Pay It Forward Blogfest - Oct. 14, 2011

Today, I'd like to share with you links to 3 of my favorite blogs. Thank you, Jessica Bell, for mentioning Appalachian Morning on your blog and Matthew MacNish for the info on how to participate in this Pay It Forward Blogfest.


Note: I love every one of the Lucky Press authors' blogs, so in the interest of fairness am excluding them from consideration on the list below, as well as any of my wonderful freelance clients. If you want to see their blogs, you can find the complete list at this link and freelance clients under "client list" or "references" at this link.


1. Art-related blog: Drawn "Your daily source of inspiration for illustration, animation, cartooning, and comic art." This blog was responsible for my recent purchase of the entire set of Famous Artist School books on ebay!


2. Photography-related: CyberKen  "Here you will find easy-to-understand articles and videos about inexpensive and in most cases free tools for Web productivity." I love the way Thomas C. Davis explains things and offers tips.


3. Writing/Book-related: Rachel Simon The author of "The Story of Beautiful Girl," "The House on Teacher's Lane," and "Riding the Bus with My Sister," shares generously with published-writers-to-be, readers, and people interested in the disabilities and sibling communities about writing, marketing, speaking, disabilities, and basically the ins and outs of a busy, successful writer's life. Rachel's blog is inspirational and informative. 

The Art of Autism and a NYC Show!

"Fast Food" by Bryce Merlin

Self-Portrait by Bryce Merlin

We are excited as our family plans to meet in NYC at the SoHo Digital Arts Gallery for "The Art of Autism" show on October 27, 2011 (6-9 pm) and a special performance event and film showing on the 28th. My son, Bryce Merlin (age 30), has had four drawings accepted into the show, organized by Debra Hosseini, author of "Artism: The Art of Autism," SoHo Digital Arts Gallery, and Keri Bowers of Normal Films. Other wonderful artists will be there as well, from the U.S. and other countries such as Israel and Morocco.

Like everyone on the face of the earth, Bryce has experienced challenges. He has strengths and weaknesses, dreams, and ideas. He is himself and all that brings, surprising those he meets with his creativity, persistence, and approach. Bryce also faces obvious hurdles as he navigates through life in yellow glasses, yellow hearing aid, yellow shoes and a hand-painted T-shirt featuring Sponge Bob Squarepants. He is friendly, verbal, and colorful. (We are in discussion on what to wear while in New York. Since his only other visit there was on September 9 - 12, 2001, this 10-year anniversary visit is going to be extra special to our family.)


Here is more information on the gallery show/event and Outsider Art:

Artism: The Art of Autism
By Debra Hosseini

ARTISM: The Art of Autism

Opening Reception Thursday, October 27th, 2011 6pm – 9pm

SoHo Gallery for Digital Art

138 Sullivan St., New York, NY 10012 

(212) 228-2810

About The Art of Autism and Debra Hosseini

Visit Debra's page on Facebook

Artism: The Art of Autism compiled by Debra Hosseini, edited by Rosa Martinez, Ph.D, with a foreword by Karen Simmons, CEO of Autism Today and Keri Bowers, film producer. This book features 54 artists on the autism spectrum and essays by Dr. Darold Treffert, Stephen Shore, and Colin Zimbleman on autism and art.

About the Special Performance Event on Oct. 28, 2011:

Keri Bowers of Normal Films

“The Art of Autism is a multi-city tour featuring performers on the autism spectrum - bands, dance, comedy, monologues, artists.”

Friday, October 28: 6-10 p.m. at The SoHo Gallery for Digital Art

About the Gallery: 

"SoHo Gallery for Digital Art is dedicated to re-establishing SoHo as an international center for the development of new artistic forms, concepts and ideas.” John Ordover, owner. Learn more here.

About Bryce Merlin: 

In 2005, Bryce received a grant from the Ohio Arts Council toward production of a book of his stories and artwork: Notes from Ohio. It is 64 pages and available on Amazon for $6, with all sales revenue going directly to Bryce.

“To say that this book is inspiring is an understatement. I was moved to tears by Bryce's faith, passion and desire to give hope to others. The book is filled with a collage of captivating stories told directly from Bryce's big heart. You will find adventure, love and even laughter through his experiences. In addition to his essays, Bryce shares his artwork and photos of he and his family celebrating life. Notes from Ohio is a touching, heartfelt read that is guaranteed to lift anyone's spirits! Bryce is a beacon of hope for young people everywhere.”

