Dandelion Fluff Balls

     I realize that dandelions are among the most hated plants around, but I don’t mind them all that much.  I am not a big fan of sterile looking mono-cultured lawns and enjoy the variety and changes of a mixed lawn.   I know dandelions can make a lawn look shabby, but area around McBride sometimes looks like it could be the Dandelion Capital of the World, and they are such a persistent and vibrant plant, I think we might as well accept their presence and recognize their benefits.

    A lot of living things depend on dandelions.  I have seen bears sitting in a field of them chowing down on them, and when I had a herd of Angora goats, when the dandelion flowers were in bloom, their muzzle around their mouths were often caked with dandelion pollen.  I have even seen our dog Kona, chewing on dandelion stems.  Of course the obvious benefactor of the plant are bees and other pollinators.  

    The sea of yellow dandelion blooms that covered our lawn and fields have now changed into balls of fluff.  I couldn’t help but notice them this morning on my walk and took these photos.   I confess that I do find the fluff balls attractive.  Once their fluffy seeds have taken flight in the wind, I don’t find those  empty stems that stick up all over attractive, so I will enjoy the dandelions during this brief period when they still have the fluff.  Once that is gone, I do mow the plant down.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Banner Is Up

     Last winter I spent months painting a picture of McBride’s Horse Rescue that was one of several paintings that were to be made into banners that would adorn the light posts along Main Street.  I was informed the other day that the banners were now hung and I was anxious to see how mine looked.  I was going to take photos of all of the banners, but when I went to take the photo of mine that the powerful rain squall took place so I quickly took a photo of mine and scrambled back to our car.

    Painting this picture was a memorable experience.  Here is what I wrote about the ordeal:

When asked to do a street banner on the subject of the McBride Horse Rescue , I was full of apprehension.  Although I had been painting almost daily since 2005, my realistic paintings were always based on my own photos, and I didn’t have any photos of the horse rescue. 

I was concerned with the vertical shape of the banner.  Composition is very important and having to come up with a painting showing the horse rescue on a two foot by four feet canvas seemed problematic.  In photos of the rescue, the brightness of the snow, made the rescuers and horses very dark and difficult to distinguish, so I used Photoshop to brighten the colors of clothes, and to highlight part of the horses by dabbling some sunshine on their backs, so from a distance they would look more distinct.   I also added that last rescuer from another photo.

When I paint I divide the canvas into two inch squares; painting one square at a time.  I paint with the canvas on my lap, looking at the square I am painting; enlarged on my computer monitor.  I couldn't paint a vertical four foot high canvas on my lap, so I painted the whole thing sideways on my lap, looking at the square on the computer that I had also flipped sideways.

My two foot by four foot canvas contained 288 two inch squares.  The picture took me 188 hours to paint.   I am not used to painting people's faces and found painting those squares terrifying, and I got really tired of painting all of those manys squares of snow.

You can view my other paintings by going to:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Very Sudden Intense Squall

     Mountainous areas can experience sudden changes of the weather, but nevertheless, I was sure surprised yesterday afternoon at just how quickly and powerfully the weather changed on us.  

    We had decided to drive into town to take Kona on a walk at Horseshoe Lake.  As we approached town, the weather over McBride was sunny with some clouds, but we did notice some very dark and threatening clouds on the horizon west of town.  We got to Horseshoe Lake and began our walk, and that is when I took the photo above which shows the blue sky over the mountains.

    We had barely begun our walk when my wife started to have trouble with her back, so we turned around and headed back to the car.  Just before getting into the car, I noticed on the horizon how much closer and quicker those threatening dark clouds had gotten to us.  The dark clouds looked so ominous that I whipped out my camera and snapped the photo below.

    We then made the very short drive to the Whistle Stop Gallery and while my wife popped inside, I decided to quickly walk the block down to the grocery store.  Suddenly a fierce, cold wind came up forcing me to turn around and head back to the car.  I was shocked by the extreme power of the wind whose powerful gusts threatened to blow me sideways off of my feet as I quickly jogged back to the car.  Cold drops of rain were stinging me on the face.

    I couldn’t believe how cold it suddenly was.  At Horseshoe Lake when we had gotten in the car, the outside temperature was 12°C (54°F) but by the time we were driving back home from town after our abbreviated trip, the temperature had dropped to 5°C (41°F).  I was still chilled from my cold walk back to the car at the Whistle Stop Gallery.

    It was an amazing display of how quickly a low pressure squall can move in and totally change the  weather.   Back home and forty-five minutes later, the storm was already over and the clouds were beginning to break up and show some blue sky again.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

It's A Jungle Out There

     One mid-winter day a couple of years after we had moved to the Robson Valley and everything was covered with snow, I was looking through some slides I had taken the previous summer, and I was shocked to see just how lush, green, and jungle-like everything was.  It is something you generally aren’t aware of, when it is there all around you, but this morning during my walk around the pond, I happened to look across at the neighbor’s property, and noticed the thick, tangled, wall of green that was there.

    In years past I had cleared a walking path through that jungle of growth.  It was terribly hard to maintain that trail because of the thick vibrant growth that was always encroaching and the many big branches and trees that periodically fell across the trail.  Eventually, I just gave up on the trail, because it became just too much work.

    We do live in an Interior Temperate Rain Forest, even though lately it has been very dry.  Yesterday’s heavy rain seems to have invigorated all of the green that surrounds us, and that is probably what made me notice the “jungle” beside us.   If one had to walk through it, a machete would be helpful to aid your fight through the tangle, otherwise your bushwhacking would be very tedious and frustrating.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca