I'll tell you all about this week's project in a minute, but first, a note about something I love about Belle Plaine: Tonight, someone's kid(s) had a moment they will remember all their lives. I don't know who may have won the state baseball tournament, or maybe it was the spelling bee, but as happens about once a year, long slow sirens and the honking of horns were heard, and I, like all the neighbors, stepped out on my porch to watch a firetruck, waving kids hanging out the windows, leading a parade of honking vehicles through town to the schools. It doesn't matter if the winners come home at 1:00 in the morning, if you're a kid in this town, and you achieve something big, there are grown-ups who will meet you at the city limits to make sure the whole town celebrates you. Sometimes I think this town is as backwards as they come, but tonight I'm reminded that it's full of some really fine people.
(The gray is because it was still wet when I shot this photo. Click to enlarge, click again to zoom)
I spent the week with some really fine people, sculpting this hummingbird vine over their dining room windows. As fine as the people, their fine feathered friends really stole my heart. Their home is on a peninsula of land between two creeks, and they have a backyard full of bird feeders. In the last four days, I saw orioles, black-capped chickadees, ruby throated hummingbirds, rose breasted grosbeaks, cardinals, red bellied woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, blue jays, mourning doves, house finches, purple finches, wild turkeys, white breasted nuthatches, yellow bellied sapsuckers, chipmunks, and four squirrels, two of which were so fat, they could be mistaken for small bears. Okay, that last bit is an exaggeration, but the list is not.
I have never seen so many birds of so many varieties at one time in my life, and to watch the different species interact, which ones played nice, which ones chased others away, was so distracting, I actually ended up working an extra day (okay, part of that was the usual "plan the job one way, then dream up a way it could look even cooler" thing that I do). Still, to spend the last four days sculpting pretties, plus some other decorating, for these two gentle souls, in the refuge they have created was the very best way I could have spent the work week. Heaven on Earth. Sanctuary. Ahhhhhh.
(click and click again)
And just to give you an idea of the endless options, here's another version of hummingbird plaster, done with Italian style scroll work, for the traditional home of one of my favorite customers and dear friend...
cell phone shots, better ones to come.
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