~Melissa Kline, author of young adult fiction, My Beginning

About Outsider Art: 

“Learning about Outsider Art”  (June 2009)

“Michael Jackson Drawings” (July 2009)

Links to My Favorite Outsider Art Links (on My Delicious)

"Mom" by Bryce Merlin

© 2011 by Janice Phelps Williams. All rights reserved. www.janicephelps.com

A Pumpkin Is Frightened, a Person Dies

Last October a writers' group on Facebook gave a prompt for a story that began with a pumpkin. I wrote a few lines and that prompt planted a seed and a few days later I learned of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), held every November. I decided to participate and a few paragraphs about a pumpkin that witnessed a suicide became the start of the first draft of "The Memory Tree" a novel about two brothers, a robbery, and the Athens Lunatic Asylum. I reached the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words within 30 days, but then the story languished on my computer. Recently, I began looking closer at three novels I had in various stages of completion, trying to discern which to finish and submit, after a lot of work, to an agent. In looking at the following paragraphs as they are in "The Memory Tree," I am not sure if they will make the final cut, because the book takes place in 1939-1941 and this scene is from the mid 1990s. 

Last night I read it again and thought, well, maybe it can be a story for the blog and so I offer it here. In memory of Allie Dickinson, who died much too soon.

PUMPKIN

by Janice Phelps Williams

A woman called Erin picked me and four other pumpkins off the back of a truck one Saturday morning, loaded us into the trunk of her car, and off we went to her home, a house that smelled like cinnamon, cigarette smoke, and hot cider. There were a lot of decorations as well as stencils, knives, markers, candles. The dining room table was covered with a vinyl cloth and music filled the house. 

After a bath in the sink, Erin dried me with a kitchen towel and placed me on the wooden table next to the others, ready for my destiny. Her hands were strong and I felt like something good was happening to me.

Soon, I had a mouth, eyes, a nose, a lid, a candle. When the candle was lit, late in the evening when the party was well underway, the scent of warm pumpkin wafted through the dining room and into the living room where Erin had hidden a gun under the fish tank there. It was her spare gun and you might wonder why a woman needs one gun, let alone a spare. But she did, she needed it for something.

The next morning when the guests had gone home and Erin's boots laid on their sides over the register in the kitchen floor, warm, gas-heated air drying bits of pumpkin pulp on one heel, Erin slept fitfully on the couch.

She drank too much Black Velvet, always. Though recently she'd tried her best to quit altogether. There were not enough cigarettes to smoke that desire away. Her favorite place to be was a neighborhood bar with a small dance floor where she wooed other women with her attentive blue eyes. Everything would be wonderful for a few months, maybe even a year, then "hell in a hand basket" was an appropriate cliche for the relationship's turn. There were a lot of empty baskets in Erin's closet.

Her wood frame two-story house, ninety years old but renovated and quaint, had windows that faced the Ridges, a hill above the town where the state mental hospital had been built in the late 1800s. In winter she could see the top of the buildings there, silent now since the asylum had closed years earlier. I couldn't see all this from the front porch, and that is where I was placed.

When Halloween had come and gone, Erin kept celebrating with friends, then alone. She drank on Sunday and on Monday called off work. She called in on Tuesday, and I think it was a good job she had too...said there was a family emergency. Said she needed to use a few of her vacation days. 

Wednesday night she went down to the liquor store and bought two more bottles of Black Velvet and two six-packs of beer, then came home and called her niece in Illinois, a college friend in Sedona, and Liz. I could hear her voice through the window, talking on the phone.

At two a.m. the candle that had burned inside of me all evening was finally spent and extinguished itself in the tiny foil cup at its bottom; my face went dark and I, too, went to sleep until the plopping sound of the Dispatch woke me in the morning of my last day as a jack o’lantern.

I had been surprised that morning by the woman who delivered the newspaper each day, and I liked watching for her. She's light-skinned and fat and wears a pink sweatshirt and a turquoise crocheted cap. I think she looks like a happy icing-with-sprinkles donut, her rusty old Honda sputtering along the street. That's when I wake up and start looking forward to the entire day and the lighting of my candle at night.

Anyway, about nine in the morning I started to wonder if Erin was going to miss work again. There were no sounds at all from inside the house. Then a white car pulled up to the curb and two policemen got out.

"We'll just knock on the door and make sure she's all right," said one.

"Seems a bit silly. Checking on a woman for being drunk," said the other.

