Last Pieces of the Landscape of Holiday

Fish Flower Launch

There are rituals in a place where you've been spending months of the summer for fifty years.  There are objects you see that make time tumble back.  There are new things that quickly become home. 

We sit on the porches at different times of day, watching island life, reading our books, eating our lunch, toasting each other, kibitzing. So when I got to the final pages of Holiday Home, I went to the porch.  But my porch was an amalgamation, a summary, a romanticized view. It could never be the way I composed it, and I did compose it so I saw it that way, stacking footstools on stools to raise the horizon to incorporate the sea, hanging rugs on fences, placing flowers high.

Flowers Kantha China

From Porch to Pier

Towards the end of the book I began to turn to the more complex aspects of my view… Most years Patrick builds something that becomes a feature of the garden.  His structures grow out of the landscape.  

Driftwood Garden and Chair

And as I closed one book I was able to work into another.  Yesterday as we walked around the beach the red flag and the rocks made me pause long enough to get something down. Inspired by words on the page, I drew the porch at night and a few days ago on another windy walk, with wind that wanted to lift my chair into the air, the white caps, clouds scuttling by and white rocks beyond Preble stopped me in my tracks.

Low Tide and Red Flag

Night Paddock

Wind and Whitecaps