It was only about 3.30 when the dog and I went out to jog today but it felt like it was about to get dark, which it actually was. Sundown was 5pm. Perhaps the colors have peaked here, at least the yellows and oranges, though I know that after that there are a lot of Bradford Pears and others that give lots of brilliant reds. Yesterday when I got up and looked out it was snowing leaves. Today my grass turned mauve with oak leaves. Mauve is the color on the underside of the leaves. Not my favorite color. You look down and think, that's a lot of leaves. But if you look up -- 80% are still up there. I found my rake from last year and it has about 5 tines left on it. I hope that I get a strong wind from the West once all the leaves are on the ground. One year that happened and blew all the leaves out of my yard and down the street. I figured they may have ended up in the Atlantic. Saved me a lot of raking. I love raking though, I shouldn't worry. And I have 2 able bodied helpers with me.
The sky was thin blue and the colors were not as brilliant as yesterday. Some trees simply make me gasp. I felt energetic and we ran the route around the lake. My camera was in my trunk. Last week when I ran with my camera while stopping to take photos at the same time, I lost my lens cap.
The dog is comic relief. When we finish running, I make her go down the slide with me. She does NOT like this. So I'm trying to build her confidence with the easy ones and give her treats afterwards. Once we go down, if I try to lead her anywhere near the steps to go up again, no way, Mommy, I am not doing that again!
Should I get my camera and walk the lake a 2nd time and use up my film? Instead I decided to go home. I drove through my neighborhood and finished the roll on every bright tree and bush I saw, plus the street that is like a tunnel made of overhanging trees. They are not in color, but it looks great all year long because of the trees. I hoped people were not uneasy with me taking pictures of their houses.
The other night, there was a very dark blue sky with a spotlight from a baseball field illuminating a yellow tree. Now the mind knows that it is yellow, but I studied it and thought about how to paint it. Lots of red to darken the sky and tree. The value of the tree on the shadow's side was the same as the sky. And though I knew that the leaves were yellow, I would try brown madder or yellow ochre for the lighted side of the tree. I carried this mental observation with me and three days later I opened my paints and tried to capture the colors I had seen. I used a red background and painted over it with the blue, green and tan and .... it worked! Those are the colors. I was amazed.
I cannot count how many times I have walked at dusk or at night with the dog in the past few years and thought "It is impossible to paint that. Those colors don't exist in paints. But that was before I had a good teacher. Exciting.
Olivia's flower arrangement for church was fall foliage. What she does with flowers is a combination of painting and sculpture. She is so good at it. I remember when she did the flowers for my husband's memorial service. I just stared at the pink roses thinking: those can't be real, they have to be fake.
I am so happy to be connecting with the artist in me again.
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