When cats garden

Fancy Cherry Blossom News from our Nation's Capitol

the obligatory cherry blossom picture, taken with the Sony DSLR and it's stock lens kit on April 2nd.

Fancy News from the Past

On my recent trip I barely budgeted enough time to take some photos of my old artwork in Washington, DC, but here is one - a leaded/stained glass entry transom window that I designed and made in about 1981 or so.

Fancy News, it is still Springtime in Vermont

Springtime in Vermont is a good time to get outside and say hello to neighbors.



Springtime in Vermont is a lot like Fallas, though not as well-attended. La Primavera en Vermont es muy parecido a las Fallas, pero sin botellón.




another bread shot, (I am still knocked out by the New York Times bread recipe).

Fancy News - home again, home again, jig, a jig-jig

Here in Springfield, Vermont, (Official Home of the Simpson's), the snow has melted enough for me to sweep the sidewalk, the solar collector is going full blast, and I am busy doing hand-built forms in clay for a primitive firing later in the Spring or in the Summer.
I continue to have great success with that recipe from the NYTimes for killer breads, the recipe that appeared last Fall.
Then there is the garden, it awakens suddenly and it's first words are to the birds of course, but it's second call is for me to come and groom and ready it for a Summer of fun! (LMAO/MPEC) Hay que ver, que enseguida llegan dias largos, por frio que siga siendo, el jardin llama desde el primer dia que llegan los pajaros, ni siquiera dirritido toda la nieve! Vale pues, no hay remedio, el jardin es un trabajo y hay que hacerlo y ya. Vuelto de Washington, y lleno de historias ...

Fancy News - it's Springtime in Vermont - sidewalk café in Brattleboro, can more public nudity be far behind?

You know it's Springtime when the people begin sprouting up in the sunshine!

FancyNews: a manipulated Moon image

a fine dreamscape of rowing in the dusk on a still evening, photo © by Edward Huse, 2008.

Fancy News: Last Moonrise of the Winter

Yesterday the turbulent skies guaranteed something to photograph, and when I saw the Moon shoot into view I knew what I had to do - the trusty Saab lept like a gazelle at my command, to fly up, up the hill to the transmitter and find a clear shot.
Moments later the snow shower that had been threatening to horn in finally caught up and ended the creamy blue sunset/moonrise. This is one of the resulting images captured on the digital slr which I like very much, the Sony Alpha 100, (handheld capture in raw file at automatic settings, cropped, but otherwise unadjusted).

Fancy news for real

Recently, my favorite client of all time and old friend down South in Washington called on me to come there and do some remedial decorative work in her little mansion in that city - the thought of a house repair that required cutting into a very elaborately developed mural in her home had us all bothered, but not much. After all, it gives us a fine chance to get together and run around and see the museums and have mild adventures motoring about the Nation's Capital.
You have to admit, a lush, lyrical, moody or misty decorative finish, or a full-blown mural, that results from the happy interaction between the patronesse or patron and the artist is a joy to live with, especially when the alternative is "eggshell white" out of the can.
Isn't it time for you to graduate from that "dorm room" look and dress up your crib, pad, pied a terre, flat, mansion or petit palaise with artwork or decorative treatments by Edward Huse?
Treat yourself today, send a plane ticket and a big check, and see your ordinary drywall turn into a unique and special setting for you and your family and friends.
Line forms to the right.

Fancy News - A Barn Raising!

"Barn Raising" - it sounds bucolic, old-timey, and fun. And it was - even if at the end it seemed more proper to call the event a canopy deployement rather than a barn raising since there was little timber framing, and none aloft, where the high arched components did however create a fine looking barrel vault that amazingly creates quite the "basilica/barn" effect. The aerodynamics of this kind of canopied service structure are so far more important a variable than it's weight, that it is more like a glider than a barn, so I hereby coin a new phrase analogous to "barn raising" and to be used in the same way: "barn mooring", which refers to the permanent assembly and fixed location of any inflated, canopy type, air-pressure-dependent, or otherwise aero-static barn or outbuilding, in deference to it's innate preference for flight.
Very interesting it was indeed to see it happen over the last few snowy weeks. This new cow barn has a lot of what is beautiful about a barn, even though it is so odd to see that kind of a big bubble structure in a pastoral setting - like a giant Bibelót lying in a field sleeping off a night of clubbing.
The work has all happened in cold weather. In particular, Chip told me that it was a bear just to sink the holes for the wooden beams that sit deep in the ground to anchor the structure. It has been a comparatively mild Winter, yet on any given day it has been as cold as it needs to be outside if you are working with your hands.
Above is a picture of the activity surrounding the creation of that new cow barn at Lisa's new W.A.W.W.E Farm Store the other day, that I took with the Sony digital DSLR A100k camera. I am still learning to use this image capture device, (but it is an easy study).
This barn will serve as a festive, convenient, and easy to maintain cow barn for Lisa's exquisite milk cows - for the famous Jersey Girls of Chester, Vermont, as a matter of fact.
The milk from these cows is like something you thought you had to take a time machine to find anymore.

More Fancy News from Exciting Vermont

What a riot! I thought I left the big city behind when I moved here! The Simpsons Movie opening on the twentyfirst is still having repercussions. Yesterday I was interviewed by telephone by a popular national radio station in Spain, (www.cadenaser.com - find Maria Guerra's Ventana show for the 26th, it will probably be available as a podcast) quite thrilling to prepare for, and when it happened it was flat out fun. I rec'd several telephone calls from friends in Spain letting me know how surprised and amused they were too, LOL/MPEC.

