The Garden Gate

Tuesday my new garden gate went up. I haven't had one for awhile (the old one rotted and fell to pieces, after 60 years' use), which is the main factor on which I blame my burglary--I made it just too easy. So now I am making it hard--the height of the gate is above my head, and there will be a padlock to secure it when I am not at home.

I really dislike the way things are going--I've lived in this house in this neighborhood for more than 30 years, and for most of those years I would leave the house with a window open for ventilation and the back door ajar so my cats could go out and enjoy the day on the screened-in patio. No more; now it's padlocks and alarm systems, and after 30 years of feeling secure in my "castle," I jump at every noise, inspect the reason for the neighbor dog's bark, and leave a light on 24-7. It's a sad commentary. Also, it makes me feel OLD and curmudgeonly to be talking in this vein (no, I didn't use the phrase "the good old days," but that's the gist, isn't it?).

So here's a photo of my new gate--it's a beauty. Weather-proof, rust-proof, attractive, and secure. And below it is a painting I made about 10 years ago of the old gate, when it was aged, flaked and rusted, but still hanging. Not as nice as the new one, that's for sure, but what it symbolized was infinitely more precious.

From Life

I feel like I do too much drawing and painting from photos and not from life. I do make sure to make my paintings from photos I have taken myself, when at all possible, because the discrimination of the artist's eye is just as present when deciding what to photograph as it is when deciding what to include or exclude when drawing or painting, and I think it shows when an artist is painting from someone else's view of the world. (Although I have found reference photos from online for objects to which I have no direct access, when I am making a painting that requires research!)

So today, which was a variable weather day--chilly and cloudy, with the sun only peeping--I was tempted, when I decided to paint a clump of narcissus (narcissi?) from my garden, to take a photograph of them and then go into the nice warm house to draw them. But instead, since the sun had come out and warmed things up a bit, I found a nice big plastic bag to sit on (it rained last night), and went out into my yard to draw them in situ. (Also, I remembered Nina Johansson's stories from Stockholm about frozen ink, fingerless gloves, and sitting in the car in the rain for hours to capture a cityscape, and felt ashamed of my California wimpiness!)

      

This activity, of course, resulted in lots of curious attention from the stray cats who call my yard their home. If only they would sit still long enough for me to draw them! but they are young and energetic and in constant motion--like a statue for just enough time to make a few lines on the page, and then bolting off across the yard, or flopping down to roll on their backs in the dirt, or butting into my paintbrush hand at some crucial moment. It's hard enough to capture them on film. I tried for a few spontaneous drawings and gave up, afterwards turning my attention to a couple of blessedly stationary lemons hanging just above my head where I was sitting to draw the paperwhites.

I owe today's efforts to the "Journaling Lifestyle" chapter of Cathy Johnson's book, Artist's Journal Workshop, which reminded me to find time, make time, develop a habit, work anywhere, work fast, and use your journal as a learning tool. Thanks for the inspiration.

Leftovers

If you are a family of five and you decided to make my Bonanza Beans recipe (see previous New Year's post), then that pot of beans is history. But if you are a single person, like I am, after you have eaten beans for three nights in a row and there is still half a kettle left, you are wondering, WHAT am I going to do with all these BEANS? Here's your answer...

TENNESSEE CORN PONE

4 cups very juicy cooked and seasoned beans (especially pinto or kidney)
2 cups cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 quart buttermilk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/4 cup butter

Grease a 9x13 pan. Better yet, use a 10x14 (trust me, you do NOT want this to overflow on you as you put it into the oven--been there, done that, rued the day as my oven caught on fire and my house filled with smoke!).

Heat the beans until they are quite hot, and pour them into the pan.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Mix the cornmeal, baking, soda, and salt together in a small bowl.

Melt the butter and combine it with the buttermilk and beaten eggs in a large bowl and stir.

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ones until smooth. Pour them over the hot beans. Bake on the top rack of your oven until the bread is a rich golden color and the sides of the corn bread pull away from the sides of the pan. This takes about 30 minutes.

