Autumn Leaves

Since we still do not have much Autumn color in our part of Maryland I've compiled my favorite photos of past years's foliage from our yard and Autumn vacations.   Be sure to enlarge to full screen (by clicking the square in the lower right corner).  Sit back and enjoy the music I've chosen for you and together we'll make our own Autumn Leaves. . . .

                 

❤️Take Joy❤️

Music in the Garden

♫Pachelbel in the Garden♫

Last evening we attended Surreybrooke's Music in the Garden event.  Throughout their extensive gardens were musicians playing hammered dulcimers, fiddles, flutes, banjos, guitars, recorders, harps, and mandolins.  Most of the attendees brought picnic suppers and bottles of wine, setting up their own cloth-covered tables with chairs amongst the bushes and under the trees.  I did not record any music but I've put links where I could find them to several musicians on YouTube for you to listen to after you've finished listening to the music I've selected to accompany this post (at the top of the page).  What follows are a few of the photos (to enlarge click on them) of the garden and musicians. . . .

An elfin child resting in the Children's Garden

Bells Across the Snow

   

“The little cares that fretted me,

I lost them yesterday,

… Out in the fields with God.”

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

                 

Eats Shops and Buildings

Proper punctuation makes all the difference.  I did not eat shops and buildings!  This post is about eating and shopping and the beautiful buildings in Mexico.  And when you're in a foreign country the way you pronounce a word can make all the difference, too.  For instance, Bebe means "it drinks" and bebé means "baby."  Fortunately, Ken knew enough Spanish to get us around and our son and daughter-in-law speak it fluently and were with us on several occasions.  Other times a stranger would help us translate.

Getting around Merida was easy and inexpensive with the readily available cabs.  Understanding how to shop and what to eat was another matter.  I've shown you where we slept in Merida.  Now I'll show you where we ate and shopped, as well as the architecture we passed on the street as we walked to the shops and restaurants.  I've already mentioned we shopped at a Mexico-made guaybera shirt shop the first night we arrived.  We were soon to learn that overly-helpful people were receiving commissions to steer customers to certain shops where the prices were often higher.  My first advice on shopping is look around before you buy so you can compare.  You will see many of the same items in most of the shops or in the street markets like the market set up in the Grand Plaza every Sunday.  You may also want to have a calculator on hand to help you compare the pesos price to dollars.  I was constantly trying to divide the price by 18 (the exchange rate) in my head.   These slippers were  $180 pesos--$10 USD, an easy calculation. . . .

To Be An Artist

♫Prologue - The Book of Secrets♫

"You will have to see like a true artist--with your heart." 

This statement was said in the movie A Dog of Flanders to the little boy, Nello, who wanted to become a great artist like Peter Paul Rubens.  

When I was nine I took art lessons from an eccentric old lady who lived down the street from the house we'd just moved into in Greenwood, Mississippi.  She must have had a dozen cats.  Her house was dark and smelled of oil paint and cat litter box.  The yard unkempt.  If you can imagine the type of house in movies that kids ran past this was it.  I have no recollection now if I requested these lessons or whether my mother had met the woman that summer and thought it would be something for me to do.  The only thing I remember painting was a portrait of a man's head and face.  I can still remember his beady little eyes, misshapen mouth and nose, and no ears to speak of.  I was embarrassed to show it and came away discouraged.  I see this experience as the beginning of my desire to be an artist.

I again attempted drawing lessons as an adult on several occasions.  The only success I had was when the assignment was to copy the teacher's drawing.  That I could do.  But when I had to draw from real life, I just could not get the shapes and lines right.  

My only success was in 1997 when I got the idea to write children's stories about my cat, Poetry, and her best friends, Gabriel the Snowman and Sandy the Dog.  I was so into writing these stories that the characters "appeared" in my mind's eye and I just had to get them down on paper.  This was the result...

          

They are not life-like (remember, I can't draw real-life objects), but they represent the characters in my head--or more accurately, in my heart.  When I sent them to a publisher along with my stories, I received a very nice rejection letter for the stories but they added they'd like to see more of my art work.  Unfortunately, that was the extent of what I'd done and would do.

Susan Branch is one such artist who sees with her heart as she paints from her watercolor palette....

Click here to read her story.  Her fans have gotten to know her through her website and blog and we can all attest to her generous ♥.   Her art is merely an extension of her.

Loreena McKennitt is another artist, in the field of music, who expresses her heart in her art.  You are listening to her music right now.  

These two women whom I admire attest to the truth that if you are to do great art you must see with your heart for that is where your truth lies.  It is only from your heart that you can share who you really are--and that will always be beautiful if your heart is full of love for life.