The basil is hanging on to life. Despite the seemingly sunny window, this spot is really pretty cold. My friend Coco sent me links to his gardening blogs. He lives in Italy and unfortunately I cannot use any of his useful gardening information in Idaho. I wondered if I still needed to water outdoor plants here during Winter and I have two plants in pots, so I tried to water them. The soil in the pots was too frozen to absorb any water, so the water I poured in just sat there on the top of the soil surface for hours until it just froze over into a sheet of ice. I'm thinking that means you do not bother to water plants in freezing temperatures in Winter.
I like my 2011 horoscope:
Aries Year Ahead 2011
Aries: (Mar. 20-Apr.19): this year you become the hippie of our generation, the earth mother, the father who gives up corporate America to find himself. Making life simpler, healthier and finding your bliss Aries radically changes lifestyles. It's not about pleasing everyone else, it's about pleasing yourself. How surprised or shocked will those around you be to see your transformation?
I disagree with the hippie analogy and the selfishness reference, but like the general idea. I would call it finding my center, rather than bliss, and being a pioneer, rather than a hippie.
The IWS (Idaho Watercolor Society) dinner was just great. It was held at someone's house that must be in the Beverly Hills of Idaho. It was a huge custom built house in a neighborhood of the same in a northern part of Boise. The host did not appear to have a husband and I asked someone if the host paid for her house with her art. Nope, it was paid for with a healthy insurance settlement. Oh well, one can dream.
I was, as usual, probably the youngest person in the room, but mostly had a great feeling of "these are my people." They were a friendly, welcoming group and I, once again, got to practice my new openness. I met Dwight Williams, who also shows at the Eagle gallery, and who reminded me of Dad. He told a great story about he and his brother growing up in a tornado-belt of the mid-west. They see a tornado coming, but it's not touching ground, so they decide to lay down so they can look up and watch the tornado overhead. Watch a tornado overhead?! They couldn't even open their eyes due to all the flying dirt and debris. He said he was about 13 then, sounds like 13 year old boy stuff.
The IWS dinner included a painting exchange. You bring a wrapped painting, matted but not framed, which gets a number. Everyone picks numbers and you get someone else's painting with that number. I brought the Hazel looking through the fence study. It was hard to pick something I was willing to part with for free, but that I also considered good enough to impress. I got a painting by Mark W. McGinnis, who is also new to Boise and here after teaching for many years at Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota.
http://www.markwmcginnis.com/index.html
He appears to have many styles, but my painting is similar to the iris in the series he calls Watercolor Sketching, except it is a yellow calla lily. It is dated 6/26/2010, which I thought was remarkable, since that is the date my lease expired on my TO apartment and almost the date I move out of Thousand Oaks.
http://www.markwmcginnis.com/watercolor%20sketching.html
I met several people that teach and give workshops and other artists that exhibit at the Eagle gallery and learned about other art societies and places to exhibit. There is an art gallery in the Meridian City Hall (Meridian is next door to Boise) and many IWS members also belong to the Meridian Arts Commission. I met Laurie Asahara, who came here from Hawaii and has been in Idaho for four years. She encouraged me to keep quiet about Idaho, fly under the radar, and she appears to also know how to paint people,
http://laurieasahara.blogspot.com/
Between eating chocolate pudding cake for someone's 90th birthday at noon and the warmth of the IWS dinner, I ended yesterday feeling content, humble, and hopeful. Even after eating chocolate again at the dinner, and drinking too much coffee all day and night, I went right to sleep.
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