Late Fall Color

Back yard in early morning light.

This fall had been so warm the leaves didn't start turning until late October, and didn't reach their peak until the first week in November. The leaves were not as colorful as in other years, perhaps because we had such a rainy September... Then as they were showing their best, a gale stripped most of them in one afternoon.

Back yard mid-morning

Front yard on Halloween

Side yard with Autumn Blaze maple.

The purple aster flowers (Symphiotrichum oblongifolium) have lasted a long time--the two small offshoots I split from the original clump and planted in the back beds also bloomed, though they probably won't reach the size of the first clump for another year or so. I divided the Thalia daffodils in the front yard and re-planted a bunch, the leftovers went in one of the back beds along with more daffodils. The other daffodils in the front beds probably could have used the same treatment, but I didn't have the energy to dig them all--they will have to wait another year.

Purple Asters (Symphiotrichum oblongifolium)

Taking advantage of the end of the season sales, I acquired a new Peony, 'Bartzella' (a lovely hybrid of a herbaceous and a tree Peony with yellow flowers), and a few more shrubs and bulbs. Most of these are already in the ground, but a few late purchases won't be shipped until next week. With the increasingly shorter and colder days, not to mention the frequent rains, it's getting harder to find decent weather for my garden chores now--the windows of opportunity present themselves less often.

West side garden

Just as I was finishing this post, our first snow arrived on Nov. 15, setting a record not seen in the past 22 years. The accumulation ended up being about 3-4", enough to lend a nice touch to our view, and as chance would have it, my plant order arrived exactly on that day! The weather has made it impossible to plant anything until the snow melts, which will take a few more days. I expect there may be at least one day next week when I can finally get those late arrivals in the ground.

Mid-November snow

Soon the ground will freeze hard and it will be time to put the garden to sleep for the winter. My gardening will then be confined to poring over colorful plant catalogs and dreaming... It's the season to spend my days in the studio working on paintings, remembering the glories of the past season, and looking forward to another spring.

Extreme Painting in the First Snow

First Snow, oils on canvas board, 11" x 14," at Gallery 1683 in December.

I'd signed up to go painting on Friday with Lee Boynton and a few students. We were to meet at Jerusalem Mill, a historic village from colonial times that is part of Gunpowder Falls State Park a bit north of Baltimore. In addition to the restored buildings and the mill there is a very pretty covered bridge that Lee had painted a few weeks earlier and had really appealed to me.

The weather wasn't very promising: the temperature hovered just above freezing and they were predicting snow flurries, but we agreed to meet as planned. The sun was shining when I left the house but by the time I arrived at our site the sky was getting that leaden look. The others were already setting up their easels by the old general store. I was glad I'd brought an extra polartec jacket to wear underneath my lighter nylon shell, but regretted that all I'd brought was my baseball cap.

Fortunately, one of the other ladies had an extra winter hat she loaned me--I wouldn't have lasted long without it. I had just set up my gear, loaded my palette, and was ready to roll, when here came the flurries: thick, wet flakes. The background trees became faint shadows, whited out by the snow. The snow began to stick, even to our palettes, the ice crystals mixing with the oil paint made one lumpy mess. Lee said to use more medium to keep the paint fluid, but after a while it was useless. This was really more like an ordeal: extreme painting!

Two of the ladies retreated to the porch of the store, and eventually we all ended up there (by that time my gloved hands were frozen stiff). We decided it would be a good idea to take our lunch break inside the store. Even unheated, the inside was much warmer by comparison. The flurries had stopped, and a feeble sun emerged from behind the clouds. After lunch we walked a short distance over to the covered bridge to scout our the location. Two of the ladies didn't want to chance the slippery footing at the banks of the stream; they opted to stay in the village for their afternoon painting, while the rest thought the stream, rather than the bridge, was the better view.

There was a road crew cutting down tree branches along that stretch, taking up more than half of the two-lane road, so rather than driving, we decided to walk. Along the way, my new hand-made palette somehow slipped out of its case and fell on the ground face down--isn't that the way buttered toast always lands? That did it--cleaning the palette would take time, if I didn't drive I might not make it there at all. I walked back to the car, put my stuff in, and drove over to the bridge.

The others were painting away by the time I was set up, and as I was laying in the sky, Lee exclaims, "Look, here comes the snow again!" Again our background disappeared in a fog, but the scene was beautiful with its muted colors. Again we struggled with the snow crystals sticking to our palettes, making it all but impossible to see the colors we were mixing. I managed to record the scene with incredible speed while the others, working at a smaller size, did a second painting. We packed up and went back to the porch of the now-closed store to end our day with a critique. I was surprised at how well this second painting turned out.

Lee showed us some gorgeous winter scenes painted by Emile Gruppe, a New England artist working in the first half of the twentieth century, and we talked about his paintings. He must have been one hearty artist to have endured the outdoors painting Vermont winters! As we were able to observe first-hand, at low temperatures oil paint becomes very viscous and hard to work with.

It took hours and lots of hot tea to thaw out once I got back home. If I'm going to do this again, I'll need to invest in warmer clothing. Despite the cold, I enjoyed our extreme painting experience.