Martha Kelly Art

It's been a tough week with various large griefs around here and among people I care about. I've been carving on my new block, the 18x24" one, while watching some escapist BBC mysteries, but it's big enough to be going very slowly, so there's nothing really to share yet. I'm grateful for that meditative work, and I'm grateful for sketching, where I can turn bits of daily life into color and pattern and be-here-nowness. I'm also grateful that this was the week when strawberry rhubarb pie showed up at the local grocery. Rhubarb doesn't grow in Memphis, and that's a treat I really look forward to coming out here. It hasn't been available, and then yesterday it was. Baked goods, stones with strong life lines, walks in great beauty, and tea have all been balms this week. So there they are for my journal this weekend. 

I slowed down on the sketching as the week went on. Our next stop was Keyhole State Park in Wyoming. There was a nice looking trail running a long way around a deep blue lake, though our campsite was off a smaller bay. It had lovely red rock on the far side and geese the next morning at sunrise, but it was super hot when we got there. I turned the air conditioning on in Alice for the first and only time on the trip, and Mr. Darcy and I put the bed down and took a nap. Then I did the sketch above looking out toward the water from our spot. On a cooler day it would be a neat park to explore further, and we did enjoy a short walk the next morning with a lovely breeze. It had cooled off enough to sleep with the windows open, which is nice because the A/C is pretty loud. Here are a couple of photos from the morning.

The next day we got to Lewis and Clark Caverns state park in Montana. The landscape reminded me of the reddish hills and scruffy bushes in Turkey near Bergama where I got to stay and paint a decade ago. Very few trees, and an open campground with just circles of rvs, but some really nice trails. Again it was hottest, but we had a nice short hike after we got in. It’s another park that would be good to explore further in slightly cooler weather. I had thought I might need a full day off driving one of these two days, but each morning I woke up ready to go again, so I pushed on. I found that an average of 450 miles was very doable. I mostly got in about 3pm, and I’d have time for a bit of a walk, a little sketching, and a lie down if I needed one. I was going to bed early with the light failing instead of using lights in the camper, and then waking up early and enjoying the beauty of the morning and breakfast and tea before taking off again. I could easily have spent long and lingered on this trip, but Mr. Darcy was ok with the camper but still not that relaxed, and I was looking forward to seeing Jude for the first time since early January, so we just kept moving. I’ll definitely do some state park visits to just settle and paint when I’m not trying to make it solo across the country though.

Rather unintentionally, here are my two new main pursuits across one spread of the Quarantine Journal. I've always enjoyed birds but have never watched them as intently and intentionally as I have this spring. Likewise I have always enjoyed tomatoes, and I've had an herb bed in the past, but I'm not much of a gardener. I put in a new herb bed (the old one had been totally overgrown after several years of way too much travel), added tomatoes (which I've tried without success before, but we'll see), and added a few blueberry bushes and a fig tree. Also things I've tried before and killed. Although in my defense, the fig tree was doing fine until a large masonry wall fell on top of it, which I don't count as a mark against my gardening skills.

I've gotten decoyed off the journal in recent days as I have dived headlong into the forest ABC book. I tend to do immersion in new projects while the energy is flowing and the images in my head are fresh. But tonight I have my first few tomatoes ready to pick, so I thought I would celebrate. The outdoor tomato plants are behind the curve, but this one pot is sitting in the window in my laundry room. I thought I'd try one that the squirrels couldn't get to. So far that's been a success.

I feel like most of us are having these most weeks. This week has been especially so for me. I had a lovely mother's day visit on the patio with my folks, from a safe distance. Then the baby Cardinals finally hatched. And then they died overnight in the nest, I think from cold. It affected me in an outsized way, although I imagine some of that is just the grief and stress of these times also showing up, and it's not bad to push a little of that out occasionally. Plus Mr. Darcy came over and gave me big sloppy kisses to make me feel better.

I found that I needed to physically turn the page on this page of my sketchbook, so I drew my dinner last night. I've never cooked beets before. Thanks to Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (which I think is going to be key for my CSA journey), it was super easy, and I've had a couple of truly lovely beet salads with goat cheese and slightly candied walnuts.

Then today was lovely again. I met Dad and Pat at his grandparent's house, my great grandparents, about half a mile from their daughter's (my grandmother's) house where I live now. I never knew my great grandparents, or the house, and it's recently been bought by a lovely woman who is lovingly restoring it and who wants to know the history of the house and of our family as she moves in. It's beyond special to have someone there who wants to know and carry forward those family stories. We've had such a great series of emails over the last week, and it means a tremendous amount. I sat afterwards and sketched the house to have more happiness in my journal from this time. My favorite thing, aside from getting to see the place, was finding out that the sunroom off the main bedroom was called "The Joint" because it was jointly owned by my dad (with his bed there for weekend visits) and his grandfather, who kept his desk in there.

I've never done a CSA before, and for years now I've traveled too much to even consider it. This year, however, I will be staying home, and I'm trying to shop as little as possible. Plus I'm tired of my same cooking, so it seemed like a good idea to branch out, support fantastic local farmers Whitton Farms, and learn to cook some new things. Boy howdy, it's a lot of food for one person though! I can see that I may be sharing some with my folks as we go along, but it's exciting and very beautiful to paint. This week I am going to learn to cook beets (which I usually just buy cooked and ready to go), and I think I'll try my hand at a beet/goat cheese salad. Or feta, depending on whether I can get some goat cheese easily. And I haven't had sweet potatoes in a while. It's good to bust me out of my routines.

