2•8•2021
Silver Cedar
Dear Nature,
There’s something about a cedar waxwing that makes it look almost surreal. Maybe it’s due to the fact that it’s hard to delineate any feathers, making it look like a sleek silky seal It sports a collection of beautiful colors; dove grays, soft browns, lemon yellows and sometimes unexpected flashes of the brilliant red wax droplets on the tips of their wing feathers, the trait for which it is named. And that dashing black mask!
I’m not very good at bird songs. As the seasons change, I have to re-learn each season’s songs all over again. But the cedar waxwing is one I can now always pick out, especially as they tend to move in big flocks searching for fruits and bugs to eat. It’s a very distinct thin, high-pitched “sseee, sseee, sseee.” Hello, beautiful silver seal bird!
With Love, Kelly
2•9•2021
Hermit Warbler, Barkhamstead, CT
Dear Nature,
The rare bird alert alarmed. Five years ago a rare western wood-warbler was located near the Farmington River in northwestern CT. We decided to twitch for the bird. In birder’s lingo, twitching is when you go looking for a specific bird. Conveniently, it was in a popular fly fishing area, complete with a parking lot! We approached the group of birders, standing around in the cold, who told us it was last seen heading across the river awhile ago. Bummer, dipped again? I think I ‘dip’ more than I ‘twitch’ but no sooner had we turned our binoculars to the river, I spotted it on the opposite bank. It then flew over to a spot right in front of us to glean bugs off the river rocks, giving us wonderful views. A beautiful life list bird! Unfortunately, it was highly unlikely that this stray could survive our snowy winter. By now it should have been high in the mountains of Mexico and northern Central America. Sigh.
With Love, Kelly
2•10•2021
Moonstone Magic
Dear Nature,
Oh Moonstone Beach, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…
Far across Trustom pond in Rhode Island, I watched my very first wild snowy owl, sitting on a log on the beach. One frigid, icy, windy December day, I witnessed a pure white male snowy owl hunt along the beach.
Last year at this time, we watched several short-eared owls cruise the marshes as the sun set. They hovered, swooped and swirled like large, graceful moths, searching for their evening meals. As the sun lowered further on the ocean horizon, and the sky deepened to a silky lavender blue, we were treated to one of the owls settling on a dead branch nearby, bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun.
And lest I forget, the moonstones… those beautiful, polished quartz stones that mysteriously found their way into my pockets as I walked the beach, soothed by the sound of the crashing waves.
With Love, Kelly
2•11•2021
Moonstone Owl Bonanza
Dear Nature,
To top off our “Owly” Evening at Moonstone Beach, as we were slowly driving out on the rutted, bumpy dirt road in the gloaming(!), I caught a silhouette in a tree alongside the road. I stomped on the brakes, and whispered ‘owl!’. Sure, enough, it was a great horned owl! We were able to sit quietly and observe the owl as it surveyed the nearby field. Finally it jumped off the branch, sweeping low over the ground as it started its evening rounds.
A rare treat indeed for me here in New England. Though I’ve seen great-horned owls during my travels out west, I’ve seen more snowy owls here in my home turf than great-horned owls. I do hear them every so often here on the farm, Recently they were calling at the same time as our house owl – Barred Owl, Dobby. I said a silent prayer of protection for Dobby and his family, regretfully hoping that the great horned owls would move on through!
With Love, Kelly
2•12•2021
The Cows at Cook Hill
Dear Nature,
Sometimes your treasure are not of the wild kind.
One of my favorite nearby trails borders a dilapidated barn yard with an even more dilapidated barn, but the cows and oxen are very photogenic! I love the curious youngsters in the spring & summer. Most of the time they are all busy being cows; eating and sleeping and chewing their cuds. But sometimes they strike a bovine version of a Vogue pose! A perfect photograph, and perhaps an even more perfect painting. This photo begs to be painted. The warm sunlit highlights and the cool dark shadows, a perfect tonal study. The fiery burnt siennas juxtaposed against the cool lavender textures of the barn, a classic pairing of complementary colors!
And P.S., Happy Chinese New Year, the Year of the Ox, my sign. Yes, I am a double ox, as I’m also a Taurean. Earthbound, and stubborn, err, steadfast!
With Love, Kelly
2•13•2021
Fibonacci’s Camellia
Dear Nature,
Eight years ago today, I was deep in a mysterious camellia grove at Middleton Place Plantation! I was an attending artist at the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition and had some time to explore after I set up my booth. I was staying at Middleton Place so I went next door to the plantation in search of flowers. I was a Connecticut Yankee who had just left behind a snowstorm that buried us in 36 inches of snow, so wandering around a spring garden in bloom was heavenly.
Other years that I attended the camellias were either not blooming, or had been hit by a frost, but this year they were stunning, and I was enchanted. So much so that this New England girl chose a Southern flower as the subject of her body of work to exhibit at the BISCOT show in Edinburgh that following June. One thing leads to another.
With Love, Kelly
2•14•2021
A breath of Spring in Winter
Dear Nature,
I do love winter; the woodland walks, listening to the snow crunching underfoot, the birds that spend the ‘silent season’ here, the early sunsets that make me more productive in my studio instead of being out enjoying the light; all things I cherish. But sometimes I just need to see a flower…
My sister gifted me this amaryllis for Christmas. It is a remarkable plant with a ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ blossom, bigger than my hand! It is a veritable time lapse real-time movie of plant growth. Each morning that I greet it in my studio, I see that a flower stalk has grown seemingly inches overnight, and yet another blossom has opened.
It makes me happy. And Nature, it makes me appreciate your seasons even more.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
With Love, Kelly