Red Tulips in Blue Pitcher
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Jo Castillo
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Pretty tulips. I like your shadows and flow of the leaves, too.
Enyaw
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Thanks. Personally we were lucky but I do know others who were not. The roads all over got washed out in places. My neighbour omplained earlier there we needed rain. His side road was dirt and is next to impossible for smaller vehicles. It's not just here, it's world wide but we keep sending rockets up. 
Donna T
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This is so beautiful! The composition works so well with the tulips and leaves spilling out of the pitcher. It's hot and dry where I am too and everything outside in pots is cooking regardless of how often I water them. Now I know that when a label on a plant says "full sun" it means full sun in a normal climate where it rains occasionally and is not an oven 24/7. 
JStarr
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yup- I have a passionflower in a HUGE pot that vines up against one of the master bedroom windows- full sun, likes moist soil but not wet feet. I water *around* the root ball every other day- it is never dry soil, but by noon every day it looks like it is wilted just shy of death. The pot is too heavy for me to move, and putting it on our little creeper thingie to move it won't work because it's all gravel (save me from gravel- "Hey Kiddies! Why not go out and play in Grandma's gravel?!") and so there it sits, healthy and happy in the morning shade, wilted and desperate in the afternoon sun.This is so beautiful! The composition works so well with the tulips and leaves spilling out of the pitcher. It's hot and dry where I am too and everything outside in pots is cooking regardless of how often I water them. Now I know that when a label on a plant says "full sun" it means full sun in a normal climate where it rains occasionally and is not an oven 24/7.
Even my roses- well-established plants, watered a couple gallons each plant every other day- are stressed- my lovely smaller Kennedy rose bush is *very* unhappy. The big Kennedy rose is less stressed, but also isn't really growing. And since the first bloom in late Spring, all any of them are doing is surviving- not blooming anymore so far.
When we were visiting family in Pittsburgh, it was just nice- 70s or so. And I didn't have to slather lotion on me- just my hands, really, 'cause I wash them so much. But now back here in Az, I lotion twice a day and drink litres of water so I don't dry right up like a raisin.
JStarr
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So I was just out watering our little bit of grass- it gets crisp in spots if it doesn't get watered every day and sometimes twice, and as I was finishing up, I felt drops, and more drops and more and it RAINED--
--for about five minutes. Now it is kind of drizzling a bit, like the clouds are wringing out that last bit of moisture, and maybe, given I watered it twice today, and it rained like a really quick watering for three times, maybe I won't have to water tomorrow.
This is the time of year I wonder if the autumn and winter and fall here are worth it. They are- but it's easy to forget why when it's 104 and bright, searing sun.
Thanks for your kind words- the reference is an amalgamen of two set-ups I did- one with white tulips (I liked the angle and shadows of the pitcher) and one with the red tulips (*nice* flowers and leaves but the pitcher was blah). I pulled out my Artistic License, checked that it was still good, and melded the two refs into one.
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I feel you here! I lived in Georgia for a couple of decades, and am very familiar with that watching/waiting for rain - ANY rain!! Walking across a crunchy yard, dragging the hose or carrying a watering can to keep some wilting tomato plants going.
My last Halloween there, it was 100 degrees F. Everyone's pumpkins were rotting on their porches. I had a feeling the great North was calling me back.
And it did!Of course, come February up here in the frozen tundra, I'll think wistfully of my beautiful screened in porch, not the crunchy back yard.
JStarr
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If something happens to DH, I'm going north a ways. I can do frozen tundra on my own more easily than hell on Earth, I think.Of course, come February up here in the frozen tundra, I'll think wistfully of my beautiful screened in porch, not the crunchy back yard.
'Sides, I'll move in with one of the kids if I gotta....
Hausamann
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Awesome! Well done.
JStarr
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Thank you- I often bite off far more than I can possibly chew- such as when I, again, try a landscape. It never works. I've done precisely two I have not tossed out; one is a neon-bright fall tree in a plain-ish scene- it kinda works if you squint your eyes so it doesn't look so tortured; and the other is a close-up of some Colorado rocks and a bit of Douglas fir with a trickle of water coming down the rocks to flow off in a ditch-y spot. That one doesn't look so tiresomely worked because it really is a still life of just the one bit: Rocks shaded by a tree limb with a trickle of water. That's it.Wow! Gorgeous! You blow me away. You're hella-talented. So wonderful to have you here. This is just beautiful. Simply lovely.
I cannot help but treat every tree or bush like a portrait, every cloud like what it is- how it appears. Unfortunately, that way of working is not conducive to the soft vagaries of good landscape work. Works on still life and portraiture (haven't tried animals yet) but doesn't work on landscapes.
So, fine, portraits and still lifes it is!
Lily Was Here:
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Hausamann
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Awesome again!
JStarr
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Thanks- there's a whole series of that shoe and/or martini glass; with a fig leaf and apple, with tomatoes and chiles, with their own shadows and reflected light on a wooden floor- the two shapes work well together.
I'm trying to find a stronger place for set-ups here- the studio is too small and difficult to control the light, and the dining room would be great but has a VERY low-hanging light right over the table, plus the natural light is coming through a sun-reflecting coating that is waaaay warm inside. Price I paid for giving up my very private out-of-the-house 12' x 15' shed studio- it was hot or cold depending, and I'd stay so long at night I'd have to walk back to the house in the dark, which was trepidatious given the number of snakes around here once the temp comes up over 15-16C. At night, in the dark, a rattlesnake warning you off fills the world with the loudest buzz imaginable. But, it was quiet and private and big enough I could make set-ups where I controlled the light. Thing is, DH can go south in a hot minute- and we have a rule: If you hit the floor and cannot get yourself back up before I (or he in my case, but, yeah, that doesn't happen) finds you, it's 911. So I moved inside- safer for all of us.
In the house, of course, there's a refrigerator with food and drink, hot and cold running water, a bed with pillows, and a bathroom. I suppose the trade-off can be said to work.
I'll figure out a set-up spot sooner or later.
