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ARTISTIC ADVENTURES
We've spent the past two weeks at our favorite mid-Western vacation
spot in the peaceful wooded hills of Athens County, Ohio. Our son’s
little property there is slowly being transformed from an Appalachian
jungle into a pleasant country place.
The poison ivy and multiflora rose are lying low, nursing their
battle wounds from our efforts last year. The giant squash plant that threatened to block the front
door is gone. The rogue "foot-in-a-month" plant has disappeared
from the garden side of the driveway. Part of the lawn has more grass than
dandelions and the hostas are so healthy they’re choking out the weeds!
This spring the rhododendron bloomed as if freed from captivity!
Our time there, of course, was a working vacation rather than just a
leisurely loaf. We chose to help out with some of the maintenance and
renovation jobs awaiting the free time our son doesn’t have much of. We
mowed, weeded, trimmed, weed-whacked, burned trimmings and trash, ran errands and
spoiled his dog. But this year we got promoted!
In addition to all those routine, unskilled jobs, this year we were encouraged to express our artistic abilities. So, we
were painting
and sculpting. Most of you know, of course, that we have no artistic
gifts, so perhaps a word of explanation is in order.
The end result of my painting will never make it into an art museum.
Instead, it brightens the interior of Joel's little house. He describes the
decor chosen by the previous owner of his house as "Early
Circus," in both style and colors!
The most time-consuming part of my first artistic masterpiece was
putting a coat of primer paint on a pair of French doors. Despite their
nationality, I elected not to do them in the French impressionistic style
of painting. Instead, I created my own utilitarian approach: slap-it-on,
cover-it-up, keep-moving. What fun to watch the elephant gray, the clown
green and the balloon yellow disappear under the off-white primer!
Bruce was not slinging paint but sculpting in stone. No need for hammer
or chisel because he used a revolutionary technique called the "free
throw style." It was challenging and unpredictable because this is
how it worked. At the local "stone store" he filled the bed of
our pick-up truck twice with about two tons of limestone rip-rap. He then
positioned this load in the driveway right in the middle of the culvert
that crosses a little stream. Then, by hand and one by one, he "free
threw" the rocks down onto the north bank of the creek far below! In
this painstaking way, he created a stone wall to divert the stream which
was undermining the culvert.
Most of the rocks reached the target area. A few, however, ended up in
the stream and had to be rescued and repositioned. Stone chips too small
to strengthen the creek diversion wall were carefully shoveled into one of
the many potholes along the driveway. His rip-rap wall is a masterpiece in
process because he wants to build it even higher.
My second painting adventure was to prime one wall and all the woodwork
in one of the two little rooms upstairs in Joel’s house. Only the center
of the rooms have ceilings high enough to stand upright and they looked as
if they had not been inhabited by a live human being since lavender
woodwork was in fashion! Originally I thought the woodwork was an ugly
gray until I attacked it with a wet rag. Then I discovered that it was
actually an ugly shade of lavender instead! Baseboards, moldings, door
frame, window frame, several small storage pieces, a small area of floor
at the head of the stairs and the woodwork all the way down the stairs,
all lavender. Primer doesn’t cover dark colors well, as you may know,
but a coat or two, liberally applied, at least masked the color to a pale
purple!
We stayed long enough to see those two dingy upstairs rooms transformed
into a tolerable apartment for a friend who was in need of a place to
stay. Painted up, cleaned up, dressed up with curtains, and filled with
personal possessions it was hard to believe that it was the same room in
which I had earlier hidden the lurking lavender!
Bruce’s second stone sculpting adventure was a real father/son
bonding experience. With Joel expertly operating a rented Bobcat and Bruce
plying hand tools, they redesigned and constructed a safer driveway. It
took 85 tons of gravel to accomplish that feat but now there is a level
place at the roadside where a driver can pause and check traffic before
pulling out.
So, dear readers, as you can see, our working Midwestern vacation has
taken us into new, exciting (and exhausting!) endeavors. These new
artistic adventures had to be phased out, of course. Two weeks of such
physical work is all our old bodies can take. We also suspect that two
weeks of having us around 24/7 is about all our son can tolerate.
So, this morning we went back on the road in search of our next
adventure. The memories of the projects we completed, the resulting
improvements in Joel's house and his gratitude make every aching
muscle worth it!
6/29/2010 - mshr
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