I also did a nest sketch. The mama goes off occasionally for short periods, so I sat up on a ladder (inside my kitchen, not near the nest!) to peep down in. It's quite a deep nest, and I'm hoping another egg or two is hidden on the near side that I couldn't see. But it was fun to glimpse the one speckled one. I didn't even know what a cardinal egg looked like. I'm so excited about a baby or two.

It's a glorious day, I got through the Farmers Market early enough to feel safe being there, and I came home with the most beautiful eggs I've ever seen. I sat on the back porch and sketched them, had my lunch, and watched Papa Cardinal chase off a Blue Jay and a mockingbird. I had grand plans to get back to my seagull block this afternoon, but I may take a nap instead.

It was a really good day. I put a commission I was pleased with in the mail to its new owner, I turned in three coloring book pages (my first ever) to the Memphis Flyer to see if they want them for a Memphis coloring book. I love the Flyer, it's a great idea, and they'll split proceeds with the artists instead of just asking for free art. It was fun to do a few of my favorite places and also play with a new format.

In even better news, my mama cardinal was back sitting on her nest. She'd disappeared for a couple of days, and she'd seemed bothered by me right through the window when I used my kitchen sink. She hadn't been sitting yet, so I'd been a bit worried they had decided just to start over somewhere more private. She's been spending a lot of time in the nest today, though, and she stayed while I sketched her. I'm delighted.

I rewarded my morning of work on a gorgeous day by getting on my bike and going to Elmwood, always one of my favorite places to sketch. There are MANY fewer people than in Overton Park these days, so I feel much safer and not at all crowded there. I rode a couple of loops around it, stopped to sketch, looped through Central Gardens on my way home, and ended up with an 11.5 mile ride, which felt great. A late sunshine walk with Mr. Darcy and a happy domestic evening (with asparagus brought by a kind friend after she got my email update!), and I'm living well today.

I'm still doing commissions (and thank you, good people, who want to celebrate your special days with original art!) along with a little slow carving, so nothing except journal to show just now. It's fun to have something quick to do when other projects take longer.

The international Urban Sketchers group has had a challenge going lately to bake something and then sketch it. That got me craving cookies. My baked goods are usually utilitarian -- good but not so pretty. I decided it would be fun to draw the ingredients before starting though, so that's what I did. And I added in the super simple recipe. Since it's got oatmeal as the biggest ingredient, it's got to be almost healthy, right?

I also sketched the book I just finished and really enjoyed. I'm finding that good fiction is what I want just now. City of Girls was great, and I also loved The Other Bennet Sister. I rarely read the Austen fan fiction follow ups, but I heard the author talking on npr and was impressed with her. I also fell in love with a play about Mary that Tennessee Shakespeare did this past Christmas, so I was primed for another investigation of her. The first part ran parallel to Pride and Prejudice, which I didn't like as much, but I felt it got better after it took Mary on her own journey. It definitely took some liberties with several of the characters, and some of the themes felt very 2020 (the research into personal happiness), but the writing was good, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was quite sorry to see it end and will now have to come up with another book I look forward to reading as much as this one.

It feels a little silly in April, but I've gotten chilly on damp evenings a few times lately, and I'm ongoingly grateful for these gas logs that bring happiness and coziness to just such days. Mr. Darcy is quite happy about them too.

I've been working on commissions the last few days. It's lovely to have some short term structure to supplement the very long term museum show I'm working on. It's surprisingly happy to cross a finished project off the list. So I took a break from the journal while I worked on a couple of those, but last night it felt good to get back to it. I froze some individual slices of my birthday cake last month when I realized it would be me and a whole cake alone in the house. Last night I got a slice out for after dinner. I'm glad I spread out the enjoyment of it. And so are my jeans.

It's not that I don't ever cook. In fact, I eat at home most of the time and cook chicken for salads/toasted sandwiches, and I have a go-to spinach/black bean/feta recipe that I make a lot. But I've been trying more new things lately, getting tired of my old standbys with no break. The NYT has been running some comfort recipes. My pantry looks as if I don't really cook a lot, so I had to substitute rice for small pasta and swiss chard for kale (better to my mind anyway). I was skeptical as this was cooking, but it ended up really nice and especially good with an egg on the side. So I marked the moment in my journal.

For anyone who would like to try it, I'm writing out the recipe as I did it below.

Chickpea Stew

olive oil
1 med. yellow onion (or a handful of white onion chopped in my case)
2 tsp. fresh rosemary (this I DID have, right out my door in the new herb bed!)
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 1/2 c. tomatoes (either canned or diced -- I used small ones cut up)
4 c. swiss chard or other greenery
vegetable or chicken stock as needed
cooked rice to add (or pasta, or whatever -- jasmine rice was lovely)
grated cheese for topping (which I forgot, and with the egg didn't need it)

Brown the onion (plus garlic, if you want it), add tomatoes and chickpeas and cook till soft. I probably did 10 minutes. Add rosemary, red pepper flakes. Smash about half the chick peas to thicken the stew. Salt and pepper to taste. Add in rice and swiss chard and wilt down. I added a little vegetable stock at this point to keep it a little liquidish, and I simmered covered for another 5 minutes or so while I cooked the egg.