Birdhouses are us ........

Birdhouse # 1.

These are all sized for bluebirds and swallows
One of our neighbours saw 5 bluebirds on the fence line the other day.

On our property they seem to like to nest further back, by the fields, as they like the open spaces.

Here, near the house (and on the house) we have more luck attracting swallows which are great little bug catchers and lovely to watch swooping and diving.

I think I may have heard a bluebird the other morning. They have a sweet mournful voice.

                                                                   Birdhouse # 2.

                                                                 Birdhouse #3

The birdies in the tree tops

Spring should surely soon be upon us. We have many signs of its coming: tiny wee white Babies' Breath, and teeny blue flowers that bloom in the early spring. The Wild Parsnips are still blooming but with them there is now a similarly shaped blossom with bright yellow blooms and little strappy shaped green leaves.
Yesterday as I was walking I found a wild Morel growing in a bowl of rock which could explain its early appearance.
Today was cold and by late afternoon there appeared to be snow showers scurrying down the mountains. James lit a nice warm fire in the wood stove and I made chili for supper.
This is a painting of an oriole by James McDowell. It is 24" X 32", acrylic on hardboard, and priced at $350.00 plus S&H.

The bushes are now alive with more and more spring birds. We have a number of these lovely little Rufus Sided Towhees about this spring. Hopefully they will keep their wits about themselves and watch out for the cats.
This painting by James McDowell is also 24" X 32", acrylic on hardboard, and priced at $350.00 plus S&H.  .

It's Seedy Saturday!!!!!

T

This is James' most recent creation made for a friend from her father's old golf clubs. I'm sorry that the table lets off such a glare. It doesn't do the painting justice. Below is a print of the table top - which is a painting.

Busy day, sunshine, James pruning the blackberries......
Coffee in town with the Eckersleys.
This is our monthly ArtQuilters' meeting. I'll have to report I've still been knitting but I got some great ideas from the latest Cloth, Paper, Scissors and I actually have moved my sewing machine out of the corner and onto a desk!
It's Seedy Saturday today. There's a lecture at one (talk?) which I will miss because of the aforementioned Art Quilters' meeting and then the seed exchange from 2:00 - 4:00 at New Life Church just over (east) of the high school. Non-GMO and non-hybridized seeds.

My day has been "fun, fun, fun."
Anyway we quilters met, shared ideas and projects, and then we went for coffee. I went to Seedy Saturday and brought home a bunch of free seeds for James. I only bought one package and that was of a large, very tasty black tomato.
We had friends who grew a deep purple tomato that would be about 1 inch - 1 1/2 inches across last year. They were the yummiest tomatoes I've ever had - utterly sweet and flavourful. I have since seen them called "chocolate tomatoes" and that would be a good description.
I also got some "shelling beans," Rhubarb chard, Italian parsley and parsley root, a couple other kinds of tomato, and several kinds of squash.

I am now home, beat, and ready to watch paralympic sledge hockey.

The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la .... and more of James' recent work

I went wandering up on the hill this afternoon to see what signs of spring I could find and there was the Large Fruited Desert Parsley blooming. It is a short little plant that hugs the ground and is easy to miss among the rocks and lichen.  
Bandy accompanied me and did his best to cast his shadow on the picture and trip me as he wound around my legs. He is such a pretty boy and so mellow we forgive many transgressions.

 These little fellows are blooming in the lawn. They are supposed to spread but aren't doing so very quickly. The thyme is another story, a happy one, but this is not its season.
Here are a few more of James' recent paintings:
 

 This is inspired by a visit to Kuskanook Harbour. The painting is 32 X 24 inches.

Pears on canvas - 13 1/2 in X 21 in.

Plant with alium - 24 in X 32 in.

Machinery with pliers - 32 in X 24 in.

Machinery 2 - 32 X 24 in.

James' work is for sale and available by contacting us by email or phone.

James' show

Signature piece for show - 24 in X 32 in.

Circles and squares 1 - 24 in X 32 in.

Circles and squares 2 - 24 in x 32 in.

