California Dreamin'

Some places just seem to recharge my creativity, especially in northern California (San Francisco and northward), especially Sonoma.  We try to go there every year, first to visit our dear friend Diane in Sonoma for a few days and then on up the coast to Mendocino to see the California grandkids, and their parents, of course.  My home and heart are in the desert, but we all need a change sometimes. Sonoma is so filled with the sweet green breathing of plants that it immediately refreshes my soul. I’m not just talking about vineyards, but of course the vineyards are beautiful.  This is the view from the end of Diane’s street.

For years Diane has collected salt and pepper shakers, but selectively, only couples, and it’s been fun to search antique and thrift shops, estate and yard sales, for new members to add to the little community.  They all seem to have individual expressions and personalities; I’m quite taken by the little Dutch couple in the middle, while the one on the far left seems like she’d be a bit of a gossip and busybody.  I’ve been thinking of some kind of creative project that would involve all these little people.

The first full day we were in Sonoma we went to Quarryhill, a remarkable botanical garden with a focus on Asian plant species, many of which are rare or even endangered in their homelands.  Paths lead visitors up and down gentle slopes, around ponds filled with waterlilies and ducks, and into hidden nooks where it seems quite possible fairies might come out to dance after the humans have gone for the day.

We also went to an art show on the plaza in the middle of town, put on by a group of plein-air painters who’d produced their paintings just the week before.  The artists were all very accomplished and the paintings quite lovely (and expensive), but similar in many ways, from size to subject matter to the palette of colors almost all of them seemed to use.  Perhaps that’s why I was so taken by this artist’s work, with its sharp lines and clear, bright colors.

Back at Diane’s subdivision, we went for a walk and visited Temelec Hall, built in 1858 by one of the members of California’s Bear Flag party.  This grand building is within the boundaries of the subdivision and residents can use it for gatherings.

    And this is one of four identical little cottages at the corners of the garden at Temelec Hall. I suppose they’re toolsheds or pumphouses or something similarly practical, but doesn’t this one look like it belongs in a fairy tale?  Perhaps if it was smaller, some of the salt-and-pepper people could live in it.
     The weather was unseasonably cool while we were there, but our visits to our friend and to Sonoma always warm my heart.  With temperatures here in Tucson predicted to reach 106 by Sunday, I wish I could have brought back some of that cool weather!

Bisbee, Part Deux

As I said in my last post, the Shady Dell where we stayed during our mini-vacation in Bisbee is right next to the cemetery, and I'm one of those people who's always been fascinated by graveyards. Maybe that started with my grandparents, who always went to the Memorial Day observances at the cemetery outside Emmett, Idaho, a beautiful, green, well cared for place above the river, where several family members are buried, including, now, those grandparents.  The cemetery at Bisbee bears little resemblance to the Emmett one.  First, the harshness of the southern Arizona climate makes velvet green lawns impossible.  And as a sign on the informational kiosk makes clear, it is not a perpetual care cemetery.  Families are responsible for the upkeep of their relatives' graves, and many of the deceased have no families left in the area. Still, some parts of it, and some views, have their own austere beauty.

And many markers, like this one, offer fragmentary glimpses into their occupants' stories.  I wonder who, exactly, left the flowers on this otherwise untended grave? Probably not the sister or brother who had it erected.
     Back in town, the art scene is much more lively and spills out of the galleries and into the residential neighborhoods.  Bisbee has its own special funk and flash, and I like it a lot.  Joe and I walked the hillls of this largely vertical town, climbing up and down steep inclines and narrow streets.  In many places, instead of a sidewalk, one finds flights of stairs a block or more long.  In fact, October is the month for the Bisbee 1000, a fund-raiser in which participants commit to climbing 1000 of Bisbee's stairs.  I've decided I'd like to participate this year and now, having made this public declaration of my intent, I guess I'm committed!
      Most of the galleries and antique and other shops are on Main Street, which has a fairly gentle slope. One block over is Subway Street (I saw no signs of a subway, or even a Subway sandwich shop), which is quite short, but a walker who continues past the "Dead End" sign finds a network of interesting streets.  These angels, who look to me more like Lucifer's fallen companions than the ones who stayed in heaven, guard someone's gate at the end of Subway.

