Hello Summer, Hello You

The Green Wall , pastel plein air sketch, 10" x 10" I had a lot of fun doing in late June, 2010.
The phalic looking tree trunk on the right is no longer there sticking
up like a sore.... it became compost this last winter.

The Green Wall  for real this morning,
May, 23, 2013. Totally uninspiring

Nevertheless, summer's here. Oh, I know it isn't official till the Solstice, but once Memorial Day arrives and Kathleen Turner nods approval for wearing white shoes, ( Serial Mom is a favorite movie of mine), I figure it's summer. Plus: The weed trees with the burgundy colored cone-like flowers throughout summer on the edge of the forest  have finally filled in with greenery and I'm walled in. With those leaves on the trees, this shut in is tending to  plans for continuous garden bloom and color through November.

My charcoal copy of a Peale sketch
of  a young George

While everyone I talk to is going away for Memorial Day weekend, we will be digging and hoeing and--hunting down  the hard-to-come-by, six  inch  pot, white geraniums I prefer because they are as cheerful at night as they are during the day. (How the patio, the deck or the garden looks from the house at night is as important as how it looks during the day, says the designing artist in me. In the dark, whites and yellows still sparkle while reds and blues go to shades of gloomy gray).

The painter in me says, "Shame on you." I haven't touched a canvas for nearly two weeks and don't feel particularly guilty. I've been outdoors soaking up the rays AM and indoors PM tied to my computer. My email program stopped sending and I've been absorbed in finding out why with absolutely no success. I should have given up  days ago, but being the stubborn bulldog I am, I just couldn't let the problem go. I have picked up a lot of computer lingo I never knew before--stuff like ISP and port protocols and profiles and smpt-- but who cares? I still can't send anyone a message. Socket error # 10060 and  Windows Live Mail error ID #0x800ccc0E won't let me. My ISP can't fix it. Microsoft was kinder than my ISP, but couldn't fix it either and turned me over to their online help, which didn't perform any miracles either. I figure there's a conspiracy and the culprit is Xfinity. I hate monopolies.

But on a positive note, I can still read. Did you know that according to Ron Churnow, author of George Washington, George, the first prez of the US and the guy who couldn't tell a lie was also the guy whose militia fired off the first shots on May 27th, 1754 that led to the French and Indian War (1756-1763) and a eventually to a world conflict (The Seven Years War)? So much for his Excellency Mr.Goody Two Shoes working his way up the ranks in the British Colonial Army.

George, a full-of-himself twenty two year old, was asked to deliver a letter asking the French to vacate the Ohio Valley; he was a surveyor who had mapped the area and knew it well.
When he got to the Fork of the Ohio and delivered the message, the French said no. George went home.

Gilbert Stuart's portrait
of George who didn't wear
wigs,but did powder his hair.

Then the French drove out the colonial traders and started to build Fort Duquesne in the area, so George was asked to return and ask the French to stop. They  refused  again and after George left,  sent off their own diplomat with a message for  the British about establishing some sort of peace... but it never got there.  George and his party of 100 Virginia militiamen and  a tribe of Irequois Indians ambushed the French diplomatic party in a bloody squirmish that turned into a massacre with hatchets thrown and scalps collected--including the scalp of Jumonville, the French attache. The massacre was called the Jumonville Affair--or more politely, just Jumonville Glen. It pissed  off the French who escallated their fort building, which launched  a war between the two great nations over the Ohio River Valley that lasted seven years.

The French despised George for the "assasination" of their guy--and he wasn't too popular with the British either, though they kept it hush-hush and stood by him. If they didn't, the Brits would have lost face having given this very young, self indulgent colonial the assignment and his first command.

Don't you just love a good cover up ? George always looked so dull and stern  in that copy of  the Gilbert Stuart painting in the auditoriums of so many American elementary schools. From his picture and with nothing-but-the cherry-tree tale we were told about his early life, who knew this guy was a social climbing, self indulgent, whatever it takes to get there, wanna-be aristoratic sombody as a kid, as a man? --Just the type that would be perfect for leading a young, whatever-it-takes-to-be free nation twenty some years later.

Have a good weekend, a safe weekend. May your skies be blue and your trees green.

This map of French, British and Spanish territories in the 'New World' when George took
 his first rides into the Ohio Territory fascinated me.I can't get over how large the French Louisianna
Territory and the disputed Ohio Territory was. The map came from a wonderful iPad App
 called Wikiview. Look up George Washington, George Washington and the French Indian
War, and Jumonville Glen.