perfect, screen image with my digital camera and now remembering the storm is easier with these photos.  Anderson Cooper the celebrity news man from CNN is very handsome and kind of funky. He got his national TV start on the overnight news ABC tired a few years ago. There acting and talking kind of goofy worked for the extreme late night viewers and eventually the whole industry turned to his style with entertainment news. Now Anderson is a little more serious and always in dramatic situations when he can be. I think  it is fun to watch him and wonder if he has a boyfriend who it might be. Rumor says he is gay and I wonder about the another handsome man on CNN Rob who does weather; they have done several Hurricane live shots together.  Also on late night CNN last weekend was the guy I hope will be president in a few months: Barak Obama, I caught one shot of him before I turned it all off and went to bed. They showed and warned of several storms that are training across the Atlantic ocean from Africa where they begin as thunderstorms toward the Americas. Next is on the way up northeast coast to Washington, DC area and in the five years I have lived here we have only had one Tropical Storm come to DC. It blew down trees and branches and upset everything but our power didn't go out that time. Now with tropical storm Hanna on the way I am trying to think what I could do to prepare our garden and our house for a black out. There are no easy answers. Maybe I should be contacting friends and asking them to make room in their freezers for our extra bison steaks in case the juice gets knocked out. Gustav missed New Orleans mostly now Hanna comes north, Ike may crash into Florida early next week and there is one more way out there called Josephine still trying to get a tropical storm rating. We are having a busy storm season and cable TV doesn't know what to put at the top of the news entertainment menu disaster, debauchery or government corruption so many exciting things to cover. 

Meanwhile between storms we had a good week, Keith was happy with his birthday gifts, dinner and cake. Mom and I had fun shopping and buying him some vintage ceramics and a Blue Mason Jar of his own to match mine. He loves books and got a couple from me and a gift card for more from Jenny and Frank and he danced around the room when he opened that gift.  We need an extra library to store all our books in case you are trying to think of a nice holiday gift for us both. Wink wink... but really it is fun to have fine books. I have a bunch to make of my own this month so I better shut down this computer and start working! The storms are on the way and that could really make book binding difficult.