…  to value my marriage and my partner above much else

…  to remember to keep my mind and heart open to what is different

…  to express myself and my feelings with more effort - watercolor, weaving, knitting, sewing….

And Spain…  What can I say?  The food, the people, the wine, the history - absolutely fabulous.

My watercolor from last night (Sunset at Rust op Twist, STX, April 2010):

The art pattern continues on.  Hannah and I did “Art in the Park” yesterday!  We met at the Fort in C’sted.  I’ve briefly walked through there and I have even did the tourist thing at the Fort.  But I’ve never taken the time to sit at any of the many well placed benches or picnic tables and just relaxed there.  It’s lovely.  There was a group of mothers and young kids on a play date.  And many other folk meandering through.  There are some mahogany trees there that are well established and beautiful.  Lots of shade.

So we were going to paint some building from that vantage point but I found the building to have too many lines and too many perspective issues for my skill level.  Instead - I turned to Hotel on the Cay and saw a nice simple boat scene.  I am finished with it - but maybe Pjete can help me to do a better job on the boats….

I’m excited about heading to Spain!  Madrid, Toledo, Avila, Merida….  Rioja and Albarino wines….  good food, late night dinners, tapas.  Old city walls and cathedrals.  The Prado.

Hannah and John are coming over for an early dinner tomorrow.  Bob from downstairs will join us too.  No big shakes - scalloped potatoes and ham, salad.  Still working like crazy at house chores!  Ted is laboring at the hurricane shutters these past several days.  I have plenty of painting tasks.  :)

We enjoyed a brunch at Polly’s and later after Deb left took solace in a mama-wanna and beer at Domino Club.  I’ll miss you Deb.

I brought all my wonderful gifted (by my dear daughter) watercolor supplies down with me to St. Croix last week.  I had some idyllic thoughts about gazing at the wonderful vistas and dreamily preserving the images in watercolor….  Especially with Deb here - she’s practiced and skilled at drawing and such!

Well - all much easier said then done!  But what a FUN time!  We started very nervously - had to actually make an effort to “Do It”.  The paper and colors and brushes are somewhat intimidating.  But again - What FUN!  We’ve tried to do at least one thing everyday.  I’ve found that the water is the most difficult so far.  I’m not very happy with either of my two attempts.  Otherwise I’m pretty surprised at how pleased I am with the results of my tries!  Keep in mind - I’ve not used watercolor before and I’m far from an “artist” of any sort.

What is most interesting is how Deb and I had the same topics - sitting side by side - and the results are in all cases very different in approach and in color use.  Very cool.

Deb’s first attempt at the waterscape in front of the house:

Deb’s 2nd waterscape painting:

Now MY 1st waterscape try:

Karin - 1st Waterscape at Rust op Twist

Karin - 2nd waterscape try at Rust op Twist

Deb - Conch Shell

Karin - Conch Shell

Seagrape Tree Leaf - Deb

Seagrape Leaves - Karin

Hibiscus Bloom - Deb

Hibiscus Bloom - Karin

So that’s the show folks.  I’m hoping that I’ll still do this most everyday after Deb leaves!  It’s most fun it seems because she is here doing this with me.

The tour was interesting in that nowhere stateside would the public be allowed in an industrial facility so unguarded, unprotected, and so close to the manufacture of a product that will be released to consumers…  I could have added anything I wanted to the fermenting tanks without notice by staff.  The stairs we climbed were incredibly steep and corroded.  There were hoses and pipes in any number of the “pathways” we walked.  We wore no hardhats, eye or hearing protection.  We were not continually warned to keep our hands at our sides, etc.  It’s my experience that Cruzans have an expectation of common decent behavior from all of us.  I like it here!

So - the pics from the day:

Next is a view of first the mixing tank and then a fermenter tank.

There is a significant amount of waste product that they dump.  They send the very hot mix out on this open-air rack where gravity moves it at a good pace through a number of tiers and then into a pipe.  It travels several miles through the pipe to the ocean where they are allowed to dump the now cooled waste.  There are no chemicals - so they are allowed to dump with full permit.

The remaining pics are just my “eye”.  I always enjoy banana trees with bananas growing.  The red flower at the end of the cluster is pretty fascinating.

And that concludes your tour of Cruzan Rum.  The benefit to being here in person is that after the tour they pretty much open the bar for us!  And I do like rum!

A chenile plant in Laura’s Garden. Themed with red flowering plants. I’ve only ever seen chenile plants as hot-house house plants.

Next stop - the Blacksmith’s cottage. There was, apparently a big earthquake in the mid - later 1800’s that destroyed alot of buildings on the estate. This particular building was rebuilt after that earthquake. However, I don’t know how the home-made lime, coral rock and possibly molasses would actually hold up to any of known building code/earthquake zone standards….

This was a beautiful and fragrant orchid growing on a tree. It’s roots were well seated on the trunk of the tree - almost hard to tell from the actual tree it was growing on.

This was an unknown plant - looked like a succulent? This is not a great time of year for a good display of flowers at the Botanical Gardens. It’s been pretty dry. They do have some amazing plants. An African Almond Tree. The hulls on the ground are enormous. There’s the canon-ball fruit tree, breadfruit, Tamarind, sausage tree, a huge fiddle leaf fig tree. They have a palm tree grove that is amazing with it’s variety.

The ruins are extensive. They have a flume (for moving water for various reasons), the water wheel remnants, lots of evidence of living quarters - with overseers and manager’s homes still intact. They have a great display of Taino Indian artifacts. They have a well preserved lime kiln - Deb is standing in front of it here.

This final picture is of some elegant Spanish moss. Beautiful.

The View from the Dam Trailer at the Dam Worksite at the Dam:

The Colorado River just on the other side of Glen Canyon Dam…

Well not exactly.  What we might hope for everyday.  Hard to tell that earlier in the week was gale force winds with an ocean upswell making water temps the lowest recorded….  Today was 74+ degrees at 2pm at Hole in the Fence Beach.  Dog heaven - if the tail-o-meter was any indication.

We don’t attend often - There’re are several others that are not nearly as crowded that I generally will attend vs the Thursday night market - Los Osos has a good one on Monday afternoons.  Morro Bay has a nice but small market on Saturday afternoons.  The Saturday morning market at the shopping center parking lot in San Luis Obispo is really nice.  But on this past Thursday - Ted and I were celebrating our 27th wedding anniversary.  We wanted to do something before heading to dinner and there weren’t any movies that appealed to us.  Farmer’s Market it was.  How fun!  The Artichokes were HUGE.  This is dinner tonight.  2 rib-eyes (bone-in) and these gigundous artichokes and some strawberries for dessert.  YUM.