Dark stars, autumn roadsides

Two more in the series Astrological Plants of the Squamish Valley -- and the year's not over yet! For several months, I've been looking forward to switching colour gears and working on these two signs together: Sagittarius and Capricorn. Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, associated with the colours blue, violet, purple, red-indigo, deep midnight. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, associated with indigo, grey, black, dark brown, sage green, mottled tones. My aim was to "work in the dark" to create a strong tonal contrast within the overall Astro-Plants series.

Here's Capricorn, which can be viewed in progress here.

The plants assigned to Saturn include leathery-leaved plants like holly, ivy and wintergreen so my choice of our omnipresent salal seemed a natural. (To non-locals, the name's pronounced "sha-LALL" -- as in the Latin name. But maybe everyone knows this if salal truly is omnipresent -- years ago, we saw salal in a Parisian florist's sidewalk buckets). Salal's scrumptious-looking deep blue-black berries, dried in quantity to last the winter, were a staple of traditional First Nations diets. My mouth was watering as I tried my first -- and last -- salal berry. It tasted just like eucalyptus-flavoured Mentholatum. The painting's rather austere, but it's turned out to be one of my favourites.

Along our Upper Squamish roadsides, salal is often the background to an abundant autumn display of snowberries -- the plant chosen to represent Sagittarius.

You can view it in progress here.

Jupiter, the planetary ruler of this sign, is the champion of berries of all kinds so I couldn't miss with this choice. I know snowberries from our years in the East and, wisely I think, never gave them a taste. I don't remember their growing as abundantly there as they do in our coastal valleys. The sight of them hanging in bright white bundles against the rich dark coppers, deep magentas, and olive-blacks of wet fading leaves has always stirred me.

I spy...tiny little eyes

I've noticed the Province of BC has a new tourism ad based on the children's game, "I spy...." That's the game in which one person says, "I spy something purple..." (for example) and everyone else looks around and tries to guess what it is.

Nice try, BC, but not as truly spectacular as the real-life game I witnessed one hot day on a crowded bus played by an enthusiastic father and his two small sons. The dad spoke with an English accent and had a unique (English?) twist on the script, at least one I'd never heard before. His opening line was, "I spy with my tiny little eyes..." I wondered if he was on leave from the Royal Shakespeare Company -- he was that into the whole drama of the thing. The 5-year-old could barely wait his turn and had a witty originality in the objects he selected. The 3-year-old enchanted with his carefully enunciated lisp: "I thspy wiff my tiny little eyeth." Everyone in the front of the bus, including a tough-looking tattooed adolescent, was completely mesmerized.

The tourism ad and the memory of the tiny little eyes brought to mind a painting I'd made in 2007, another under the heading of "I couldn't resist giving it a try." I assembled all my cat figurines (most of them gifts, one hand-me-down, one outright purchase) and a bunch of semi-related stuff and tried to bring them all together. The outcome is "White Cats and Rumi-Blue" -- with a salute to my friend Rumi, originally a work-buddy with whom there was an instant bond on the subjects of cats and the mellow softer-than-navy colour that pervades this painting.

I know everything that's wrong here...so many objects, so many tiny little eyes...but I still like the cats and the colour! I thought I'd learned the lesson with a 2009 painting, "The Wishful Bird" ...but still too many small fiddly details.

The little guys below arrived too late for the "White Cats" painting -- a parting gift received as I walked out the retirement door at the end of 2009. I spy their tiny little eyes and know that I can just enjoy them without trying to put them in a painting.