Three Berry Summer Trifle

This is no trifling matter. First, you make homemade raspberry jam. Then you spend two days looking for locally baked ladyfingers. I eventually had to substitute pound cake from the bakery, cut it up and toasted it in the oven. Pick up blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. Then you make hand whipped cream and finally start building the dessert.

Scratch made dessert and sketches
I have to say that it requires steel clad reserves of self control to maintain a stoic artistic detachment while sketching this project. I am surrounded by sweet, warm oven smells, raspberry and strawberry perfume and bowls piled to the top with fluffy mounds of whipped cream. Aargh! The agony and the ecstasy!

Flowers in the window

I have three new classes starting this week, so I won't be saying too much about this painting. I'm just happy I got it posted.

 

My fellow sketchers are at Rosario today, for one more summer/fall afternoon. Since I am prepping lessons at home in the studio, I am posting a plein air piece that I did around this same time of year at a farm in Issaquah. It's a half sheet (15x22") size. I know a similar treatment could be applied to the picnic shelter there at Rosario. (I am there with you in spirit!)

Summer

I was a little girl alone in my little world who dreamed of a little home for me.

I played pretend between the trees, and fed my house guests bark and leaves, and laughed in my pretty bed of green. Attributed to Lieka Romeijn.

Summer is my favorite time of year, except for Spring and Fall. :-) The reason I love summer in the Pacific NW is that we get these weeks of beautiful sunny days to enjoy the lush green landscape that comes from the previous rainy season. Sprinkled all around are colorful wildflowers...they grow all by themselves along the shoulder of the freeways and on top of ridges with views of the ocean.

I discovered the poem above that perfectly expresses my own childhood, too.