New Hampshire!

Litchfield is a small town along the Merrimack River, nestled between Manchester and Nashua.  We saw lots of rich brown soil, ready for this year’s crops to be planted.  The land next to rivers is always very fertile, and it was good to see it used for its best purposes.  Meaning, no housing there, just farmers’ fields.

The white wooden clapboard building states that it is the home of the Litchfield Historical Society.  The red, white, and blue bunting was up in time for Memorial Day, at the end of May, and will likely stay there until Independence Day, July 4. I don’t know what the original use of the building was.  The fire station is next door.  One of their vehicles is parked in the shade.  I sat in the grass to draw this, and that perspective explains the very tall purple irises in bloom.

Historical Societies are a wonderful New England thing.  They range in size and scope from one-room adjuncts to other buildings, run by very dedicated volunteers and open one day a week or perhaps just by appointment, to large activities with professional staff such as the one located in the Amoskeag Mills complex in Manchester.  The thing that’s common to all is a love of their locality and a deep appreciation of its rich history.  You can find links to over 40 such organizations on this page at DirectoryNH.com.  And there are surely others that haven’t yet gotten quite up to speed with the Information Age, but you can find them if you look hard enough once you get to town.

We arrived in Londonderry at midday, and as I have mentioned before, I just don’t draw on an empty stomach.  So we had a very nice lunch at a corner restaurant, The Coach Stop. We ate on a terrace, overlooking the front lawn.  On this lawn sat a buggy.  It was in lovely condition, actually looked new.  The old vehicle seemed to gaze out towards the busy highway crossroads.

A friend once remarked to me that there is nothing I won’t draw.  I replied that there is little that I won’t consider drawing.  And I drew this locomotive engine at an incredible pace because the black flies were swarming around my face. I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of the pesky flies that aim for your eyes, since our region 2 hours south was already pretty much through with them for the year.

After a few minutes I started to speed up the drawing process even more by just drawing where the train was NOT.  In other words, I penciled in the shapes where I could see light through the complex undercarriage of the train.  And I finished it at home from my notations.  Artists often focus on negative spaces for design anyway, so it worked well.  It is all pencil with watercolor for the red, blue, and green shapes.

  And the vehicle is a lumber train engine in Lincoln in the White Mountains area.  It is no longer used, and is now perched near the entrance to the Loon Mountain Ski Resort.  The railroad opened up the White Mountains to logging, as the rivers weren’t suitable for floating the logs down to the mills as was done elsewhere.  Logging practices of the day were horrendous, leading to the creation of the White Mountain National Forest and the attendant restrictions on the industry.

 The sign said that three trains a day went through town loaded with felled trees.  And there was a photo of the engine pulling railroad cars piled with pre-built lumber towns into place for the summer logging season.  The lumber industry in this area is pretty much over.  Tourists are the money makers now.

Plymouth is a small city at the southern edge of the White Mountains. My sister Aimée was born here while our father was a graduate student at Plymouth State University.  When we lived here it was called Plymouth State Teacher’s College.  He was getting a Master’s degree in preparation for becoming a science teacher.  In one class, he was learning to give IQ tests.  I think I was the only person in the family who agreed to take it.  I was five years old, and I remember the pretty red and white blocks I had to rearrange in a certain time. 

Plymouth has a shaded sort of oval shaped common or town park.  I found this bronze statue there and liked it.  It represents a Boy Scout and was sculpted in 1932 by G. H. Borst.  The boulder is from the nearby Franconia Notch and the natural pothole basin, at the foot of the boulder, is from the Baker River. I love the details on sculpture, in this case the boy has patches on his sleeve from a local troop, Troop 56. 

The university buildings are up on the hill behind the white post office.

Here is my husband resting on a bench at the Audubon Center in Auburn, NH.  The wooden boxes on posts are most likely for nesting bluebirds.  I think they have at least 85 of them.

The building is named the Broad Barn, for the donors named Mr. and Mrs. Broad.  The orange sign says bat box.  The center wasn’t yet open for spring and the ground was all soggy, so we didn’t walk around. 

The sign on the red building says “Torrent Hose Co. No 1 RFD”.  It is the fire station in Raymond, NH.  Clearly it is an old house, repurposed and expanded horizontally and perhaps raised up one story as well.  I was sitting on a bench in the town green to draw this.

 It is good to have highways to bypass the little towns, in this case Route 101.  But then you never see the small towns and have no sense of where you really are.  This is one of the many reasons that I am enjoying my Draw-NH project.  The only cure for wanderlust is wandering.

I don’t post my drawings exactly when I draw them.  I put them in a box to accumulate until I see at least two subjects that look like they want to tell a story.  I can tell from the orange colors of the leaves that I drew this last autumn.  