Now, this dish serves 8-10 people, so you could either:
1. Plan to use your leftovers for a potluck dish with a large group later in the week;
2. Freeze half and take the other half for lunch for a couple of days;
3. Give some to your neighbors.

So, the idea of using up the leftovers in a thrifty manner isn't exactly realized by this--but you do have something different to eat, made from those beans!

Note for future reference: Next time I make this, I will use the same amount of beans (4 cups), but only use half of the rest of the recipe. I was hoping for more of a bean-based dish with a bread topping (a southern, vegetarian version of shepherd's pie?), but instead got a pan of moist cornbread with beans dispersed through it here and there.

By the way, let me properly attribute this recipe: Laurel's Kitchen, A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition, by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey, page 262. My cooking bible for many years.

Superstitions



Miniver, my quality control inspector (and black cat).

Very superstitious, writings on the wall,
Very superstitious, ladders ‘bout to fall,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin' glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past

When you believe in things that you don't understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain't the way

I thought of this old Stevie Wonder song today, because I am ritualistic when it comes to the first day of a new year. Somebody once told me that whatever you do on New Year’s Day, you’ll do throughout the year, so I have become careful about what precedents I am setting.

Therefore, I started the day with some judicious exercise (a medium-long walk around the neighborhood), followed by a healthy breakfast. I did a little reading today, but not too much; I have a tendency to read my life away as it is, I didn’t want to push it. I did a few small chores, so that good habits would be represented. And I drew and painted.

I thought, on and off, while I was walking and doing dishes, about what I wanted to paint, and inspiration didn’t strike. Then, around 3:30 I turned on the TV to catch a bit of the Rose Parade. I never really cared about watching it, but to my mom, it was a tradition to get up early and watch the whole thing, start to finish, marveling over what people could make out of flowers. Thinking about my mom made me think of her New Year’s superstition, which was an old southern wives’ tale that if you ate beans (or, if you want to be really specific, black-eyed peas) on New Year’s Day, you’d have good luck for the rest of the year. So that decided the dinner menu.

I chose Bonanza Beans (mostly because I had all the ingredients), and when I double-checked the recipe and assembled everything, I thought, what could be more lucky than to paint the fixings before I made the dish? So here is a photo of the ingredients (minus the beans), and my drawing and painting. I also had a little help from Miniver, who was fascinated with the paintbrush moving in and out of the paint, and who overlooked things, purring all the while, as I created on the couch, with the Rose Parade droning in the background. At some point, I realized that I had to deconstruct my still life in order to put on the beans, so I carefully removed the bag from the grouping and started cooking them while painting the other ingredients before it was time to add them. A very interactive project!

Maybe, as Stevie says, “superstition ain’t the way,” but...it got me to draw, paint AND cook this New Year’s Day! Hope yours is lucky...

Here’s the recipe for Bonanza Beans:

1 lb. (1 bag dried) small red beans
2 T. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1/2 cup catsup
1/2 cup water
1 T. molasses (or you can use brown sugar)
1/2 tsp. liquid smoke (hickory flavoring)
1/8 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 T.. each chili powder and salt

Cover the beans with water and simmer, covered, about 2 hours, checking at regular intervals and replenishing water as needed. About 30 minutes before the two hours is up, heat your frying pan, add olive oil, and saute onions and green pepper until tender. Measure out your water in a large glass measuring cup, add catsup and the other ingredients and stir. Add this mix to the skillet, cover and simmer 10 minutes to marry the flavors. Add contents of skillet to beans, simmer another 30 minutes to 1 hour. Add salad and cornbread!

(By the way, the fuzzy, soft quality of these pictures is because I haven't yet replaced my computer, which means I have nothing to which I can attach my scanner, so my only option is to take photos with my Droid. Not great, but it's that or don't post. Hoping to remedy this soon--waiting for the contractor to make things more secure before I go buying new equipment.)

