Month: September 2020

The last lesson of the workshop I talked about in the last post was about finding beauty in the flowers and plants as they faded from their glory of the summer.  Sometimes, it is difficult to believe that the dying flowers and plants can have any beauty.  But, some do.  The image I’ve included with this week’s post shows a yellow Missouri primrose in full bloom and what happens as the bloom begins to fade.  You can see that it changes from the cupped yellow blossom to the spiraling look of a candle flame.  Even the colors changed from pure yellow to red and orange!  This candle shape is as beautiful to me as the newly blooming blossom.

Until Judith’s workshop directed students to really look at the fading flowers in this new way, I simply deadheaded those faded primrose flowers and threw them away.  Looking at our environment in new ways is revealing.  Really revealing.

Outside the flowers are fading; but that’s for another article.  Right now, the flowers are glorious.  Sunflowers.  Cone flowers.  Hollyhock.  Yellow Missouri primrose.

I recently took a virtual workshop with one of the best teachers and mentors I’ve ever met, with whom I’ve worked for years.  And, I know these things because as a supervising educator (school director at one of the two Colorado state hospitals, school superintendent of a district on Colorado’s eastern plains), it was my job to evaluate the educators who worked in those places.  Judith’s workshop, this time, was about looking outside to find special things in our environment.  She usually teaches this class in Crested Butte, Colorado, but, of course, with the pandemic, it has become a virtual class.  So, out into our yards, parks, alleyways, and roadsides, we went searching for anything to catch our eye and sketch.  We were promised that by the end of the workshop, we would have a journal filled with wonderful images.  And, writing.

            You are reading a first post of a blog by an 82-year-old woman who has never completed a blog before.  In fact, until Karl, one of my computer gurus, mentioned it to me, I never had a thought about publishing a blog.  After asking some friends and relatives for their thoughts about me writing a blog and receiving several “you go girl” responses, I decided to take Karl up on his suggestion.  So, bear with me while I develop my “sea legs” for this activity.

            You should be told something about the person whose work you are reading.  For sixty years, I was married to and lived with one of the best man human beings that has ever walked the earth until his life was taken as a result of being a uranium worker to make money to pay for our college education.  You will hear about Larry a lot, I think.  You will also hear about my daughters (two, H&J), my son-in-law (one, B), granddaughters (two-R&L), as well as my neighbors and other friends that I have been blessed to have in my life.  I consider my life is enriched by all of them.