Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Whimsies


April WAS poetry month. I know it's May, but anyway. A little slack okay? In our town, during poetry month (which does run into May here in the west), local artists come together to exhibit their paintings accompanied by poems in our local library. I belong to the Art Council, so am called upon to participate. I don't "do" visual arts much anymore (too busy blogging?), so I had to dig deep for an original artwork and decided to exhibit these two abstracts I made in 1994 when I was taking an art course in Australia. The girls and I dubbed them my "Whimsies" as abstract art was not my usual. 

First I'll show you a photo of the painting, then the poem that's posted next to it in the library.



HAIKU
by Susie Talbot

Tentative flower
stems spring like coiled wires
vibrantly greet life

And TA DAH!



Celebrate
by Susie Talbot

Rainbow skies explode into
shimmering ribbons of color
harmonize and dance to golden melodies
gilding the broad city's face
her buildings, her streets, her people
expectant, celebrating, welcoming
His spectacular, long-awaited return

copyright, 2010




Thursday, May 13, 2010

The Truth is Who You Are...

This young man has something to say. I hope you'll take a minute to play this.



What did you think?

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Still and always my HERO...

Yesterday Jay and I were checking on our friends' house, because of a nasty wind storm that came through on Sunday. We found everything to be in pretty tip-top shape at their place, except for a dove nesting proudly on their lounge's head rest. Today I went back and snuck up on the nest and got this photo. It's blurry because I took it with my iPhone and at a distance, then zoomed in so you could see the bird.
When I tried to get closer, she flew out and started whimpering around the yard acting wounded. They do this to distract predators away from their nests and eventual chicks. We have a surplus of dove in our neighborhood and they make their nests in the weirdest locations. This is an AWWWWW shot and I'm praying Wes and Diane won't feel it necessary to disturb this family's home.

Is that amazing or what?  Anyway, back to the real story of the day about "my hero." While J and I were there, we couldn't help but notice the neighbor's Palo Verde tree. Sunday's wind ripped a substantial limb off the beaut mature tree at a winter visitor's house. That means these folks, B and Sue won't be back until November.
While I was feeling bad for the tree, J suggested he get his trusty saw and relieve it of it's broken appendage, so we went on home, picked up the saw, loaded into the pick-up and returned to the site.

This here's my hero. For him, this was a dangerous undertaking as the Palo Verde was buzzing with bees, and he is highly allergic to bee stings. You know, where they sting you and you immediately swell up, can't breathe, etc? We hummed a nice tune and spoke softly to them and thankfully escaped without an angry bee attack. Next he had to chop the limb into smaller pieces to haul and fit the branches into the truck bed. He's so CLEVER. I never would have thought of that! (maybe eventually?)

Almost finished, bear with us here. Loading the truck. I helped...yes I did.

See truck full of tree.

One last shot of what this tree suffered...a great wound. The beautiful thing about desert plants (the Palo Verde is native to this area), is that they are hardy!

Mother Nature pruned this wonderful tree, but it will continue to flourish in spite of its recent catastrophy. What does that make you think of?

Anyway, my point is, this is what our neighborhood is like. We're still in the busines of taking care of each other and helping where we can. It's nice. Last July a huge wind came through. J and I were on an extended trip, and a neighbor found our Palo Verde completely uprooted and restaked it back into place for us. Very nice!We enjoyed our little outing and maybe saved a tree? Does that make us GREEN?
One more photo...I just can't resist! Isn't this beautiful?
 
AWWWWWW...