Photos from Maine


Pake snaps beans on the back porch. He's got two vintage Texasware bowls there, I'd forgotten that my mom has them. They're bigger than mine and have funkier colors, still I like the ones I have the best. Funny how that goes. I made your potato salad this weekend Mom, the one Uncle Arthur always liked so much. The one you always made in the big yellow bowl, with the plastic lid. I made mine in my bigger Texasware bowl, and after it had set up for a while in the fridge I transferred it to the big yellow bowl I'd bought a while ago at the AH. Somehow that bowl makes it taste better :-)


This is a painting I did almost twenty years ago. It seems like a lifetime ago. (I'd forgotten that my mom had this, too.) I like the way you have it in the window, with the little perfume bottle next to it. When I look at this picture I can smell the breeze coming through the window, fresh sea breeze, scented with pine and blueberries. But I can also smell the painting, all those years ago, the layers and layers of oil paint. How the corner of the painting studio that was mine smelled, musty, dusty. All that sanding of gesso before I actually got to paint. It's a small painting, done on a hardwood plank -- walnut? Cherry? It took a long time to paint, despite its size. It amazes me to think of those days. The whole day in which to paint, no interruptions but the ones you make yourself. When I think about trying to paint like that now, in my life right now, my head explodes. There are days, many days, when I don't even get to go to the bathroom alone, without running commentary and/or interruption. And I look back on my twenty-something self and think, girl you didn't know what you had. Or what you would miss, twenty years on.


This is the screen porch, if you look through the right window you can just see a bit of my dad's silver hair as he's snapping those beans. I think I'd spend a lot of time out here, if I ever get to visit. I like me a porch with screens.


Mom's flower garden this year. Oh, poppies. And the grass is looking good, Dad! (The grass is always greener on the other side of the ocean...)


This is overlooking the bay. I love those big rocks. If I were, say, six-years-old -- those would be my horses and I would be a cowgirl, rounding them up.