Ces choses que j'ai appris.

Topic one: little trees.
Today I bought a dwarf pomegranate tree. That makes my collection of little trees two. I also have an Australian tree fern growing in the shade of my patio... it will get bigger, but for now it is still young. I figure by the time it is big enough to demand placement in the earth, I'll have moved to a more permanent location... or not, I guess. Regardless, I have developed a profound fondness for my small trees. I never realized how much one could fall in love with flora... I often sit at my desk and day-dream about my plants. J'adore mon jardin!

Topic two: autumnal equinox
So, the autumnal equinox is this Monday...and I think that's pretty exciting. Just in case you were wondering, "On a day which has an equinox, the centre of the Sun will spend a nearly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on Earth and night and day will be of nearly the same length."

Topic three: Picasso in Santa Barbara
If you happen to be a Santa Barbarian (or will be in this town in the next few months), you should pop into the SBMA to check out the exhibit of Picasso's drawings. It is always so much fun to see works in graphite or charcoal or ink done by artists whom we typically think of in oils or acrylics. I think it is easy to create an image of an artist in our heads based on one or two career-defining works... and thus it is both educational and fascinating to see what she or he has done in various media and/or across years. So, Picasso at the SBMA, toally worth seeing.

Today, today.

It is the end of yet another summer weekend in Santa Barbara (some hold to the belief that summer ends with Labour Day... I choose to believe that the end comes at the autumn equinox, September 21ish. Why would anyone admit to the earlier date?)

I've begun my drawing class: so far we've drawn lines and shapes (focusing on positive and negative space). It is quite nice to start at the beginning, at the basics. I had forgotten how dramatically the practice of art can alter ones perception of the world. I sat on the couch in my room this evening, listening to melodious sounds from Portugal, and tried to see the Spanish moss on the patio for its negative space. It tried to see not one continuous shape cascading in tendrils from the place where it hung, but hundreds of tiny shapes dancing about amongst the tendrils. When I looked further into the yard, I saw the sky as a shape bound by trees and structures; for a moment that huge, visually endless expanse was a form that could be rendered. How does it all work? I wondered.

Try it sometime: look for the negative space in the world.

I spent today in the garden... I have a bit of a sunburn to show for it. I've started several plants from seed, and some of them needed to be transferred from there little bins of moss into larger pots of soil. I quite like the process: handling something so delicate, something so mysterious as a seedling. The experience reminded me of certain good qualities of life, but what these are I cannot quite say.

In sum: it was a fine summer weekend in Santa Barbara.