More paintings from James' show

Circles and squares 3 - 24 in X 32 in.

Circles and squares 4 - 30 in X 40 in.

Circles and squares 5 - 16 in X 16 in.

Great time at the opening and on with life.

James' opening last Saturday was a great success: lots of folks and lots of good eats if I do say so myself.
The show will continue to hang at Kingfisher Used Books until April 30.
Another great show, this of photography by Peter McLennan, is on at our library.Our weather is typical March: sun and wind, rain, and a chill, and snow squalls blowing across the valley but not amounting to anything.
My snow drops are still just awfully pleased with themselves and I have a few crocuses popping into bloom.
Tomorrow I go and meet with a young fellow at the library to see if we can figure why no one can see the art work on our web page nor can I get in there to add anything new or change any of the "blather." I live in hope.

New show by James

Well, January and February have fled. Of course February was graced with 2 weeks of Olympics - what joy and what a great excuse to sit and knit! Now on with life.
Here it is March already, my oldest cousin turned 70 today, and James has a new show going in to Kingfisher Used Books on Friday with an opening on Sat. The show will hang until the end of April.
We really must whack the studio/gallery into order out here as he has much more and varied new work to show. This show is to an un-named theme.
Meanwhile there are hints that James will help me by cutting some parts for me and taking apart a drawer pull display that I have had quite the time with. If he can do that I may even get some bird houses done for this spring. We shall see. I've always done all the parts cutting but I'm so short the dust is always in my face and I hate that particular part. I don't intend to have houses all over the Kootenays but some on hand here and a couple local spots would be OK. I always give one to the local Rotary Auction. They do a lot of good both here and away.
Yesterday the sun shone and the snow drops were alive with honey bees, as were the compost piles and, as we get the old coffee grounds from Joe, at Kingfisher Used Books, last night I bet there were a whole bunch of bees on a caffeine high.
Yesterday I bought the most beautiful book I have ever seen.
It is "Landsdowne's Birds of the Forest" with paintings by JF Landsdowne and text by John A Livingston.
I bought it at Kingfisher. I had it set aside while I decided which books of mine to sell to help pay for it. It was $32.00, but new would have been much, much more expensive. While some books are referred to as coffee table books this is a desk or big table book: too big to hold in your lap and look at. It is the combining of Landsdowne's "Eastern Woodland Birds" and "Northern Woodland Birds" and would have been easier read in it's 2 parts but I so love it. For each bird there is a page with preliminary pencil sketches of it, then the next 2 facing pages are the writing and a lovely colour painting. The sketches are more exciting to me from an artistic perspective than the finished illustrations.
James acquainted me with a lovely blog full of inspiration the other night.
It is: http://donnawatsonart.blogspot.com/2010/01/inner-stillness.html#links
Tomorrow I meet with a young fellow at the Creston Public Library to help me see where our web page has fallen off the rails. As it sits tonight no one, including me, can get at it to see the art work and I would also like to change some of its features and "blather."
I am still knitting many, many toques. I had to stop last year when I developed a trigger thumb and had to have surgery but now I am using softer yarns for some things and have taught myself to loom knit left handed - gotta get all those sparks firing in the brain.
I read that the huge Chilean earthquake has actually caused the earth to shift about 3 inches on its axis and shortened the day by a couple nano seconds. I don't really think I need a shorter day.
Mailings are going out for this year's ArtWalk: our 15th. Harry Miller has come on board and will be doing a lot of the foot work. He has coordinated the Christmas Craft Fairs for the Arts Council these last few years and done a very good job and this seems a fit for him. I think I can't retire from it yet as I'm still the "computer person."
This was a grayer day. We will see what kind of spring we get.

Was this January?

