Happy Memorial Day

These flowers bloom on a pair of plants that grow outside my studio. The plants are currently not flowering. I took this photo several years ago. I always thought these flowers were rather weird, the way they hang down from droopy leaved bromeliads. They remind me of a pink flower I saw on a banana plant when we were in St. Thomas. They do affect my own artwork. I see similar ones in my own work.

Happy Memorial Day. I worked all day except when I took a little time to go visit my special friend. He's among those we can thank for keeping this country safe for many years. We owe them all a special thank, although a simple thanks seems hardly adequate.

Memorial Day is a serious, important holiday, but it also marks the beginning of summer. Here in Southern California that's not true exactly, at least where the weather is concerned. Sometimes it's cooler on Memorial Day and early June than it is in May. Today was warm enough to sit out in shirt sleeves.

Summer is a time for flowers even though in San Diego there are always flowers blooming somewhere. It does seem like a good season to draw them. I'm amazed at how I can think flowers and they appear out of the tip of my pen. That's all it takes: think flowers, and you get flowers. You sort of feel them into being.

Here in Spanish Village, I see the tourist and the local people taking photos of them. They take photos of the succulents, too, and the artists. We part of the scenery, some of us as unusual as the succulents, I suppose. And fortunately lots of us look just like every other plant.