The square boxy white building is the former fire station in Hollis, NH, now the home of the local Historical Society.  The letters on the sign spell out the charming name of the “Always Ready Engine House”.  It was home of a horse drawn carriage and hose.  

The tower in the background belongs to the town offices.  The little tree arrears to be atop the fire station roof, but it is merely centered behind it.  I could have moved it, or left it out, but I chose to keep it there like a topknot.  Drawing makes you feel powerful.

And here we have the railroad station in East Kingston, NH.  Yellow and brown are the colors of the Boston and Maine Railroad, I’m told.  Commonly referred to as the B&M. I think it is possible that a few trains still use these tracks.

I do have to be careful when counting toward my goal of drawing all 234 towns in the state.  East Kingston is indeed a separate town, though many places whose names feature compass points are just informally designated local areas of the actual town.  Acton, Massachusetts, where I lived during most of my high school and college years, is the only place I’ve ever encountered that has a locally recognized (though unofficial) North, East, South, West, and Center. 

And another yellow painted wooden building.  New England is all about clapboard construction from local timber.  This is called the Ladd-Gilman house in Exeter, NH.  It is the side view, from a viewpoint on a street way below the house.

There is in fact a cannon on the green grass pointing out towards the passersby.  It was hard to draw from a point of perspective, and hard to draw a weapon aimed at me.  So sorry to those who are missing the cannon and saying “where is it?”.

Exeter, it seems to me, has a larger number of yellow houses than the typical New Hampshire town.  Some day I would like to understand why.  Right now, I just enjoy the cheery phenomenon.

This is the steeple of the Pilgrim United Church of Christ in the tiny town of Brentwood, NH.  I liked the use of red paint instead of the standard green, and of course, I was taken by the gold colored fish weather vane. The churches of New Hampshire almost always seem to have a weather vane on the top rather than a cross.  It is important to know which way the wind is blowing. 

An historical marker to the side of this church told of a peace rally there in 1812.  Two thousand people gathered to hear Daniel Webster speak against Americans entering into the War of 1812 against the British.  Many historians regard the War of 1812 as the Revolutionary War, part II. 

We have been friends with the British ever since we settled that conflict.  We call each other cousins.  When we lived there for three years as a family, the daily struggle with language and cultural differences nearly did us in.  At times.

I sat on the grass directly underneath this tall steeple of the Parkhill Meeting House in Westmoreland, NH.  The current appearance of the meeting house dates from 1824.  And it was moved to this spot from a nearby location as the population shifted.  I am so impressed with the skill to move buildings.  I included this drawing and the next in honor of June brides.

Walpole is an attractive village in the western part of the state along the Vermont border.  I just knew that I would have some trouble deciding what to draw.  So I went into the town’s Old Academy Historical Society. And I happily wandered through the exhibits.

  I was struck by a beautiful wedding gown from the 1870’s.  The dress fabric was champagne colored satin, with multitudes of chiffon roses.  The bodice was a delicate sheer lace with hand appliqued flower clusters.  I liked it so much I decided to draw it on the spot.  And then I got the idea to envision the wedding bouquet.  And then I extended the paper to draw the bride’s face, hair and veil, again through my imagination.

I used to work for an old large country estate in Maryland.  For four and a half years, I went to a wedding a week.  My job was to ensure that all was going smoothly. Or if not, to assist where needed.  It was a real behind-the-scenes job. I liked my job as I ate well, heard wonderful music, and witnessed much happiness and joy.

I drew the Barrington Community Playground in Barrington, NH while sitting in the car.  There were several parents there supervising and having a Saturday afternoon chat.  But I chose to just draw the children.  It was quite a fun adventure style playground that the kids were enjoying a lot.

New Hampshire and British Columbia!

While I was outside drawing this beautiful brick library in Kensington NH, my husband was inside getting a deluxe tour from the librarian, who clearly loved the building and the history it represented.  The sign above the door says in white letters The Kensington Social Library.  The building was a gift of Joseph C. Hilliard in 1895.  It has a modern wing out back (nicely concealed so as not to detract from the original architecture), and it is next door to the elementary school.  That must be handy for the students.  I just love the conflicting architectural devices of this era, e.g. the symmetrical and the asymmetrical windows and columns.

 The term ‘social library’ is a holdover from the early 1800’s when libraries in New Hampshire were private book collections.  If you joined as a member and paid a fee, you were allowed to borrow.  Ironically, libraries are now evolving into more social centers with meeting rooms, and clubs such as knitting.  My sister and her husband have recently posted photos of themselves at their library in Wisconsin...one while enjoying a Death by Chocolate cooking competition and another at a costume party.

My drawings and watercolor paintings always indicate the weather and the season as well as the architecture.  The trees in spring are yellow-green and pink.

