Peggy's Place In Bloom

Peggy lives on my biking and walking route downtown. This house belongs to her and her husband. They live there and also rent out rooms to other people. If I'm walking by heading to the store at the end of a work day, I sometimes see them gathering on the porch, just like in something out of a novel, or an Andy Griffith t.v. segment. Except that Peggy's roomers are more ethnically diverse than those in Mayberry.

Peggy once gave me some lemons and has also gave me some valuable advice about making a protest sign when I was getting ready to go to the March-In-March protest for California public college funding. When I took this photo, earlier this month, the Cecile Breuner roses where in bloom over Peggy's porch. CLICK on the picture for more rose detail. That's my bike parked in front. It's pretty much the same color as the roses.

I altered the original photo using Photoshop CS4's the colored pencil filter. I also made the digital mat with Photoshop, extracting the color from the roses .

Bees: What The World Needs Now

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I found these honeys pollinating blackberry blooms in the park near my house.

Keep up the good work, darlin's. I love my berries.

Bee Populations are in Trouble http://news.discovery.com/animals/honey-bees-disappearing-still-a-problem.html

Dawn Came Sneaking Through The Clothesline, While I Sat Working

CLICK on this art-journal page to see the detail

Martha Knuth's Birthday Card

Here is Martha Knuth's birthday card from Rosine. I altered the original quite a bit using Photoshop CS4. I wrote about this yesterday in my blog entry "From your Sister Rosine".

In the 'midst of a lot of hectic, I finished reading Nella Larsen's Passing * . It engaged me further in the question of people's concept of ethnicity and race. My daughter looks for a strong link with a group of people. But for me, my parents, and my grandparents, we focused more on reinventing ourselves within each generation.

The book club notes in the back of the book don't touch on these ideas at all. Another reason not to read what other people say about anything arty until I develop my own response.

* I cannot get 'underline' to work for the book title even when I edit the html directly

From Your Sister Rosine

My daughter found this card in a small local antique store for $1.50. Don't you wonder about Martha and Rosine? Did Martha tuck this away on her mirror, in a memory box or a book perhaps for years and years? They might have lived right around here. Did they grow old together?

I think they might have celebrated Martha's birthday together because it's not addressed to Martha. The ink smudges indicate to me that Rosine used a fountain pen, not a modern ball point pen.

I found several "Martha Knuth's on facebook and messaged them that I'd be glad to send them a scan of the back and front of this card. No luck.

Either

a) they're not into old

or

b) they figured I probably sold vitamins.

I did a lot of altering of the back of this card using Photoshop CS4. I extracted the flowers from the front of the card, filtered it to make it look older (!) and transformed Rosine's salutation so it's more in line with her sister's name. You can still see where she actually wrote, under the flowers I brought over from the other side.

The Buzz

Vancouver B. C. Rose, Van Deusen Botanical Gardens

A sax player told me it's called the buzz , when you get swept along with the musician next to you.

It’s the same thing little Roxie Dog feels when we take her to the park and she starts barking wildly, till a three inch taller dog comes along and I have to carry her.