Weekend Walkabout: It's So Hot!!

It's too hot for a Weekend Walkabout anywhere but in the house. Summers keep getting hotter and hotter. We have less of our old, daily, polite rains. Now we get nothing for weeks at a time, then a monsoon that causes floods. It doesn't cool off at night anymore, and we are literally dependent on our air conditioners. Scary. Our Avian Cooling Station is running full tilt-- here are our Fish Crow Fledglings, cooling their toes....

Hoppin and Pippin are amazing. They've learned to take frequent showers at the cooling station. They bring little shells from the beach to float and play with in the Avian Cooling Pool. Corvids are remarkable and charming creatures.
Since I'm kind of stuck inside with the A/C, I've been painting. My Nebula 3 is getting there....

Here is Nebula 2, the Gold One....

And for all my American Readers, Happy 4th of July! Here is Dahlia, celebrating....

Wishing you all happy Weekend Walkabouts!

Goodbye, Crazy 2016, and Hello 2017!

2016 was one crazy year. For quiet gardeners like you and me, even. Just a few highlights from the garden:

Unprecedented heat. Exceptional aridity. In March, the worst toxic algae event on our river in remembered history. It killed every living thing in the river, and poisoned many of the inhabitants who lived on its shores, including me. I won't show a picture, too heartbreaking.

Then TS Hermine. TS Julia. Hurricane Matthew. And much worse for people living on the islands, especially Haiti and Cuba, and for the Carolinas, Georgia, and Louisiana, than for us here on our sand dune.

TS Hermine approaches.

Munin and Hugin, Fish Crows In Residence

Horseshoe crab in the garden after Hurricane Matthew.

After Matthew roared by (thank you for that wobble!!) the sun came back, the air was cleaner than it's been in years, and I found wonderful paintings by Andy Lakey. Finally, rebuilding it all.  That's some gardening year....

Andy Lakey's cheerful "Brilliant Nature" painting.

Related to gardening, because the garden is probably where we met some bad mosquitoes, Zika Virus roared through my family, turning us into scarlet-speckled aliens with bright red eyes. Not a pleasant disease, but again, much worse for those who were starting or building their families. We lost several beloved family members in 2016 also. We know they're in a good place, but we miss them terribly.

Sooo, with all that in mind, I set to painting my annual New Year watercolor. This one is more subdued than usual, but I like it- It's called "Angels, Blue and Green"- Here's to a peaceful 2017 full of growth and joy!

New Year 2017: Angels in Blue and Green- MRobb

Weekend Walkabout: Munin the Fish Crow and the Bloomin' Babytoes

Babytoes bloomed today, just in time for the weekend. And I finished a difficult painting, a tiny little thing that has been bugging me for months (another in my New Orleans Wall Fragment series), so I put them together for a mini-portrait:

Bloomin' Babytoes with New Orleans Wall Fragment 2, MRobb, 2016

After a whole month of drought, we got a lot of rain (phew, no more evening waterings!), so I thought I'd publish a portrait of Munin, our resident Fish Crow Patriarch and Way Cool Corvid, enjoying the rain on my fence- have I mentioned that Fish Crows are as intelligent as chimps?

Munin in Rain, MRobb, 2016

Here's a more regular portrait of Munin, singing on the balcony while I play my HAPI drum:

Munin at Dawn, MRobb, 2016

And finally, a new soul window, from an indigo center to a bright yellow outer ring. This one will go to the winner of our local poetry contest:

Soul Window, Indigo to Yellow, MRobb, 2016

Have a wonderful weekend and happy gardening!

The Amazing Wellesley Ravens

I just love corvids. I used to live in the Far North, where the ravens are the size of small aircraft. Now I live in the tropics, and we have Fish Crows, the smaller, cuter cousin of the American Crow.

Fish Crows, MRobb, 20014

I love them, but I do miss the ravens. So I was delighted to find a happy raven family on a webcam at Wellesley College. It's nesting season, and the happy pair (ravens are monogamous) are raising 4 lovely ravinettes...let's check it out!

http://www.wellesley.edu/ravencam

The latest research shows that some crows, particularly the New Caledonian Crow, are as smart as chimpanzees! If you want to learn some amazing facts about just how much more intelligent corvids are than a lot of humans you know, read this right now:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19042_6-terrifying-ways-crows-are-way-smarter-than-you-think.html

Have a great weekend and Happy Gardening!