Ayer me entrevistaron en la Cadena Ser (www.cadenaser.com - hay que buscar "la Ventana" de Maria Guerra, del dia 26 del presente, a lo mejor se encuentra como podcast en iTunes). Me conocieron atraves de la reportera Barbara Celis quien tuve placer de conocer esa tarde del estreno. Buscava un lugar central, para observar a ver que puedo hacer o ver, ya que la tarde iva terminandose aunque seguia movimiento. y dentro de poco veo una reportera muy interesante poseando con su fotografo en frente de donde todos los estrellas havian hecho su pasarela en frente del teatro, con camiseta en castellano -
Le pregunto -"Hola, sois de la prensa de alguna parte?"
ella - "Si, de Espanya ... "
yo - "No me digas, de El Pais?"
ella -"Vaya, pues si, espera, eres de aqui? Como es que hablas
espanyol?"
yo - "Si Ms Corresponsal, soy de aqui, y si, hablo espanyoooool"
ella entonces saca su boli y me hace preguntas, hablamos media hora, cambiamos tarjetas y tal, y terminamos invitandole a ella y al fotografo a una paella esa noche (no llegaron, pues se les hizo tarde y estavan de trabajo, pero me escribieron un email gracioso dando las gracias y para darme el pdf del articulo que salio en "El Pais" hoy dia 26 en la seccion de Cultura, lo has visto?)
Ella se llama Barbara Celis, reportera en NYC para El Pais, y me dijo por email esta manyana que le havia dado mi tarjeta a un socio en Cadena Ser/radio Valencia, llamado Javier Del Pino creo.
Entonces llamo ella a Javier en Barcelona, averiguando los detalles, y me explico de que dentro de poco llamarian para poner me en vivo en la radio.
Hace poco rato mas, llamo una assistenta para entrevistarme y sacar algunos mas detalles, y dentro de poco llamo Maria Guerra y me presento a los RADIO AUDIENTES EN ESPANYAAAA!!!! que risa, y sigo riendo!!!
Now back to the garden.

Fancy News - Exciting Times in Vermont, by Edward Huse, 2007

Today was an excellent weather day.
The tomato seedlings are looking mighty beefy, and next week they will start living outdoors, or maybe the week after next, (or wheneverthehell Summer finally starts and the nights don't frost over anymore).
There are also very robust lavender seedlings, and some annuals.
Both the tomato plants and the lavender plants each are grown enough by now to produce fresh floral smells, however neither one as yet smells the way it should (the tomato smells not a whit like a tomato plant on a summer day, etc.) but rather each has some odd smell that our acquaintance Dr. Macrovertigo ascribes to the plants' ancient alien roots, a juvenile characteristic that quickly fades as a given plant matures. All present expressed amazement or amusement, one laughed out loud, and very soon a party was in full swing.
Recently, I took the good old Saab to the new mechanic, for diagnosis and repair of unnerving hard shifting symptoms - I already knew that they are incredible at this shop, so I was glad to have them go over the machine. Even so, I was pleasantly surprised.
Instead of diagnosing the problem as some exotic mechanical crisis and charging us any amount, they charged less than an hour of labor to clean an accumulation of dirt in what is apparently is characteristic for good old Saabs - (a bearing on a shaft that moves to push the plate against flywheel sits in a channel that can collect dirt sometimes). Ray even showed me how to access and clean out the channel myself whenever it happens again!
And wait, there's more - suddenly like magic, the key no longer gets stuck in Lock position - huh!?
Unbeleivable! All of this instead of a 6 or 7 Hundred Dollar Repair!
(I express glee because I have gone through the experience of hunting for a mechanic in a new town. For example, I once had a car with that developed a rattle that I took around to different mechanics - each of 7 mechanics told me some variation of impending transmission and/or engine failure, one cautioned me to stop driving it for my own safety and to sell it to him for seventy five dollars! I finally found the right place when they diagnosed a U-joint prob that was fixed in twenty minutes for 60 dollars.)
The Artist is way pleased.
Who says nothing exciting ever happens in Vermont?

Turkeys and ruined bridges in Vermont, by Edward Huse, 2007

[This was written on April thirtieth.]
Today I drove the back roads to Rochester. The weather was beautiful. The rivers are busy this time of year - full but not ferocious. They are still wicked fast though, like thick viscous clear liquid glass running by as fast as possible.
It is a definately scenic route, so that the drive itself was great in the trusty, zippy old Saab. And then to arrive itself is a pleasure, it is so nice there in the little town of Rochester, Vermont. Everyone's gardens are perking up there, things are looking crisp and green already, the chickens were out busy, and the mechanics were taking a break watching traffic while I made a judicious u-turn to visit a bike shop.
The turns can be decieving, and on the way home I almost ran over a couple of turkeys - Who says they can't fly?!
They split in different directions. One played possum at the side of the road, but the other lept instantly into muscular flight and sailed through the woods and over the river with apparently just one initial swift stroke. I was very impressed. It was like watching a C5 cargo plane taking off from a hot zone at dawn or something.
This happened right after I passed a favorite view of a ruined bridge that is only visible during 'stick season' - that, plus the awe-inspiring turkey exhibition of powered flight, made me stop at the next turn-off and make a few drawings, one of them is here.