Lousy reason to draw

My house was burglarized on Wednesday while I was at work. They took my TV and my (new iMac) computer, but what really hurt was the jewelry. I love earrings and pins, and I have been collecting vintage, one-of-a-kind specimens for almost 30 years. They were unique and mostly irreplaceable, and they are all gone. The thief overlooked two brooches and one pair of earrings that were not in my jewelry box (plus three or four singles that fell on the floor, thanks so much), so with the pair I was wearing, that's two, where I probably had 40 pairs--all colors, styles, sizes, to go with every outfit.

Also, of course, I had incorporated my favorite pieces from my mother's jewelry collection, and those are gone as well, including the rhinestone bracelet and earrings set I drew previously for this blog.

The policeman who took the report said that if there were any unusual pieces it would help to have details, because it was much more likely they would catch someone if the item was unique, so I gave him a couple of descriptions. The next morning, when I woke up, I realized that I know my jewelry pretty well, and that I could DRAW PICTURES of it to help with the search. So I sat down and drew two pages' worth and watercolored them. Here is page one.

I don't really expect to get anything back, but it was worth a shot. Hopefully in the coming weeks I will have some better subject for art.

(By the way, this is an out-of-focus photo from my Droid, because without the computer I can't use my scanner. And I'm not buying a new computer until I first replace the two busted doors and the garden gate!)

The story of Beatrice

In 1998, there was a cat named Hazel living in my back yard. She was the third generation in the family tree of Fraidy (a feral cat who had adopted me), and was the meanest cat I ever met, before or since--at least to humans. She was apparently not mean to her fellow cats, since every three to six months she was producing yet another litter of kittens. It took me two years (she was smart and wary, in addition to being mean), but I finally sequestered Hazel in my garage, trapped her, and had her spayed. I made my best effort to find homes for all those many kittens, but she left a legacy of about a dozen unclaimed, who I fed and cosseted in my back yard until they either died of old age, found another home, or disappeared in less pleasant ways (coyote or hawk).

Since she was an outdoor cat with no medical advantages, and since she seemed to produce kittens without regard to the season, some of the kittens in her litters were less than healthy. One morning in January, I came outside to discover a two-week-old black kitten lying all by itself on the sidewalk, gasping for breath. Hazel had apparently carried her there, banishing her from the litter, because she had a severe upper respiratory infection. I took the poor little thing to the vet, but was told that she was too young to handle antibiotics, and that I could either euthanize her or try to raise her with a bottle if the mama cat wouldn't take her back. I knew better than to even broach the subject with Hazel, so I bought a doll bottle, some formula, and a cat carrier, and thus started Beatrice's daily treks to work with me. She had to be fed every two hours, so there was really no other solution but to take her along. Once she got over the respiratory infection, she quickly charmed everyone at my office, including Harold Adler, a talented calligrapher and a lovely man in his 80s who rented an office from Cinema Research Corporation, where I worked as a movie title artist. He wrote this tag and taped it to a cat toy he left on my desk for her:

He perfectly captured her sweet expression in just a few strokes.

After a couple of months, Beatrice was able to stay at home, where she was joined soon after by two others of Hazel's kittens--Miniver, who was actually born in the litter before her, but who had stayed outside until a severe injury made it necessary to bring her inside to recuperate; and Dante, from Hazel's last litter, who was invited indoors because he was just too charming and cheeky not to make into a special pet.

Beatrice was quite the personality. She wasn't exactly an affectionate cat--not a lap sitter, not a bed sleeper, and she let you know with a growl within about 30 seconds of you picking her up that this was not her idea of a good time. She showed her love in more unusual ways. When I sat in my chair to read (said chair being a Mission rocker with open slat sides), I would suddenly feel claws scratching gently at my thigh, and look down to see

On her back for a belly rub--this was the "crazy eye."

