Cariño and I just had a very nice weekend…filled with the best of things – family visits, nice weather, good food, wine…and a healthy dose of eye candy and inspirational art talk!
As is often the case, what started as a small overnight away, turned into a multiple visit weekend mini-holiday…I didn’t do any of the driving, so it was all much easier on me!
Through an act of kind generosity, my sister-in-law-to-be decided to give Cariño and me her car…this couldn’t have come at a better time…our van, which we had hoped would make it through to the end of Cariño’s university degree was fast failing and the prospect of having to buy another vehicle at this time was daunting, to say the least!
It’s funny how a few seemingly unrelated things can come together and form into an elaborate, but do-able event…
It just so happened that my art show at the Stepping Stones Gallery ended last week (Cariño, my younger daughter and I had taken it down on the Wednesday afternoon) and I needed to deliver the painting that my Mom had bought...she lives in Mount Hope…it also just so happens that my brother’s fiancé lives in Ancaster...very close to my Mom…it further just so happened that my brother was going down this weekend to a pre-wedding party at his fiancé’s parents…add to this the fact that Cariño and I had already planned to go to Napanee to visit my Dad and his cariño…
So all of these various things kind of melded together into a master plan…Oma said she would watch the dogs for us…so Cariño and I drove them out to the Oma’s Happy Hermitage on Thursday afternoon…we stopped on the way home so I could take some shots of this beautiful little creek that winds its way through the woods…
Early Friday morning found my brother, Cariño and I heading out of Ottawa in my brother’s truck…we made it (a 6 hour drive) to the garage in Mount Hope, where the car had been taken for its safety and emissions tests, in time to pick up that paperwork, go to the licensing office and do that paperwork, then back to the garage, slap on the plates, fly by the wine store, and be sitting at my Mom and her cariño’s place for a glass of wine by about 5pm!
This is the painting that Mom bought at my show opening…it is the latest in my Flow series…
Mom and her cariño took us for a delicious dinner at a little place called
Lemon Grass Restaurant…then a good sleep, leisurely morning, nice visit and we headed off on the next part of the trip…
Just before Dad’s there is an old abandoned barn…it makes me sad to see these beautiful old wooden farm buildings being left to fall to pieces…they are so magnificent…but they also take a lot of maintenance…we had one of these wood barns on the farm that I grew up on…Dad tells me that it was endless upkeep…that he could go out at night and hear pieces of the barn falling off…still…it seems such a shame that so many of these old beauties are being left to fall to the ground to be swallowed up by the brambles…
I have tried a few times to photograph this particular group of farm buildings…I’m not sure if it is lighting, or the fact that I am a bit hesitant to go wandering in and around them too much…I have never seen anyone that I could ask permission from…the old farmhouse is abandoned too…but I have yet to get a picture that I really love of this place…here are my efforts from this past Saturday…
We got to Napanee in perfect time, once again, for pre-dinner drinks…yummy dinner and then later we watched the movie
“Hachiko: A Dog’s Story”...it was very touching and had me crying…it was based on the story of a dog in Japan –
Hachikō – who waited for nine years for his master (who had died while at work) to return to the train station where the dog had met him after work each day…of course I am a sucker for a good animal yarn…plus the facial expressions of an
Akita are amazing…
After brunch Cariño and I began the trip home…on the way, we stopped in to visit one of my Dad’s cariño’s daughters (my step-sister) in Kingston…
Su Sheedy is an encaustics artist…my elder daughter and I took a weekend encaustics workshop a few years ago…it was so much fun…so for a while now, I had been wanting to get together with Su to talk art with her and to see her studio…it was a wonderfully inspiring visit…
Here are some shots from around her studio…what a fun place...full of neat things...
After picking up the dogs from Oma’s outside of Wakefield, it was late by the time we got home…I woke this morning to the welcome feelings of happiness and being inspired…it was a very nice weekend and I want to get back to painting!
Out running around today it seems that Ottawa is starting to burst into colour with blooming tulips…they have started to open over the weekend…masses of vibrant colours…I think they will be in their full glory before the beginning of the
Tulip Festival…I’m going to have to spend some time this week out photographing them…this is what I got on the way home from errands today…
