Foto Friday

Back to the zoo pictures. I love photographing the great apes. First they are studies in black and shades of gray and this one has wonderful "Gym" patterns around. But I also love their expressions. I swear my father used to get this same expression on his face - half amusement and half puzzlement with a dash of satisfaction.

I can remember getting this look when I had gotten into some sort of trouble of a less than serious nature that would have been something he had gotten caught at when a child. It is the "what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you-look." Being my father's daughter I got it a lot. It always made my mother absolutely livid.

In this particular instance I think the look was for a child at the guard rail. And his mother was close to being livid.

Multi-blog Poetry Wednesday

The above image is of the Vietnam Memorial in Angel Fire, New Mexico. I usually post a picture I have taken of it on Memorial Day. Don't know where my head was this time. So better late than never. And I also decided to borrow another Tu Fu Poem and I am not particularly poetic of late.

Day's End

Oxen and sheep were brought back down
Long ago, and bramble gates closed. Over
Mountains and rivers, far from my old garden,
A windswept moon rises into clear night.

Springs trickle down dark cliffs, and autumn
Dew fills ridgeline grasses. My hair seems
Whiter in lamplight. The flame flickers
Good fortune over and over -- and for what?

Tu Fu

Hopefully other readers and participants have poems to share. Leave me a comment here or on my Y!360 page or on twitter.

Bekkieann at My So Called Life

Dangerous Meredith

Nicholas V

Frani joins us on Multiply

Djeseru

Bee on 360

And Bee on Blogger (two different poems)

The Plant Bench

The above is the completed plant bench under the front studio windows. I painted the wood to match the other painted furniture in the studio like the bentwood rocker in the foreground. The tile is the same as that on my floor. In fact I saved all the little bits and pieces I cut off. I have always been a bit "waste not/want not" about things but in this instance saving the tile pieces was a good thing.

Below is a detail of the shells, ceramic pieces from the wind chime and stones in part of the top. I used a cream colored grout because I wanted it to look like the sand on a beach and even took a brush when the grout was still wet and shaped the "sand" around the shells to look like the tide had just deposited them on the shore.


The three potted plants sitting on the bench in the first picture are sitting in areas of the top that are just tile.You can still see the detail pieces around the base of the pots.The really good news about this project is that it cost nothing out of pocket. I had found the sofa table in need of repair at the dumpsters. And I had all the other materials on hand.

I am really happy with the way this turned out.

The Plant

New Project

A sure sign that I am feeling better is I have begun a new project. Well, new in that I have finally gotten round to it. (Said as if one word - roundtoit)

I found this former sofa table at the dumpsters. It was missing two legs. I cut the two it had in half and created a bench 16" tall. I removed the trim around the top (one piece already missing) and added hardibacker as a basis for the tile. I had some of that. And I had the tile. These are bits and pieces I had to cut off when doing the tile floor in my studio.

For interest I added in seashells collected decades ago when I lived near the beach and little ceramic old men that came from a wind chime that fell victim to the winds. And for good measure a few interesting pocket rocks picked up along Utah trails. The picture above shows the lose bits and pieces as I was playing with the layout. Yesterday I got out my tile saw and cut some things to fit.


This is the finished layout with the tiles cleaned of their ceramic dust. Today I have to add the new edge around it. And then grout it. Even had the grout on hand. Will probably have to buy edging
though I have a 1x 4 by 8' I could rip to 2 1/2 wide.

This will not be a sitting bench but a plant bench to go under the front window of the studio to hold some of my many potted plants. The plants and I are looking forward to its completion.

A Poem for Wednesday - Ill

I have never been good at being sick so it is good that on the whole of my life I have been in good health. Course I went through the usual run of childhood diseases (before we had vaccinations for things like measles) but I usually had a lot lighter case of them than my brother. Except for the mumps. I really got the mumps.

I never wanted people to know I was sick, especially parents, which meant acting well and trudging off to school. I became the grade school version of Typhoid Mary. With the mumps it was immediately sent home to the cloying ministrations of my mother. As an adult I shut myself up into my cave. Which is what I did when I got the flu. And when I could I penned the following poem. I am on the mend let me hasten to add.

Ill

Oh, when I feel ill
I want my blankie
Snatched from me at six
I want to hide in old movies
And hug hot mugs of tea.

I seek to bury myself
Beneath blankets and comforters and purr kids
Close myself off from all contact
Like a grumpy hibernating bear
In the deepest part of the cave.

I am not the best of company
When my health is off
I am not even sure I like myself
When ill
I even avoid me.

Hiding beneath blankets
In books I am not a character in
Movies I have watched so much they are memorized
Until I become curious again
About the world outside my sick room.

Till then let me be
A bump under piles of blankets
Someone you thought you saw last week
If I die someone will let you know
The date of the more permanent internment.

(c) Jacqui Binford-Bell

Another multi-blog poetry Wednesday is our future. Do let me know if you are participating.

Diana

Bekkieann

Djeseru

NicholasV

Dangerous Meredith

On Both your Houses

Shooting At Street Lights

Friday's Fenomenal Foto

This view of Wheeler Peak and the Sangre de Cristo Mountain range is about three miles from my house, though if you saw the movie Lonesome Dove you think it is Montana. That is the movies for you.

Because I am still getting over the flu, though I think I am on the road to recover, I am not doing a lot of painting at the moment. However, yesterday I did feel good enough to bring the camera along on a pet sitting job. It is spring here in the high country and things are just beginning to really green up. We have not had much rain so the wildflowers are still in short supply. And the mountains, even in this southern exposure, still have some snow on them.

I get my inspiration for paintings from the land I live in and many of my photographs become the basis of compositions. It obviously inspires lots of artists. This view will be seen by those traveling the 3T's Art Trail beginning this summer. We have 17 art studios and galleries that will be participating this year with more applications coming in daily.