Farewell to January in our very odd winter. We have had so little snow James has not had to plow once. Since the start of the year we had maybe an inch or two one day and a few tiny skiffs but the ground is bare except for some ice on the driveway. Even the ice out through the grass is disappearing. I don't know what this bodes for farming but I hope we get a good kill on the wasps. They have been unreal the last few summers.
The chickadees are singing a new more melodic song: not their "springs coming" song yet but it is coming.
James has been painting in the studio. He has a show opening at Kingfisher Used Books in early March.
I have been knitting on the round looms again, many hats in different combinations of yarns, and I am teaching myself to knit left handed.
This past year I have been seriously transitioning out of building birdhouses. I can't say I'll never make another, but they are taking a back roll and I am doing cleaner things that aren't as hard on my hands. Having knit right handed enough to have to have surgery for a trigger thumb last spring I am realizing that in everything I do I need to watch for repetitive stress or it will bight me!
This Thursday is a memorial service for everyone who has passed away at the Lodge since last October. My sister is coming, she and I and two of our close friends have all lost parents (our last parents) in thiese past few months.

Farewell to 2009

As you can see Skeeter is still hopeful. This was taken Dec 26 I believe. We had more snow earlier and then it melted and "wore away" in the cold. Now we again have an inch or so, not much but enough to cover some of the dry remains of last summer.
James and I had a very quiet Christmas with a wonderful roast lamb for dinner at our friend Betty's. Her daughter-in-law is French and French Canadian and this is a part of her French heritage, her grandfather coming from France with Moroccan heritage. Dinner was delicious.

November

James has been taking pictures through the slider. This little fellow, a Downy Woodpecker, spent some time peeking in all the cracks on the deck looking for lunch.

















We have more birds and more variety of birds at the feeder than in previous years.
















This wee fellow is a chickadee of which we've had lots in the past but this year we are being visited by the various finches, most just stripy browns at this time of year but we also have the rosy headed House Finches and I'm sure I saw a Red Poll yesterday. His whole body was rosy and he had the little red stripes on his head; such a bright little fellow.
Sadly James was not lurking about with the camera when he appeared.
We have decided to discourage the cats at the feeder, after all, it is a bird feeder, not a cat feeder! James caught Skeeter sitting on top the other day. It would be a pretty foolish bird who would fly in to that welcome.
Today James added another 20 inches height to the pipe the feeder is mounted on. Take that cats!

Changes

Tuesday I put my sister on the bus to return to Kelowna. There was a finality to it.
Nearly 3 weeks ago she'd come to visit our mom and celebrate our 60th birthday on October 5. We'd had a couple really nice visits with our mom and then on the 6th she had a massive stroke from which she never regained any consciousness or reflex or anything. She slipped peacefully away in the the very early morning of October 10.
On the Sunday was the funeral of our very close friend's dad. Her mom had passed away 5 months earlier. It has been a time of goodbyes.
In the spring when the wild flowers are blooming we will have a celebration of life for our mom.
I am giving myself some time to breathe deep and reorder.
One is never really ready for these things.

Musings

I have been building birdhouses for 15 years now but have built very few these past few years as I've been having numbers of hand surgeries however, having had a surgery this spring as a result of too enthusiastic knitting I think I can return to birdhouses, but on a lesser scale. The secret, no doubt, is in learning to pace oneself.
Instead of trying to sell my houses all over the Kootenays and Northern Idaho I plan to only build and sell a limited number from our own gallery here at home, and that will also give me time to work more in fabric. I am planning on taking a couple classes this summer.
Also, The College of the Rockies Creston campus is again offering classes this summer in the arts. James will be teaching his Exploring Experimental Approaches to working with Acrylics.
This year the classes are of a 3 day duration, most on weekends.
I will teach a class on Building a Functional Art Birdhouse, showing people how to build a birdhouse that is playful and decorative, but also a safe healthy home for the birds.
The brochure is poorly done this year but I am glad to send people details myself.
The college can be reached at 1.866.740.2687 or 250.428.5332 or emailed at creston@cotr.bc.ca . The brochure lists my class as "Birdhouses" and gives no indication of the rustic, funky houses I build.

Here's Skeeter perched on Garth Huscroft's panther,

and trying to look innocent like she doesn't hear any baby birds!

And here is Bandy doing his Yin & Yang thing with the panther.

My how the times do fly .......

