Happy Memorial Day (to Me) : )

Happy Memorial Day, 2013, to everyone, and it's also my 56th birthday today. I've always enjoyed having a holiday weekend for most of my birthdays, but I can't remember too many times it has actually fallen on this day. There have been several Indy 500 races on my birthday and I graduated from college on my 22nd birthday. Hard to believe that was 34 years ago today!

Pictured above, is my reproduction 13-star flag, dating to the mid 1930s. It was probably bought first for either Connecticut's Tercentennial in 1935 or Guilford's in 1939. I hang it outside once or twice a year to prevent it from fading, although it's age-yellowed a bit.

I apologize to all of my readers for my absence lately. I'll be back to posting more regularly soon!

Happy Birthday to a Special Gal!

 

As I sit here freezing (it's about 20° outside tonight), the heat isn't working in two apartments at Pink Gardens, mine included, I really need to see some bright summery colors! And today also happens to be Artichoke Annie's birthday, one of my earliest and most supportive readers and now friends. While I can't send Annie a beautiful flower arrangement, I can brighten her day with these flowers from my past gardens. I hope you have a wonderful and very special birthday, Annie, you sure have brightened many of MY days!

Last but not Least:

 

I created this image two years ago of a Tangerine-colored 1969 Porsche 912 for Annie. She had one just like it "back in the day" and mentioned it in the comments section once. She mentioned that she didn't have many photos of it, if any, so I recreated it for her. I'm reprinting it today because it  fits in perfectly with this very "artandcolour" birthday post today.

Pssst, Singalong! "Happy Birthday to You..."

One of my original readers, TampaGranny, is celebrating her birthday today! Let's all gather 'round and sing "Happy Birthday" to her. Thank you so much, Granny, for all of your comments and support these paste [almost] three years! I hope you have a great day!

Above, a dark pink dahlia blooming in my cutting garden.

Heavenly Blue morning glories are almost twice as large as other varieties of glories, and I just love their color. They are very prolific, too, in both vine length and number of blooms. These photos are from a few days ago, the last time we had full sunshine!

Trying to escape from the cutting garden, these orange dahlias really caught my eye the other day.

 

The Victorian cast-iron planters in front of Pink Gardens are blooming profusely this year, with sweet potato vine, Vinca, geraniums, Joe-Pye, mini Dahlias, and these multi-colored morning glories. These dark blue and pink glories remind me of those Hubble photos of galaxies "floating around" in space.

 

A longer view of the blue morning glories. They're on three sides of my vegetable garden. I spent all summer weaving the vines in and out of the fencing, not letting them grow "upwards" until the very end of the summer. If you let them grow vertically too soon, they run out of things to climb on and then just weave themselves around each other. They're still pretty, but you don't get as much of a "bang for your buck" in just one big jumble. These vines are now almost twenty feet wide in every direction. Once they had cleared three sides of the fence, I let them do their thing naturally, growing upwards, and then they just took off. Now I enjoy hundreds of new blooms every day. I hope we have a very late frost this year!

Sometimes Just the Ad is Fake; Calling Dr. Mini!

Hey, at least I didn't put a hospital gown on it! Click to open 'er up in a larger size.

C H O P — This is a fake ad for a real Mini. Back in the halcyon days of Autoweek's Combustion Chamber Forum, before it combusted for realz, one of the posters there bought a brand new Mini Cooper (sorry, can't remember his forum name!). He posted several photos of his new baby online. One night, instead of doing any modifications to the car itself, I decided to create a few ads for the new car. This one, "Say, Ah" was a natural when I saw the diminutive sports hatch with every orifice wide open, lol.

I've never worked in the advertising side of the art world, preferring to stay on the editorial side of publishing. As I used to so cunningly say, "I preferred to tell the story, rather than sell the story." Apparently I also preferred socks with holes in them rather than socks with argyles on them. Editorial art directors never made anywhere near the salaries of our advertising counterparts, but I never was sorry for my decision. Working in newspapers, magazines and books, had been a lifelong dream for me, well until it wasn't anymore and I started working on my own art. Early on, I fell in love with the joys of journalism, bringing people's stories to the fore, their tragedies and their triumphs, teachable moments in many cases to use the vernacular of the day, I still do on a freelance basis. I always felt it was the 'honest' side of publishing, scrupulously honest as opposed to trying to 'put one over' on unsuspecting customers, but the decline of that honesty in the past decade or so is sad to me. I've worked with some of the best reporters, editors, publishers and authors of their day, and for that I'll be eternally grateful. That's a post for another day...

I've modified this ad slightly from its AWCC origins. My friend June owns a British Racing Green Mini Cooper, and since today is her birthday (why didn't her parents name her July, lol?) I thought I'd 'paint' this Cooper's original dark gray finish BRG to look just like her cheeky little car. Happy Birthday, June!