"Yeah, but her friend said there was a gunshot."

I heard them pounding on the front door, then one peeked into the living room window. He noticed the antique instruments hanging on the wall, then Erin sprawled out on the couch. 

"Ms. Stewart?" he yelled tapping on the window. "Ms. Stewart, I need you to come to the door."

It took her a while, but she made her way to the wooden door. It was the original door to this house and last year she'd lovingly refinished it. Polished and warm, it was the entrance to every room in her house, literally and metaphorically. Oh, how smart I am for a pumpkin, you might wonder. If a pumpkin cannot speak in October, or November such as it is now, then there is no magic anywhere anymore. 

"Ma'am, we got a call from one of your friends and just wanted to check and make sure everything is okay. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine, you can see that can't ya?" Erin didn't sound like the woman who picked me out of the pumpkins; like the woman who gave the carving party; like the woman, even, she'd been the night before. When I was carved out to be a jack o'lantern, a light was put inside of me and I glowed, realizing my true destiny at last. But Erin sounded as if she'd had her insides carved out as well, with no illumination, no destiny, no future to look forward to. I know, now, this is the sound of hopelessness.

"Your friend suggested you might want to check into the mental health center for a few days. She's concerned about your safety. Are you a danger to yourself or others?"

"No, I'm not. It's not against the law to have a drink is it? Get the hell off my porch!" The wooden door slammed hard, a window pane cracked. The wooden slats on the front porch floor shook a bit and my vine-topped cap jiggled slightly.

"What do you want to do now?" one cop said.

"Not much we can do; she's got a right to be wasted. Let’s go." 

Nothing was making sense to me and a weird feeling seemed to sprout within the little of me there was left inside. A feeling of fear and dread.

Around noon a car pulled up. I recognized the car because it was Erin's friend from the pumpkin-carving party. Stacey had a man with her, someone I'd never seen before. She also had a key to the front door and soon they were inside, then I heard voices. Erin's voice, slurred then angry. Then soft talking.

"Erin, we're worried about you. We love you. Please, let us take you to the hospital for some help. Just for a few days, just to be safe. Please."

"I'mrrrr okay," Erin said.

"No, you're not okay. It's not safe for you to stay here by yourself. You need help, please...you are my best friend, please let me help you."

"Go awwwaayh."

"Erin," the man's voice said. "You know you need to do this. You need help, just go with us this one time. Trust us, okay."

This talk went on quite a while. Two calm voices pleading, Erin's slurred voice saying no. Louder voices. 

"Okay, I'll go," Erin finally said. "Let me take care of a few things. I think I need some coffee . . ."

"I'll make it for you, you get ready," Stacey said. She went into the kitchen, the warm, inviting kitchen where we'd had our Halloween time just a few weeks earlier. The scene of so much fun.

The man followed her into the kitchen, I guess, because the living room was silent now. I didn't see Erin go over to her aquarium to feed her fish, but I heard about it later. She opened the cabinet door underneath the tank and retrieved her gun. Soon, the front door opened and she came out onto the porch, her steps determined and quick. 

Across the wooden floorboards and down the concrete steps to the walk that led to more steps and the sidewalk. By that time the man had opened the front door as well. "Stacey!" he called to the woman inside. "She's got a gun!" He could see it held tightly in Erin's hand against her hip as an old woman would clutch her vinyl purse close to her, keeping it from would-be snatchers.

Cowboy boots on, Erin stepped off the curb and into the street, which ended abruptly before a wooded area.

"Erin! Come on back, let's talk!" the man called out.

"Erin! Erin! Come back, come here, where're you going?" Stacey, who had run out the front door, called, her voice shrill and anxious, the heels of her leather boots sticking in the grass as she hurried toward her friend.

Erin turned and pointed the gun at the man. "Stay back," she said. Then, very quickly and right in front of my triangle eyes, she put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Her body crumpled and twitched on the asphalt like a rabbit Mr. Boyd shot on the farm, then gave to his wife to make a Sunday stew.

Stacey wailed and cried and held her friend's head in her lap. The man muttered and swore and yelled and pulled a phone from his pocket to call for help. But it was too late, she was gone, her spirit lifting quickly above the street, above the trees, above my point of view. Higher and higher it went until it merged with the gray clouds and became a part of them in a way that would forever bring to Stacey's mind thoughts of gray November days.