Beatrice poking at me through the slats. I would hold out my hand to her, and she would flop down on her back, grab my hand with her front paws, and kick it with her back feet--never digging in her claws, never hurting me in the slightest--and then gnaw on my fingers for a bit, never biting hard enough to break the skin. She did this from a very young age (a friend of mine suggested that I change her name to Vampira) until almost the end of her life.

The other way to get Beatrice to pay attention to you was to sing or whistle. I never figured out if she loved it and wanted to encourage me to continue, or hated it and hoped she could make me stop, but if I sang to her (she preferred "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" but also responded to "Frere Jacques"), she would run into the room, jump up on my chest, and start "knitting" and purring like crazy.

My model, on the patio.

Although, as I said, she wasn't overtly affectionate, she was attentive. She didn't openly follow me around, but whatever room I ended up in--bedroom, office, kitchen, patio--she would soon be there, usually sitting across the room so she could keep an eye on me. She was also johnny on the spot whenever she heard anything that might be associated with food or a handout--paper rustling, plastic lids peeling back, the opening of the refrigerator door. She was a big fan of cheese in particular, but didn't turn up her nose at sour cream, yogurt, or scrambled eggs. And having been weaned off her formula with baby food meat from jars, the seal-breaking pop of a lid could bring her running from the opposite end of the house.

Because she was ever-present somewhere nearby, once I took up drawing and painting she made a good model, and was the only cat I have ever drawn or painted from life rather than from photos, because she would get into a pose and hold it as long as she wasn't distracted or surprised. I wish so much that I had painted more of her while I had her.

Josephine and Beatrice come to dinner.

Because of her tenuous beginnings, Beatrice had many health issues throughout her life. She was prone to respiratory infections and suffered through quite a few of them. She had a touch of congestive heart failure, and between this and the respiratory issues, she had slowed down considerably during the past few years. Two years ago, however, I took her to a specialist who suggested she have a procedure to open up her nasal passages, and this made a huge difference in her quality of life for a few years. But then, six months ago, a huge buboe appeared above her right hip.

At first, the vet thought she had suffered some trauma from a fall, as it appeared to be a hematoma, but more investigation revealed that it was hemangiosarcoma, a cancer arising from blood vessels that is considered very rare in cats (much more common in dogs). There are two forms, with the cutaneous version being operable. This was the form Beatrice's took, so the vet surgically removed the tumor, with clean margins, and we hoped that would be the end of it; but two months later she had recurrence both at the site and internally. She waxed and waned over the next few months, but she was a stubborn and determined little cat, and every time I thought we were near the end, she would rally. She met me at the front door every night, and was happiest on the nights when I showed up with El Pollo Loco just for her. She loved to hang out on the patio, sitting in the sun and smelling the breeze, and curled up on the sofa every night with Miniver beside her.

She was alert and in good spirits until Thanksgiving Day, when she seemed lethargic and didn't purr or knit when I put her on my chest. I decided to stay home from the family festivities to be with her, and she died at 4:30 that afternoon, after a brief struggle to breathe.

She is going back out to the yard where she was born, and her ashes will rest under a lavender bush just like the one from which she emerged to grace my life almost 15 years ago. She is missed already--I and the other cats keep thinking we catch sight of her, out of the corner of our eyes, and when I sit in my chair to read, I hang my hand down hoping to feel her grab it. I have had many cats in my life, and have loved them all, but Beatrice was special. Hail to you, Queen Bea.

Fall Sunday

No new paintings this weekend--I was otherwise preoccupied--but a couple of snapshots. This is the burst of blooms that greets October along the side of my house--asters that bloom once a year, and almost always open on my birthday early in the month. They are really coming into their own now, a few weeks in, and still have a couple of weeks to go before they get cut down to the ground to start over for next year. These all grew from one small 9-inch pot!

The preoccupation this weekend was with Beatrice, my cat, whose health issues are unfortunately not over, and whose outlook is shorter than I had hoped. But today she went out on the patio of her own incentive, jumped up on my little wicker sofa, and spent a few hours sleeping, watching other cats out in the yard, and sniffing the breeze. A good day.