Monday, November 11, 2013

Saturday and Sunday posts all rolled into one

First, a follow-up to Fun Monday when I posted pictures of our aloe blooms.  This is the crazy magic flowerbed where EVERYTHING grows like crazy.  I have no idea why, but we started with six tiny aloe plants in that upper right corner of the bed and this is what it looks like now...
 
 


It's still blooming, ya'll.  Plus these pictures that I took yesterday of our roses and a close up of one of the aloe blooms:





It's crazy.  Mid-November - no frosts yet, but nights getting into the 40s sometimes (mostly 50s).  Even here, these flowers would be pretty much done but not yet, I guess!

Friday night, the Day School associated with my church had a silent auction fundraiser.  There were lots of certificates for classes, a corner with plants, a table of jewelry, some baskets with coffees or chocolates or what-have-you, but my favorite part was the artwork....

 
One of the members of our church is a truly extraordinary woman.  She does so many things for the church - crafty things, handy-man things, organizational things - I don't know what we did before she joined us.  Now, I discover that she's also a talented painter.  In the VanGogh painting above, she painted the background and the kids in the dayschool painted the star groupings and it was applied to the background painting.  I loved this one.  Another was Matisse's goldfish, VanGogh's Sunflowers and another that is a jungle scene but I can't remember the artist.  They were amazing!
 
 
 She also painted this just herself.  It's also a copy of someone else's work, but if you held the photograph of the painting up next to this, you wouldn't know it wasn't an original. I liked this one so much I actually put in a bid for it, but she liked it too and outbid me!  On her own painting!  As it turned out, neither one of us won the bid - someone else liked it just as much as we did.

 
And finally, this.  I love watercolors and this is a subject near to my heart.  This is St. Clement's Chapel, which sits on our property and is used for the early service on Sundays.  Lots of people in my family have been married here - including my parents who were the first after it was moved here from Lloyd, Florida.  I was married here (the first time) and most recently, my brother Matt and his wife Dawon were married here.  I didn't bid as the prior bids were too rich for me already, but I did admire this several times during the course of the evening.
 
I love art - especially art done by people I know.  A few years ago, I purchased a painting from a friend who lives in Massachusetts and just this past week, bought a drawing from another friend in Arizona who's recently discovered her amazing talent.  The week before that, I bought two prints of paintings from a local artist who specialized in painting animals.  These all mean so much to me because of the personal connection - but I wouldn't be buying them if I didn't also love them. 



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I want to do that. :)

karmyn R said...

Can't believe you still have things blooming....but, I did see a house around the corner from here that still had a Dahlia blooming - so it must have been protected from the cold.

karmyn R said...

HA! 2 comments for 2 "posts"

I recently read a book where one of the characters was an art copier - and they used his art to replace the originals...so no one knew they were stolen.

I bet your friend could do that. LOL

karisma said...

Love the garden shots and the paintings are great too. Sorry you missed out on the one you liked, maybe you could convince the lady to paint another one. :-)

Jill said...

even our mums have died, too hard a freeze, and getting ready to snow here so they say, but it won't stick.. it's coming down from the north..