So, somewhere the last month and a half has flown by. When last I wrote Arts and Culture Week was just on and it seemed very soon after my most recent hand surgery. During that week there was an afternoon workshop and presentation by Don Maybe on Artist Trading Cards and this is a photo of the cards I made that afternoon. They are primarily fabric though there's a bit of detritus from the back lot made its way in too. The glue I used is an excellent heavy bodied glue called "Yes."

This picture was actually taken May 8 just after a lovely heavy shower. The forsythia, which I had threatened to hack down because it had bloomed so poorly for years rewarded my good pruning last year with a wonderful show of blooms this year.
We have a little chestnut tree my sister brought as a seedling and it has "lived" and grown imperceptibly for about 15 years but this year it is putting on new growth and has rewarded us with a blossom. Never give up!
For Arts and Culture Week the show at the Blue Awning was called Forty and on and was honoring this, the 40th year Creston has had a Community Arts Council. On that theme I displayed my knitted touques in groupings of 10, from infant, to child's, to youth, and to adult , with the highest grouping representing all ages and the future.

And then there were two.....

I do think it is spring this time. The chickadees are singing "Spring's coming" from the bushes. There's a large older magnolia tree ( the kind with white blossoms) on the way to the mall that is just coming into bloom and many bushes and trees are just waiting to pop their leaves.

Went driving north toward Sirdar. The banks are covered with dog toothed violets (avalanche lilies) We decided to drive out on the dike: lots of ducks, geese, coots, Black Necked Stilts, a couple swans, a blue heron, swallows, and a mamma black bear with her two last year's cubs!

The Black Necked Stilt is fairly rare here in the Creston Valley. They have wonderful "formal attire" and were quite close to shore so we could stop and see them well.
They have bright orange legs. They are quite showy little birds.
It was one of those days when I again think "Why don't I just put a pair of binoculars in the jeep?"
The binos were at home on the table because that is where the best bird watching starts.
Friday evening we had a pair of vultures soaring and swooping right close to us - so utterly wonderful!
Mamma bear and babies were across the channel from us far enough away that we weren't making her nervous, nor she us.
This week will be Arts and Culture Week across the province. Here in Creston we are again renting "The Blue Awning Gallery" across from the government agent's office on Canyon (main) Street. We have a show opening tonight in the west side and going on for the week with different activities in the east side of the building.
Next Saturday James will be helping Sandy Kunze raky behind Kingfisher Used Books and I will be attending an Artist Trading Card lecture and session at the Painted Turtle Gallery.
James and I are going to the opening of Arts and Culture Week tonight. James is showing the 2 pieces of metal sculpture shown at the top of the post. They are made to hang and are about 4 feet tall.
I have created an installation from some of the many, many toques I knit from Jan through March. The show's theme is Forty Forward, celebrating the 40 years of the existence of the Arts Council here in Creston and looking top the future.
My installation has large picture frames (4 of them) hung vertically and strung with wire like clothes lines and at the bottom I hung, using brightly coloured clothes pins, 10 infant hats for the very years, then, above that, 10 toddler hats, for a bit older, then 10 adolescent hats, and then 10 large adult hats.
In the top frame I have hung many hats of all sizes and colours representing the future.
I'll try to get a picture. James tried but it wasn't until we got home we realized his picture only showed the bottom 3 frames.

Promises of spring

Now that the Wynndel Ats Center is "virtually finished" James has had a chance to do some art himself. This is his metal sculpture from last weekend which he will show in the Art Show celebrating Arts and Culture Week at the "Blue Awning Gallery."
I need to evaluate who we've heard from and who we need to be contacting for this summer's ArtWalk.



Meanwhile, my frantic and joyful round-loom knitting has paid off. I have many, many touques to show as an installation at the Blue Awning and to sell this next fall and have had to have another hand surgery for a very badly triggering thumb. I am swanning about while James does the cooking and dishes. Stitches come out Friday -yea!!!!
Spring progresses slowly without me. The daffodils by the front door are nearly open and the little purple violets are blooming with abandon. These are "better behaved" than some and spreading slowly but my hope is for some more inclined to "take over".


