High Peaks

 Still thinking about Arizona.

Everyone in California lives on a white, sandy beach.” False. The only people who live on California beaches are vacationers from Arizona, Utah, and Nevada who own condos.
– Erma Bombeck

 You know you’re from Arizona when you drive two miles around a parking lot looking for a shady place – even in the dead of winter. – Author Unknown

 You know you’re from Arizona when you feed your chickens ice cubes to keep them from laying hard-boiled eggs.  Author Unknown

Gotta go back

Well I left this one unfinished because I need to go back to Arizona. I love Arizona.

What most people don't understand is that UFOs are on a cosmic tourist route. That's why they're always seen in Arizona, Scotland, and New Mexico. Another thing to consider is that all three of those destinations are good places to play golf. So there's possibly some connection between aliens and golf. Alice Cooper

There's not a single person in Arizona today who would say the Grand Canyon was a mistake. Stewart Udall

Oil on canvas paper  8x10

Reminiscing

I had such a great time visiting the Grand Tetons in Idaho and Wyoming I had to go back .... just kidding... it was a mental "go back". Totally day dreaming and wandering back to the scenes of days gone by. Loved it anyway.

Theodore Roosevelt
"We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune."

"We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so."

"...wild flowers should be enjoyed unplucked where they grow."

"It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it."

"We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation."

"I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us."

"Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west."

There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm."

"The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom."

Oil on canva paper 8x10

It's white today

Hope this is an indication of the Winter to come. A couple days after the Winter Solstice and we have a nice covering of snow down here in the valley.  I love Winter. Tomorrow the sun may come out.


And there is quite a different sort of conversation around a fire than there is in the shadow of a beech tree.... [F]our dry logs have in them all the circumstance necessary to a conversation of four or five hours, with chestnuts on the plate and a jug of wine between the legs. Yes, let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. ~Pietro Aretino, translated from Italian


[W]hat a severe yet master artist old Winter is.... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel. ~John Burroughs, "The Snow-Walkers," 1866


Winter is a time of promise because there is so little to do — or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. ~Stanley Crawford, A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm, 1992


One kind word can warm three winter months. ~Japanese Proverb

Tomatoes from my garden again

My Grandson's wife told me that her mom pulled up the tomato plants at the end of the year and hung them indoors to ripen the last of the tomatoes that were hanging on the vine still green. Not having a barn or shed I hung them in the guest room which has a large South facing window which warms up the room nicely during the Winter. It works fine. I love tomatoes..... salad, soup or in a snadwhich... whatever.

I love judging food by its smell and feel and taste. The healthiest tomato isn't always the perfect one that's been covered in pesticides.

Sheherazade Goldsmith 

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can't eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as 'progress', doesn't spread. Andy Rooney

Oil on canva paper  5x7

The fishing shacks at Monterrrey

When you go down to the boardwalk at Monterrey this is one of the first things you will see.... it may be one of the most famous and most painted sites. It seems a little tilted... but then maybe I was on the down-slooped sidewalk.... maybe my head was leaning .... maybe I just goofed when painting this one. Well, there it is, the fishing shacks at Monterrey

Never stop doing little things for others. Sometimes those little things occupy the biggest part of their hearts.

California is a fine place to live - if you happen to be an orange. Fred Allen

Earlier today, Arnold Schwarzenegger criticized the California school system, calling it disastrous. Arnold says California's schools are so bad that its graduates are willing to vote for me. Conan O'Brien

oil on Canva paper 6x8

Meandering on the Beach

I just can't leave the Oregon beach. Just about every morning we were out there walking up and down... North and South. The view was always different because we wandered around at different times of the day but the sun always made long shadows about mid-morning because it had to rise above the hills to the East........ and it sometimes took a while to burn off the morning fog. There was always someone else running or walking or picking up sea shells.... and an occasional dog prancing about. So who can't feel good at the beach.

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter. Blaise Pascal

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. John Ruskin

oil on canva paper  8x10

Rocky shore line

Still painting pictures of the rocky Oregon coastline on a warm almost winter day ... it,s only 6 Dec so we are a few days from winter. The sun has dipped way down in the southern sky and shines over to my desk part of the day which is really, really nice. I love it when the sun shines thru those big windows.

“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”  ― Helen Keller

“Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.”  ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.”  ― Joseph Addison

“Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”  ― Walt Whitman

oil on canva paper  8x10