Creative Slump?

I've been working on various aspects of the upcoming exhibition at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum on Harker's Island, NC and have nearly finished.  All I have left to do is to take my paintings to the Museum so it's a relief to get most of the preparations behind me.

I think I've mentioned it before but after a marathon painting period, I sometimes go into a creative slump where I don't want to see another canvas, paintbrush or tube of paint!  Well, it's happened this time too but I was determined to keep painting through it.

We planted a new-to-us variety of that old Southern staple, okra, and it's gorgeous!  Really, it's gorgeous.  It's a beautiful variegated maroon color with bits of lime green in it.  It's not often that mundane garden veggies inspire me to paint them but did I mention that this okra is gorgeous?

That's why I chose a few pods of it to try to paint through this slump.  I know I haven't done it justice.  Reds are notoriously hard to shade properly - if you add white, you get pink instead of a lighter shade of red.  You can supposedly add yellow to lighten but that doesn't always work either so I just did the best I could with it.  It was a learning piece and I wasn't expecting a masterpiece so wasn't all that disappointed when I didn't achieve one!

Another reason I wanted to paint is that I received some new paint from an order I placed a while ago.  I've been painting in alkyd oils for a while now and I really like them so I ordered some replacement (& new) colors in various brands so I could compare them.  They only just arrived yesterday so I'll let you know what I think about them in another post after I've had time to play with them a bit more.

In the meantime, I'll be in the studio painting!

Harvest Time

Pickled Okra and Jalapeno Peppers

It's that time of the year again when we have to do something with all the goodies from our garden.

Even though we no longer have a traditional working farm, we do like to have a garden and we certainly like to eat from the garden all year long.  In order to do that, we have to either freeze or can produce as soon as it's ready for harvest.

As I said, we love to have our own produce available during the winter months but preserving that produce sure eats into any art time!

Right now we have peppers of all kinds, tomatoes and a few okra plants producing like crazy and something needs to be done with it.  We enjoy sharing with friends & acquaintances who don't have a garden but even though we cut back on what we plant each spring, it seems we still have the same amount of harvest!

We canned 4 pint jars of jalapeno peppers today along with the okra but that's just a drop in the bucket as to what we'll use between now and next year's garden!  My husband loves hot peppers and could go through a jar in just a couple of days!  We plan to can quart jars of the various peppers tomorrow - oh, my burning hands!

We also put some fresh sweet corn in the freezer.  We don't plant corn because of the problems with deer and raccoons but a neighbor gave us some of his harvest today and it looks beautiful.  I know we'll enjoy it this winter too!

There are also tomatoes & squash in the freezer and I've made both fermented sour pickles and sweet bread 'n butter pickles and canned string beans.  The green beans, squash and cucumbers are nearly finished but we still have field peas left to harvest plus lots and lots of peppers.

Hopefully we can get everything in the freezer or the canner soon  and I can get back to painting.