I knew my candle would never be lit again and sadness replaced every happy memory I had cherished. Sorrow and shock and grief went through me, around me, under me and within. My spirit caved in on itself, like an old hotel imploding, all sense of former revelry extinguished in a burst of dust and brokenness.

The couple who lived across the street hurried out to see if they could help. They'd been invited to a party Erin had held during the OSU-Michigan football game last year and were hoping to attend this year as well. Their youngest son had recently left home for the University of Pennsylvania, and they were having trouble adjusting to an empty home. Erin had a diverse group of friends and the Mason's enjoyed themselves. But now here she was on the street, still. What the hell?

Mr. Mason went to the man's side just as a police car pulled up, then an ambulance. A paramedic rushed to Erin's body and confirmed what everyone knew. She was dead. So was I, but I'm only a small pumpkin and can be thrown out in the trash, forgotten immediately and soon rotting in a landfill, my dreams of Halloween and my light gone forever. 

My last thought was the memory of being held in Erin’s hands. I felt this mixture of wonder and safety and destiny as she carried me from the table at the farmers’ market to the back of her car, those first moments suspended in the air, like a bird or a cloud, feeling lighter than I ever had. Anything could happen.

# # #

Note:

Excerpt from “The Memory Tree” a work in progress by Janice Phelps Williams. Copyright 2010, All rights reserved. www.appalachianmorning.blogspot.com

Painting at top of page by Janice Marie Phelps, 11/2004. Acrylic, modeling paste, and felt. All rights reserved. Painted on an outing with the wonderful Ohio Plein Air Society.

“Pumpkin” is a work of fiction, but is based on the suicide of a friend of mine, a woman who shot herself in front of her brother and best friend, in the street, just as the fictional Erin did. It was a horrible event and her death was mourned by many, many friends who loved her and her enthusiasm for Halloween and pumpkin carving. 

The publishing company I founded, Lucky Press, published a book this year by a poet whose adult son, suffering from bipolar disorder, committed suicide. Madeline Sharples’ memoir is “Leaving the Hall Light On” and you can find it at Amazon and at other online and in-store booksellers.


You may hear Paul Sharples wonderful jazz piano music at THIS LINK.


Madeline Sharples will be participating in a fund-raising walk/run for Didi Hirsch Mental Health Center in Los Angeles, California Sept. 25, 2011. Here is A LINK for more information or to make a donation to help those who suffer from depression and mental illness .

DICTIONEERIE

Years ago, before Blogger, Google, Facebook, Open Salon, and Twitter… before I owned a cell phone, an HD TV, a Kindle, a Nook, and a laptop… before I owned a COMPUTER… I had the idea for a cartoon series that would highlight unfamiliar words. I would call it "Dictioneerie."

I didn't need present-day technology to give me a short attention span… within a week I had gone onto other bright ideas (immersion in the book business was still a ways off). But, since I have a difficult time throwing away any piece of paper, a file folder has traveled with me from Florida to Columbus to Athens… and now, thanks to the remarkable miracle of scanners and the Internet, I present to you a few frames of Dictioneerie!

Dancing after September 11th

This will be an unusually short post for me today because I have to go out and about and do a lot of things, some responsible things, a few fun things, and along with those activities will come the process of remembering and giving thanks for life.

It is important to honor those who died on September 11th; to remember them, to mourn them, to celebrate them. I did not lose a loved one on 9/11. I can only muse on our family's luck that day, the thankfulness I feel for the decade since, and the empathy I feel for those who must think 9/11 was both "last week" and a lifetime ago.

I was in NYC on 9/11 with my sister, Joan Phelps, and my son, Bryce. You can read a post I wrote about that day AT THIS LINK.

When Osama bin Laden was found and killed this year, I thought more about those who died on 9/11. The blogpost I wrote this past May on that event "Justice on May 1" is AT THIS LINK.

The photo above was taken on Sept. 9, 2001. Bryce is looking at a souvenir he's just bought and Joan is in the photo too. We had gone to NYC to meet with Publisher's Weekly and to see Michael Jackson's 30th anniversary concert on 9/10. The concert was incredible and you can get a sense of the sounds and excitement at this YouTube clip.

Here is Bryce earlier in the day, on 9/10/01 in Central Park.

A week after 9/11, we were back in Ohio and the nursing home where Bryce lives has an annual Sept. family cook-out with an Elvis impersonator. Joan and I were there and in 10 days we'd gone from Michael Jackson in Madison Square Garden to the sorrow and shock of 9/11 to a week of nonstop terror attack coverage to a small parking lot in Ohio where we were invited to dance. We did and this photo captures that moment.



