#351 • Another City Garden Poster

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Every year for the past several, I've done a painting for the local garden club - Friends of the Eastern Prom. It's for their annual hidden garden tour. This is a particularly difficult assignment for me to do because I know nothing about flowers. I'm a wiz with vegetables, but flowers are a totally incomprehensible language. The flowers I buy, and are given, are complete mysteries to me. It's a lesson in something, not quite sure what.

Another City Garden Tour Poster • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

#350 • Frenchboro

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It was over a decade ago on one of those days you could sell a clam shack on a no-beach-rock-bound-wind-battered-all-day-shade-side of an island with no ferry access in a heartbeat to someone from away. Frenchboro was holding it's annual lobster festival and we just happened to be there on one of those spectacular summer days.

Set up on a hillside in the churchyard near the head of harbor, local fisherman's wives were, and had for over fifty years, been preparing for their annual fundraising lobster feed - a bunch of picnic tables with plastic table covers and the atmosphere only a hillside on a harbor on a remote island can offer. Although lobster was the star, the homemade pies made you nod yes please, though your bloated stomach sloshed no way.  I had chosen a pecan pie, and unbeknownst to me, this artist had thrown a handful of chocolate bits into the mix.Yeowza!

The Frenchboro Congregational Church always hosts this event on the second Saturday in August, rain or shine. It benefits the church and outreach programs in the island community including the Historical Society, library and Solid Waste Committee. It's gone mainstream now with live music, a road race, children’s games and other activities.

We stopped by last summer, missed the dinner, but made a donation to the cause. It's a good honest one.

Frenchboro • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

#349 • What Appears To Be Peace and Tranquility • Isle au Haut

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We were anchored off Isle au Haut one beautiful summer afternoon - remember those? After a good long leg-stretcher on the island, we headed back down to the town float where the dinghy was tied, and came across these young folks fully entranced with something down under. All eyes were glued to one spot. Even big sister got in there for a look. The scene reminded me of my three brothers and I, but was the polar opposite of what our water excursions were like.

I was content to sit on the beach in my chair looking cool, the only big worry being not to let my tan go a shade lighter. My brothers, however and of course, tried to get into as much trouble as they could, but not on purpose. Trouble just seemed to be attracted to them - a magnetic pull they were born with.

Inevitably something would happen - a busted toe, the discovery of a dead horseshoe crab, the terror of a shark (dog fish) slithering around their legs, or a full on no-mercy mud slinging fight at low tide. Compared to those days, these kids looked pretty tame, sweet even.

I wanted to peek over their shoulders, but decided to leave them to their discovery and take this pic of what appeared to be a period of peace and tranquility. Sometimes it's more fun not to know what's really going on behind the scenes. It might be perfectly normal, or were they scheming to snag whatever it was to  hide it in their mother's apron pocket when she wasn't looking, or better still, under their other younger brother's pillow that night?

I'm sure adults were looking at my brothers and I the same way. God, they'd whisper, were they raised in a barn?

What Appears To Be Peace and Tranquility • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

#348 • What Gets Left Behind

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When it finally warmed up for a bit and the clouds allowed the sun some air time, the snow melted as fast as a Popsicle* in mid-August. This year the Easter egg hunt around here was for lost gloves, rakes, chairs, anything green and some sanity. There are probably plenty of treasures up on the mountain too where chairlift lines are veritable graveyards of poles, gloves, hats, goggles and cell phones to name just a few. It's winter's great lost and found, full of surprises.

Unfortunately, the roads and lift lines are also littered with our trash - discarded beer cans and bottles, cigarette butts, coffee cups and nip bottles. Get a grip people.

*The name was trademarked registered by Frank Epperson of Oakland, Calif., presumably from (lolly)pop + (ic)icle. ... Seeing that it was a success, in 1924 Epperson applied for a patent for his “frozen confectionery” which he called “the Epsicle ice pop.” He renamed it Popsicle, allegedly at the insistence of his children.

#347 • Antidote To Spring Whiplash Syndrome

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It's pretty easy to pick up a case of whiplash throwing your head back to look up at the sky for signs of the sun, then flipping it forward to the ground searching for any hint of spring. If you slow the rotation down by stopping midpoint to look straight ahead, spring emerges. It's in the color. The color is subtle, but if you gaze long enough, you'll see it out there.

Toss into that gaze some memory, a smidge of wishful thinking, and a dose of desperation, and it becomes a veritable vernal springtime color show experience not unlike those spectacular Philmore East Light Shows of my youth.

Antidote To Spring Whiplash Syndrome 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

#346 • Is Spring Stuck in a Pajama Bottom Somewhere?

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I was in bed reading one night when suddenly the avocado and kiwi I had thrown into my clothing satchel the week before popped in to my head. Luckily they weren’t in as bad shape as the banana I found last month, and fortunately their skins were tough enough to hold innards under extreme pressure.

While I was rummaging for the avocado and kiwi, I discovered two bars of dark chocolate I had purchased during a two-for-one sale a while ago. I don't remember tossing them in the satchel. I do remember thinking I had bought two bars of chocolate, looked for them, but never found them. I figured I had left them in the shopping cart or worse, never bought them and just thought I did. As it turns out, they had settled on the bottom of the satchel - sunken under a sea of clothing. How does that happen?

Which reminds me, I found a missing dryer ball all the way down in the ankle of my pajamas. How does that happen? And while we're at it, how is it that spring gets lost? Is it too stuck in the bottom of some satchel or pajama bottom somewhere?

Is Spring Stuck in a Pajama Bottom Somewhere? • 16.5” x 10.5” acrylic unframed • $350

#345 • The Invisible Lady at the Miss Portland Diner

THE INVISIBLE LADY AT THE MISS PORTLAND DINER

I was meeting a friend at the Portland Diner the other day and was late.

I didn’t see her in the new addition, so stepped up to the original diner and glanced around to see if she was there yet. A waitress swooped down the aisle from the opposite direction. I told her I was looking for a friend.

She said, oh yes, she's right here and pointed to the booth to my right.

An old guy sitting on a stool hunched over a big piece of pie at the deserted counter across the aisle looked over his left shoulder at the booth at about the same time I did.

“Well, if she’s sitting there, she’s invisible,” he rasped turning back to his pie.

He was right - all I saw was a cup of steaming coffee.

The waitress quickly added that my friend was currently in the ladies room. She never cracked a smile and asked if I wanted some coffee.

I replied no thank you and fell into the booth trying to contain hysterical laughter in my cupped hands, afraid someone might think I was a head case.