Even though, for pedestrians, this is not a dead end, the sign seems to go with those slightly menacing angels.  The path continued uphill to the left, and we followed it.  The steps in this next picture just lead to the house above them, but others like them are blocks long, linking streets that are (barely) accessible to cars.
     Higher up we found this collection of interesting things alongside a parking place outside a small yard.  A neighbor told us that the place belongs to a couple of antique dealers. The picture doesn't  show half of what's there.

Most of the yards in Bisbee are small, but many residents have made creative use of the space they have.  I especially liked this garden, with its terraces and fountains that make such creative use of vertical space.
     Eventually, of course, it was time to leave this town that seems caught in a time warp that somehow combines the rough and tumble wild west mining town of the late 19th century with an artistic sensibility firmly grounded in the 1960s.  Pick your decade, and you're likely to find vestiges of it surviving in Bisbee, as shown in these last two photographs, taken on the only street that survives of the once busy neighborhood called Lowell, that was eaten up by further expansion of the huge pit mine.

 University of Arizona creative writing professor Richard Shelton, who taught at the high school there (I think) earlier in his career, wrote a book called Going Back to Bisbee, which I haven't read yet, but plan to.  And I highly recommend J. A. Jance's mystery novels set in Bisbee, with Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady as her detective.  I know I'll be going back, and not just for the Bisbee 1000!

Art and Nature

Today we visited just a few of the artists on the Tucson-Pima Arts Council's free open studio tour, which continues tomorrow from 11-5 (go to www.tucsonpimaartscouncil.org for more information, list of artists, and maps of where the studios are).  It was wonderful to see the spaces where other artists work, to visit with them, and to be inspired by their art to spend more time on my own.  But I didn't take my camera, so I'll post a picture of some of Nature's art instead:

These are the last of the caladium leaves for this year (that's one of Joe's paintings behind them). I'd wanted to try this amazingly gorgeous plant for a long time and found them at a local nursery early in the summer.  This one thrived in a gorgeous Talavera pot in the shaded entryway outside our front door, but now it's finally cooled off, so I'll do what the books say and take out the tubers and store them for next spring.  No matter how difficult the day might have been, coming home to find these amazing leaves on their  2-3 foot tall stems waiting outside the front door made me smile.  Maybe next spring I'll try more in different colors.

     In the meantime, it's back to the easel.

 

Wildlife Encounters

The weather's back down in the 80s, closer to where it belongs (though still unseasonably warm), and it's a gorgeous day - bright blue sky and a few wispy clouds just for textural interest.  On our walk Sunday morning Joe and I saw something unusual, at least in our limited experience.  At first I thought it was a smaller bird chasing a hawk away from its nest or young, something we've often seen.  But on a closer look, it wasn't that at all, but rather a red-tailed hawk and a significantly smaller Cooper's hawk, apparently just hanging out together, riding the air currents in that glorious sky.  We stopped and watched for about 5 minutes, until they drifted up and westward out of sight.

A few days earlier, in that magical lavender pre-dawn light that lasts only a short time each morning, we came upon a bobcat watching a rabbit that had just crossed the road (why does a rabbit cross the road? I have no idea).  Again, we paused to see what would happen.  The bobcat was utterly still yet we could sense its focused attention on the rabbit, its muscles like tightly coiled springs, and then it leapt, almost crossing the road in one bound and flushing the rabbit from a thick clump of red-blossoming oleander.  The bobcat was right behind it, less than a foot away, when the rabbit wheeled into a tight right turn and was off down the road (the rabbit stopped half a block or so away and looked back before ducking into the brush).  Apparently bobcats, perhaps because they're bigger, can't turn as tightly as rabbits.  In any event, this one knew when it had lost its prey - predators, after all, miss more often than they hit.  I didn't necessarily want to see a bloody spectacle enacted just 20 feet in front of me, but I do hope the bobcat eventually found some breakfast.