This week a wonderful opportunity arose for Bryce; 4 of his drawings have been accepted into a show on The Art of Autism in the Soho Gallery of Digital Arts in NYC on October 27, 2011 and running for 3 weeks. We are taking him there, his second trip to NYC, and so different than our first. I'm going to visit him today and tell him about the show, about our upcoming trip, about how life holds suffering and sadness but also joy and surprise and love. (I will post more about this event soon.)

As you move through the coming days, if sorrow wraps itself around your heart, I hope you will be able to come through the other side of that sorrow and find a sprout of happiness that can grow within you to become a future that will honor life and those who now exist only through our choices and memories.

"A poem as lovely…"

(Note: This blog post may also be found at www.appalachianmorning.blogspot.com.)

The older I get the more I love trees and the more photographs I seem to take of them. They crop up everywhere, these photos of trees. When I travel, I notice the architecture, the artwork, the people, the climate, the food -- but what I notice most of all are the trees.

When winter presses glaring whiteness against every window in our house, it is the trees I notice first -- their ink-like branch-strokes creating veins and arteries against the light grey February sky or their ice-covered bark holding on against weight and gravity or snapping like gunshots in the woods behind our place. (See photo below of the view from our kitchen window in the wintertime.)

When I remember being a little girl, my happiest afternoons were summers spent in the shade of a tall tree, on a blanket, playing with dolls. Here I am at age 10 picking oranges from the tree in my grandparents' yard in Bradenton, Florida.




In high school, my parents and I moved into a new house in northeastern Ohio, right on the Pennsylvania border, and my dad promptly set about transplanting small trees from nearby woods into our yard. By the time I was off to college, he had quite a nice, park-like backyard. He and Mom would rest in the hammock there, looking up at the trees. Here is Dad in 1982, with my eldest child, Bryce…introducing him to the joys of lawn care.

When I was nineteen and everything seemed to be before me, I stood at the top of Blanket Hill at Kent State and roll…roll...rolled down the leaf-strewn grass, passing trees who were teenagers also.

As a young mother in Sarasota, Florida, I took my sons, an old sheet, and some snacks and off we would go to the grounds of the Ringling Mansion. (Now, you can't just drive back to the grounds and wander aimlessly, but then you could.) There was a huge banyan tree there and that's where we'd sit and look out at the Intracoastal Waterway, the sail- and motorboats passing by, the pink stone facade of John Ringling's house so near we could almost pretend it was our house too. Here is a photo of us there, in 1984! Jesse is on the left and Bryce is on the right.

I went through a period of years where I didn't think much about trees; there were more pressing matters and, after all, trees always seem to be around when you get back to noticing them. They are patient that way. Eventually, though, I ended up back in Ohio in an old two-story house with a bedroom window that looked right out onto the boughs of a huge maple tree. When we moved there in March 1999, nothing much was happening, leaf-wise, but soon the buds, then leaves appeared, and then the morning bird sounds broke through the silence of cold winter nights, and I loved it so much that I knelt beside the open window at dusk, my heart filled with thankfulness at all the good that was in my life, even though when I look back on it now, I realize life was more than a little difficult. Maybe that's why the steadfast beauty of a big tree meant so much.

So, here are some of my tree photos, in no particular order. There will be subsequent tree posts, because I have so many photos and continue to take even more. At one time I kept an album of tree photos, thinking one day I would do a large painting and all these photos would come in handy. But now I just want the photos, and in many cases the stories that go with the trees that are in them.

AUTUMN

The bright tree above is what we see out of our kitchen window in the fall. There is our bird feeder with the visiting goldfinches.

Above is the view of the road at the top of our street. I drive this way to go to the post office to pick up business mail. Ah…what a pleasant drive!

WINTER

I feel sad when the beautiful autumn leaves fall to the ground, wither and die. The trees seem so stoic…they know what is coming. They are ready. I am not.

In our backyard, in the winter, the bare trees reveal the most beautiful sunrises I've ever seen (below).

On the same morning I was standing out in the backyard in my robe, camera in hand, taking the photo above, I began to hear loud scurrying sounds among the branches. This tree, below, was acting as an early morning freeway system for a slew of squirrels who were chasing each other along the thicker branches, as if they'd already been hyped up on coffee for an hour or so.

