Wild Berries and Paintings

The Painted Ladies met at Glenna’s house near Waurika Lake yesterday. We arrived early to pick blackberries before the day got too hot. The blackberries were even better this year than last year. The sand plums were almost ready to pick and the trees were loaded. If I were the industrious sort, I would head back out there next week to pick plums. Then I would make a big batch of plum jelly. If I had a kitchen…

Berry pickin’ is hot, sweaty, nasty work. We wore long pants, long sleeves, and gloves. Still we were scratched and stuck with thorns. Sweat rolled off my head and into my eyes much like it does in step class. Thanks to Glenna’s swimming pool, we were able to cool off fast. I wore my swimsuit under my berry pickin’ clothes so that I was able to shuck my clothes and dive in. Refreshing! I swam and fought with Glenna’s grandsons (I really need to get me some of those) while waiting on lunch, which was just sandwiches. When you have had such a busy, hot morning, the sandwiches were wonderful. After we cleaned up lunch and ourselves, we headed up to Glenna’s studio to paint.
Maybe I was wound up from the morning activities, but it was difficult to settle down and paint (not to mention the whale music Glenna had playing). I warmed up with a little card painting of flowers. Then I flipped through a book and found an interesting painting and decided to try something new. For this painting I had to stand up and use a bigger brush. Since I work fairly fast anyway, this was wild. I kept a saltshaker in one hand and a brush in the other and just went at the painting. This was the result. The Ladies were amazed that I could knock out a painting so fast. Skipping all the detail work helped a lot. In watercolor, you can let the paint do much of the work. Sometimes, though, we are just too controlling. It was fun to let it fly in this painting with only a few controlled elements.

Today, I need to make a big blackberry cobbler.