I went up on the hill today to see what new wildflowers are about. These teeny, tiny blue flowers will soon carpet the ground but now they are still few and far between.

This is a slow spring. Down in the Lower Mainland, in the farming communities east and south of Vancouver the strawberry growers say their crops will be later than usual and sparser.
I've suggested to James we plant some of our own strawberries in the chicken pen where the deer can't get them. We had them in a raised bed where the deer ate the berries and James mulched them for one winter so well they composted, poor things.
Yesterday we bought our seed potatoes. At Straight from Earth Natural Food Store in town I see a sign saying they are selling the last of the local carrots and I need to buy some before they are all gone. I'm anxious to see things planted but I am a spectator at this time and it's still pretty cold to expect things to grow.

A whole day of sunshine! and a job well done.

Whee! Spring feels really here. I saw 2 towhees in the bushes, the honey bees are out again, the little tortoise shell kitty is seeking shade, and everything feels ready to pop.
James has been redoing his greenhouse, getting ready for tomatoes, and the project for the Wynndel Mudders is essentially finished!
James and Bruce Johnson renovated (rebuilt?) the old changing rooms from the former Wynndel Pool and made them into a really nice open 700 square foot clay studio.
Wednesday we threw a surprise party to honour James and Bruce for all their hard work.
Above, James and Dirk Kunze are philosophizing.
Sadly, we don't have any "before" pictures of the warren of toilet stalls and shower rooms and walls rotting off at the bottom.
James and Bruce tore out all that and with some help from several of the women pulling nails, cleaning, and painting they've made a real silk purse out of a sow's ear.

The outer walls and ceiling are all natural wood and the men post and beamed the room so it could be open concept.


In case one fears there's nothing left to do the outside of the building will need some help and there needs to be a bit of landscaping but for the time being both James and Bruce need to do their spring work at home. This being such a late spring they got a bit of a reprieve.
In November I posted pictures of James and Bruce working on the concrete which formed the floor for this large storage room (about 1/2 shown) which runs the width of the north wall.

Still springing

The little hat with the flower is in gray with periwinkle flower and a variegated periwinkle, gray green yarn knit with the gray.
The flower and leaves are crocheted.
I'm sort of resting my hands which, after just 3 months, are loudly complaining and growing lumps. Oh to have strong hands and wrists!
Anyway, I found a pattern for tendrils, as seen in the picture below, and I'm back to teaching myself real, two needle-type knitting and doing a bit of crochet which I know already.
I've been watching all the World's in figure skating but they are done tonight unless there is a gala. I may have pushed it as far as I can in that we do share the TV and figure skating is not James' thing.
I hope I've enough "grace" saved up to watch Midsomer Murders when it comes on!
This morning as we were dropping off the recycling we saw the first Kill Deer of the season. They are a real sign of spring. Robins may just overwinter somewhere else in the valley but the kill deer actually fly away and then return and it's a joy to see them in their jaunty little formal wear. It's amazing how well they blend with the side of the road when they have such a bright white and black collar.
The swans are also back.
As I drove down Devon Road the other day I saw a large white thing floating down to the flats, and my mind was going "Kite?", "Hang glider?", and then realized I was looking at a swan settling onto a big puddle with about 12 of his buddies. I drove down the little side road to get nearer but the binoculars would have really helped. This time of year they come in and rest at the channel on the south end of Kootenay Lake. A friend from Sirdar watched them flying over for more than 1/2 an hour. They don't stay long and then they are on their way north.
James and Bruce are nearly done the big remodel job for the Wynndel Mudders. After many, many hours of volunteer work I think they are glad to see the end nearing.
I'll try to get some more pictures. They took out walls and post and beamed the roof so it is basically one big room and an added on store room.
James decided he did not want to do the chicken-sitting this summer so we will have both pens to use as fenced, deer proof gardens.
I have just received a first draft of the Barraclough family history. My maternal grandmother was a Barraclough and my second cousin has been assembling this. It should be interesting.