Sometimes in the winter, I can look up to the skylight in our kitchen and see the blue sky and the silvery branches of a tall tree covered with ice. I dwell in a wonderland.

Years ago, the year the Tsunami hit Indonesia, we had an ice storm in Ohio. It was just after Christmas, and I had a very simple point-and-shoot camera at that time. After taking my son, Bryce, back to his home, I stopped to take many photos of the frozen trees. The photo below is not "Photoshopped" this is exactly how it (and many others) came out that day. When I got home, I learned of the tsunami. So, these photos also remind me of how beautiful, but how cruel and random the natural world can be.

I like the photo below of the woods in our backyard because it looks like something scary might happen at any minute…but not too frightening, just a little bit frightening…and then you drink hot chocolate with marshmallows!


You'll think less of my intellectual capabilities when you hear a story about the photo above. One day I noticed many robins flying to this tree, which is near our front door. All morning long, they came, landing on the branches, then flying to nearby trees, then back to the branches. Dozens of them. I thought it was some weird bird thing. Perhaps they'd been confused by a recent snowstorm… What was going on? Then I noticed all the berries were gone.

DUH!

Some trees are meant to decorate our homes. Here is Gracie admiring a tree that comes once every year and lives inside of our house. It is not a real tree, but she still seems to like it!
Above: Here is another photo taken the day of the ice storm. I wonder if the ground has what is called "hoarfrost" on it…? I should look that up!

SPRING

I love the way trees look when their leaves are just starting to emerge. They remind me of lace…like a Victorian beauty in fancy, somewhat transparent layers of pale fabric. I love seeing the branches through the tender, young leaves.

Perhaps I am easy to impress, but thinking about all the wonderful things trees can do and be fills me with wonder: flowers, fruit, nuts, shade, wood to use in hundreds of ways… And they live for hundreds of years!

Sometimes, you can find beautiful trees in unexpected places. The pink flowering tree below was located right next to the voice box at a busy drive-thru in a commercial area. Always keep a camera in your car, and you'll be surprised how many photo opportunities present themselves!

SUMMER

It seems some weird time trick to me, the time period when trees seem to have a few small leaves then suddenly all the leaves are out and summer is here. One time we went away for a few days and returned to find summer had returned full force. I am always a bit surprised by summer in southern Ohio. I think it is going to be a bit cooler and more comfortable than it is. But, before you know it, heat and humidity descend and my Florida relatives are telling me it is cooler in Bradenton than in Athens. The trees do their best to offer shade, but it's still hot, and I confess to looking at trees through the window much more than seems right.

Here is little Tyler, above, letting me know he loves the outdoors and can lead me right to the best places.

Guess where this tree, above, is at? (see below for answer)

Here is our backyard in the summertime. Everything is green, green, green. Strangely enough, while I love trees, green is not my favorite color. I even feel at times it is a bit oppressive and claustrophobic. I can only go so far into these woods without feeling too closed in. I prefer to walk here in the spring and fall.

My father loved to plant trees. In the yard where I grew up, he planted several trees in the front yard. (Actually, he planted them when I was just a baby.) There are photos of me as a girl with these trees. Last year, my mother and I drove back to see the house and yard and, yowzah!, the trees were humongous. They hid the entire front of the house. This (above) is a view from down the street of our old front yard (past the stop sign) and you can see four of the tall trees my father planted fifty years, or so, ago. At every house we had lived in we saw the trees my father had planted. I wrote a blog article about it, and you can read it here and see more photos: http://appalachianmorning.blogspot.com/2010/07/at-each-home-towering-tree.html

Mark and I went to New Orleans earlier this year, and the lovely tree above lives in the Garden District.

In New Orleans, we ate at the Court of Two Sisters, which had a delightful outdoor patio. There were many table umbrellas, but in one area over a fountain, the trees provided a natural canopy (above).
In the photo above, you can see a tree that lives along the Athens (OH) bike trail, right near the Ohio University football stadium (in background). This isn't a very good photo, but I love the shape of this tree.
Here is Ash Cave in Logan, Ohio. I like the graceful trees that keep it company, provide shade for visitors, and also add soft, green foliage to contrast with the hard, large expanses of rock.

One morning I was working at my desk and looked out the window and this is what I saw.

In the remaining days of summer, grab a camera and take a few photographs of trees. Email them to me at "art at janicephelps dot com" and I will share them on a future blog post.

And where was the mystery photo taken? St. Lucia!

All photos copyright Janice Phelps Williams. All rights reserved.