Knee Deep in the Good Stuff

Tres Amigos ©2009 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord
SOLD • private collection, Attleboro, Massachusetts

These handsome fellas were hanging out in the pasture just on the other side of our fence a few days ago. I used a super zoom lens to capture the scene, but you’ll notice that the one on the far left has spotted the paparazzo. Even though technically we’re in the dead of winter, the day was so spring-like I just couldn’t resist adding the merest suggestion of blooms here and there in the painting.

And after I finished the painting and walked out in the yard with Trixie just a couple of hours ago I saw that today, while a lot of the country is still waist deep in snow, the paper whites out in the pasture have already started blooming.


Yeah. That’s what I love about the South.

Oh, and just to top off this wonderful day, I just got an email from a good friend letting us know that her brother, who has been on a waiting list for 2 years for a liver transplant, has received a new liver and will be having it installed tonight at midnight. Praise God for answered prayer! (Just to show you the sense of humor my friend Mona has: the subject on her email was "LIVER!!! (but not with onions)." That really cracked me up. And that's one of the reasons we've been friends for 20-something years.

Lest you think I forgot, here are the ever popular work-in-progress photos of today's painting:









And a few close-up details:

When satellite goes bad

We’ve been having trouble this week with our satellite connection. The connection speed has slowed down to SLOWER THAN DIAL-UP! So frustrating, so no blogging. Isn’t it funny how fast luxuries become necessities? I’m so spoiled. It’s an amazing thing to be able to have access to the world wide web at any speed, actually, when you think about it. So I shouldn’t complain. But I was really happily surprised when this photo uploaded without timing out on me!

Earlier in the week weather.com predicted a couple of nights in the 20’s for us, and I knew these pretty little flowers might be all brown the next morning, so I went out in the yard and the pasture in the drizzling rain and cut bunches of them to bring in and put in vases so we could enjoy them longer. The little white ones, the paperwhites, are unbelievably fragrant. I’m very grateful for the way they mask almost completely the smell of wet dog when Henry, Trixie and I come in from a rainy walk.

Tomorrow I’ll try to post some more painting pictures for you, even if it takes all afternoon for them to upload!

Gearing up for spring

Our new stove was delivered on Saturday! Not to say that cooking with the microwave, toaster oven, crock pot and camp stove for 7 months hasn’t been fun and everything, but I would just like to let out a hearty, “WA-HOO!”

Anyway, getting the new stove in place has inspired me to gear things up around here, so we’ve been unpacking boxes that have been sitting “in storage” upstairs for weeks (nay, months) and finding places to put things away. In a few cases, I would open a box, look in it and think why the heck are we keeping this? So there was a Goodwill pile and a Salvation Army pile and a trash pile. My mom came over Saturday and helped by cleaning out and washing the inside of some of the kitchen cupboards I’ve been putting off. (When we moved in I cleaned just enough space for us to have a little room for our dishes and some pantry space - why go overboard, you know?)

I organized a staging area for our trash and recycling (a place to keep it until we take it to the compactor site.) I even cleaned up the breakfast nook, a.k.a. my “temporary” office space, which had gotten quite out of control.

And while I’ve been engaged in a flurry of organizing activity inside, look what happened when I wasn’t looking:


Yes, whilst Pioneer Woman and her clan are playing in the snow and feeding their horses in snow covered pastures, our paperwhites are busy blooming their little heads off out in the pasture. I just love living in the South! And I love flowers you don’t have to plant or water or anything. Well, I guess you do have to plant these if you don’t having any growing around, but then you don’t have to do much of anything and they just keep on coming back! These were planted several generations back, I think. Maybe longer. I wonder if the person who planted them thought about us here in the future, being blessed by the fruits of their labor?


I feel inspiration coming on ... I think it’s time to paint!

For the Beauty of the Earth

For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the beauty of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower,
sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of ear and eye,
for the heart and mind's delight,
for the mystic harmony,
linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of human love,
brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth and friends above,
for all gentle thoughts and mild;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For thy church, that evermore
lifteth holy hands above,
offering up on every shore
her pure sacrifice of love;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For thyself, best Gift Divine,
to the world so freely given,
for that great, great love of thine,
peace on earth, and joy in heaven:
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

Text: (1864) Folliot S. Pierpoint
Music: (1838) Conrad Kocher; Arr. by W.H. Monk