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Category Archives: Passing Time

Sunday Afternoon Exercise

22-Jul-07
Leita Thompson Memorial Garden

Ahhhh, exercise. While most visitors to the Leita Thompson Memorial Park in Roswell, Georgia were there to walk or jog the woodlands trail for their exercise, I was their to exercise my sketching skills this Sunday afternoon. All the while happily keeping my lazy rear end parked in the comfy seat of my automobile.

My wife came along and read in her new book…something to do with deathly hallows and some kid named Harry who rides a broom for sport. And our doggie, Rosie, came along to exercise her lounging skills while stretched out in the back seat.

This fountain in the memorial garden interests me because it is built of stone. I’ve always admired the patience and skill required to build anything of substance out of stacked and mortared stones. It is a skill that at once requires thought in design, engineering, precision, layout, materials management, perseverance, and hand/eye coordination with simple tools. Your average person can’t produce stone masonry that is both beautiful and crafted to stand the test of time. It’s simply not the stuff of Home Depot clinics.

The Tomato Basket

16-Jul-07
The Tomato Basket

My father-in-law, Hubert, is 84 and still keeps a garden each year. This year he has about 140 tomato plants.

He gives them away to friends and family. Yes…he gives them away. He has “a list”.

This is our first take for the season…a basket of the best home growns you can get. One of ‘em makes about two ‘mater sandwiches, sometimes three. They’re big.

Hubert really toils over his tomato garden. He is very proud of his work and he should be. He’s had a garden for many, many years. And as such, has kept many people happy each summer with his generosity. People like Hubert are hard to find these days.

I thought they made a nice sketch and a nice testimonial toward being good to others.

A Dock at Callaway Gardens

15-Jul-07
Callaway Gardens Pavillion Dock

Without providing details, I’ve been ill. I’m gradually feeling better and I’m going to get rolling on sketching again. Sorry for the two month downtime. Sometimes things don’t go as we want.

Callaway Gardens in South Georgia, is an unusual place. It’s an outdoor place. In Spring, it’s ablaze with azaleas practically everywhere, hundreds of acres of them. They have a very nice horticultural center, and a butterfly center, which is an entire building dedicated to housing and raising live butterflies…thousands of them.

They have miles of bicycle trails too and walking trails through the gardens and woods. And three golf courses, a tennis center, a large swimming lake and beach, a circus in the summer, a gigantic vegetable garden, fishing boat rentals, bike rentals, fly-fishing store, a couple of restaurants, a wonderful summer program for kids, a lodge and conference center, cabin rentals…it’s a resort I suppose…a family oriented resort.

I know of nothing like Callaway Gardens. It’s not a typical resort. It’s quieter and isolated in an unusually out of the way place. It’s in nowhere land really. A little town in South Georgia, called Pine Mountain. It would be safe to say there is nothing in South Georgia except a bunch of little bucolic towns, the pastoral scenes between them, and the hard to imagine ways of life lived in each little house, trailer, shack, or rare “big house” one passes on the two-lane highways. Other than that, there are a half dozen small sized cities, a few low-key tourist attractions, and Callaway Gardens.

I’ve been there a lot since I was a kid. Off the beaten path, there is this dock with a shake shingled roof, which I think used to be a boat house. It sits lonely below the overlook pavillion in the very shallow end of a small lake. It’s abandoned as far as purpose. Dirt Daubers and turtles have moved in and call it and the shallow waters beneath it home.

The turtles await food from people like me who come to visit. I had none so they just poked their heads out of the water and stared at me with forlorn eyes. The Dirt Daubers…well…they just stay in their little clay homes and buzzzzzzz apparently. There were more Dirt Dauber nests than I recall seeing in one place, twenty maybe. But only a couple of them flew about me for a moment to check me out. Other than that, they all just buzzzzzzed in their nests.

This being the first attempt at sketching in two months, it was a “therapy” sketch more than anything. So, not much in the way of humor or meaning here. The timber bracket bracing up the roof is what caught my attention because I’d not ever seen brackets designed the way these were. So be it…that’s all there is behind this sketch.

I’ll see if I can’t do better as I try to get rolling here again.

Thanks to all my readers for sticking by. You are all much appreciated!

Tree Study

09-May-07
Study of a Tree

I use the little Moleskine cahirs note booklets when I need to order my thoughts. I keep them in the car, with a pencil, in the console. Most of my thinking is done in the car.

Today, I went to the Chattahoochee River Park, selected a shady parking space aimed at the river, pulled out a note booklet and pencil…and set about to make some notes.

Notes of purpose let’s say.
Notes toward doing work, solving problems.

I wrote the first word, looked up, and saw the tree under which I was parked.

I don’t know why.
I stopped noting.
Instead I sketched the tree. I got lost in the tree.

The notes of purpose were not of a pressing nature anyway.

I then waited a little bit for the evening air to blow in and headed home to cut the grass. That is the most pressing issue of the day in my dear wife’s mind and trust me, no notes were needed to recall that.

Tonight I’ll work on work.

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Quieting the Mind

08-May-07
Creek at East Cobb Park

Just a little something to facilitate moving past having my mug as the current post. No story, just a sketch. Took a walk, sat and sketched the creek.

Don Needs

06-May-07

No sketch with this one…just giggles.

Brian over at BeanQuest had an interesting post that gave me a good laugh.

It’s an interesting little thing you can do with Google.
You Google this phrase: “(your name here) needs”.
For me, that would be “Don needs”.
Then you pick your favorites and list them in your blog post.

So dear readers, I present Google’s results on the search, “Don Needs”…

On My Charms

“don needs to take his sunshades off….he’s too handsome.”
Thank ye. Thank ye vera much.

“Truly Don needs to be in the Country Music Hall of Fame”
Thank ye. Thank ye vera much.

“…Don needs to win an award… he is fantastic!”
Thank ye. Thank ye vera much.

“Although Don needs help picking out sweaters (he has absolutely no fashion sense), he is a class act”
hmmmm…what’s the matter with plaid sweaters?

“Don needs a hug!”
“Don needs a kiss.”
“Poor Don needs more fun in his life.”
“…Don needs to identify all the women who might be candidates and take the ultimate road trip of his life.”
“Don needs to restrain himself when Betty’s in the store.”
“Everyone’s heard a lot of rumors today and, clearly, Don needs to explain some things.”

It’s not what it seems dear…really. I can explain…

“Don needs to get rushed to the hospital.”
hmmmm…can’t understand why she didn’t believe me. Say, you EMT’s do a lot of training don’t cha? How come I can’t see? She only hit me once.

“Don needs to do something about his hair. He looks like an old lady.”
Alrighty then…next subject.

On My Intelligence

“Don needs to talk to my sis sounds like they both have a problem with armadillo recognition.”
Yes, I was very weak with that in school.

“Don needs to have Thomas NOT use the regular multiplication sign when using x as a variable”
Yeah Thomas! It confuses the hell out of me! Little x’s everywhere…ya think I’m a genius or somethin’?!

“Don needs to be reading at 4th grade level.”
It’s hard…really hard. I try. But it’s really, really hard.

“Don needs to make a grid, divide it into six boxes and list each area in a different box, then check off each activity each day after it’s accomplished.”
Not gonna happen. I can’t even read at a 4th grade level. Haven’t you heard?

On My Health

“Energy is certainly what Don needs in abundance.”
Zzzzzzzzz…..

“Don needs a private place to change his pants.”
It wasn’t like that when I was younger.

“DON needs to follow up with individual nurses to make sure the flowsheets are being updated.”
It’s not what it seems dear…really. Put the lead pipe away dear.

“…I was trying to describe Don’s needs, We’re not quite to rubber sheets yet, but we’re into Depends.”
Oh c’mon! How does Google know this stuff?

“We all know Don needs to go to rehab”
Yeah, well, it’s expensive ya know?

“I think Don needs a bit of exercise, don’t you?”
Yeah, well, it’s expensive ya know?

“Don needs to get those teeth filed down at the dentist”
Yeah, well, it’s expensive ya know?

“..don needs to resuscitate himself..”
Hypocratic oath…Yeah right! Lazy ER docs…just can’t find good help anymore!

On Meeting My Potential in Life

“Don needs to get himself over to Oprah.”
It’s all about exposure. One needs exposure to live up to their potential…

“Don needs to step up against a hard hitting top ten contender…”
Naaaah…I don’t like ruining people’s careers.

On My Genetic Individuality

“Don needs Rodney.”
Nope. Don don’t need no Rodney. Don is genetically straight. All the little genes and chromosomes are neatly lined up and clearly heterosexual.

“Don needs no fuel - presumably he photosynthesizes.”
Dang! They’ve found me out! I knew these green fingernails would blow my cover!

“…DON needs additional physiological and molecular investigation…”
As long as it’s non-invasive, I’m fine with that. I like helping science and all.

“Don needs a baritone of extreme flexibility”
Like I SAID…Don is genetically STRAIGHT. Take notes OK?
uh…women can’t be baritones can they? I just assumed they couldn’t…
Put the lead pipe down dear! I was just kidding! Put it doooowwwwwnnnnn. Thank you.

And Finally…

“Before you go, have you noticed anything Don needs to work on?”

The Book Reader

04-May-07
The Book Reader

I returned early from our little wedding expedition to Destin. My wife stayed on for a few days for some much deserved relaxation with her friends.

While waiting at the Pensacola airport I wanted to sketch someone. Places where people sit and wait are great places to sketch.

Trouble was, every time I would get a minute into a sketch, the person would up and leave. I wanted to spend some time on just one person.

  • Fat guy sleeping, great! Five lines into it, he wakes up and leaves.
  • Lady reading a magazine. She kept changing in her seat, crossing her legs, uncrossing, crossing the other way…jeez! sit still!
  • Little kid…hah! forget that!
  • Business man on his cell phone. Got the phone and one finger. Then he was up, walking and flailing his arms like a Broadway actor as he talked.

Finally, this young lady sat down across from me and immediately opened a book and started reading. She read non-stop for a solid hour. I sketched for probably half that time and really enjoyed it.

I was able to tweak here and there, erase, re-draw, study her face and hair, and get a pretty good likeness of her.

She looked up over my head a couple of times at the clock. Interestingly, she looked like a totally different person from the front. I suppose that’s to be expected, but having concentrated on her profile for so long, the change to the front angle was surprising.

Anyway, I was happy to have had such a good model after all. It was a fine way to conclude my short little vacation sketch series.

Got another little trip in a couple of weeks. I’ll sketch a bunch there too.