Has it really been almost seven years since you passed ?  So many of our times together seem like they just happened.  I have been channeling you babe, makes me want be better, as if you were still here.  So my resolution for this year is to cook! Yes cook real dinners and shop and cook for myself as if I were cooking for others.  Let me say that it has been a good year food wise.  And the rewards have become apparent gradually.  One big reward, was channeling you,  Connie, when I cook dinner.  I wish only that you were coming over  to sample my latest hot salad or lamb tacos. I have almost tried to call you then stopped myself.  Scrapping the burnt pie juices off the oven floor, I thought of  how you were both organized and free in the kitchen.  How did you do that?  I don’t have any pictures of you cooking. How could I have not taken any?

Just wanted to let you know how I have been feeling….Other things make me stop and think.  I remember you never wasting a morsel and I have become like that too and my food bills, while eating better, have plummeted.  You knew how to cook just enough whether it was for the two of you or for seventeen guests.  So many things I admired about you.  Your amazing style and smile.  Your inner beauty and your outer beauty too.  Your advice.  I can still hear you telling me things, Janet, use your blinkers.  Janet, do not roll up your pants.  Janet, No socks with sandals.  I was a hopeless case and always felt lucky to have you as my friend.  Always showing me the way, another way, your way and they mostly became my way too.  I miss you.  These photographs are from the day we went up the Duwamish river with my brother and his friend in his skiff.  An example of your spontaneous nature.  I called you when they left the Kitsap to come over here and you said of course and off we went.  You were always so much fun.  You inspired me.  You were such a good painter.  The featured image is one of your pieces.  I don’t know if you knew how good you were as both a painter and a person and a cook.  Oh you were a gardener too. And more.  You were damn good.  That’s what I say.

 

 

Jess on Halloween

Jess on Halloween

I've been looking back on all my portfolios and blog posts and decided to go about things a bit differently lately.  It is thus that I give you Jess (my daughter) dressed up on Halloween. A bit of cool air for Halloween. just saying its breezy these days. We...

Willapa Bay iphone photographs

Willapa Bay iphone photographs

I learned in August that I had been offered a residency at the Willapa Bay AiR. I am very very happy about this. I'm going for a month beginning October 1st. At Willapa, they feed and house me and I just do my work. I recently bought an Ondu 120 pinhole camera (My...

Oh South Dakota

Oh South Dakota

I just returned from a momentous trip to South Dakota where I stayed in my Uncle Ray's house and rested and recuperated.  I am now ready to begin work on this site. The ranch where I went has been in our family for three generations; (that is almost 120 years).  It is...