When I am driving around in my project of drawing every town in New Hampshire, two thoughts are usually floating around in my head: “Oh, I have never seen that before”  and “Oh, that building really looks like the one in such and such a place”.  If the towns are close together, I sometimes feel I am following around a local architect/builder.  And I know that pattern books and mail order trimmings were readily available, so that could explain many of the similarities. 

This is Bedford Center, NH.  The town hall is in the center, which includes the Narragansett Grange No. 16.  The yellow building is a private home, and just to the left of that are small views of the end of the town library. And the white building on the far left is a home.

Granges were established a in the mid 1800’s as a social movement.  This was an era when half the population left to move to better farmland in the midwest states of the US.  Those who stayed behind suffered from the lack of man power to keep the land in agriculture.  Most fields quickly reverted to woodland, and New Hampshire slid into a severe economic decline.  For decades.

 The yellow shrub is called forsythia, which cheerfully blooms early.  It blooms before its leaves pop out so the color effect is dramatic.  Since this has been a cool spring, they are still in bloom a month later.  The odd brown shape to the far right is a vine on an arbor.

If you should go to Bedford Center, you will not see this exact view.  I drew it as I was walking up the road, adding new details and sightlines as I went around a corner.  That is the fun of drawing on location.

These are the main cross roads in Gilmanton, NH.  The tallest building in the center is the home of the town offices.  On the left stands the Gilmanton Community Church, and on the right is a small scale public library.  I didn’t check to see how many copies of the novel Peyton Place (Grace Metalious, 1956) may be inside.  It was always said that she based the plot and characters in her scandalous novel on this town, where she was living when she penned it.

The town office, grand in scale but built of wooden clapboards, has an unusual window. It is circular and resembles a globe in an atlas. Tricky to draw.

Notice the granite pillars along the roadway.  There were too many to count, but they seemed such a part of the place that I had to fit in three.  They were once part of a fence.  I wouldn’t want to meet one with a car fender.  New Hampshire is the Granite State.

My historical advisor tells me that the ‘traditional’ white New England buildings date only to the 1930’s.  A conference was held and sponsored by Yankee Magazine.  The attendees discussed how to get more tourists to come to New England, stay longer, and spend more money.  It was agreed that painting all the buildings white would have a unifying effect and successfully convey quaintness.  The paint companies were most happy to assist and encourage this thought.  (Up to this point, the buildings were left unpainted or painted with whatever was the least expensive color available.)  No harmony at all in other words.  Litchfield, Connecticut was selected as a trial town. White paint was slapped on all the buildings in the town center.  Then the owners were required to attach black or dark green shutters.  Voilà, instant charm.  (The plague of shutters with no function continues to this day.  Don’t get me started on shutters that don’t shut.)  It worked. Tourism picked up, and paint brushes and buckets emerged all over the six New England states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Fremont is a small town in the southeast part of New Hampshire.  I decided to draw their town pound viewed from the inside.  In earlier days, wandering livestock would be corralled into this enclosed space until the owner could come claim them.  It is made of small granite boulders and upright granite posts.  It is kept as a relic, and somebody must be restacking the stones from time to time because these kinds of walls do tumble down.  It is not easy to draw rocks.  I try to draw the idea of rocks, if you see what I mean. In behind is the Poplin Meeting House, 1800, in white clapboard, and a graveyard across the road.  

My paternal grandfather and his parents and brothers came south from Quebec, Canada to work in the granite quarries of Concord, NH.  I think they may have been stonemasons in Quebec as well.

Fremont has an historical marker about the town’s Mast Tree Riot in 1734.  This was a little altercation between local tree owners and the English Crown.  It seems the Crown reserved the tallest and straightest pine trees as masts for the king’s ships.  And some folks objected.

And here we have another stone town pound in the tiny town of Windsor, just west of Hillsborough.  It has a population of about 200 in about 8 square miles  It was known as Campbell’s Gore originally.  A gore is a wedge shaped piece of land, sort of a leftover. The sign in the center notes that the fee for claiming an impounded animal was 50 cents per day—quite a large sum by the standards of the time.  Little volunteer evergreens are sprouting in the center. I like how I could see through the woods to a lake and a mountain.

I decided to gather a few of my drawings of schools, in honor of the winding down of the school year. Schools in North American close for the summer, in early to mid June.  The summer camp industry has grown to fill in the gap of time in the summer.  I am a volunteer at our local elementary school, where I talk about art history once a month.

To make this drawing, I peered in through very dusty windows.  It is the Bow Center Schoolhouse, 1894, in Bow NH, and is no longer in use.  Of note, the black slate writing board. The lettering above this chalkboard is called the Palmer Penmanship script.  I think it is still taught in North America. It is a distinctive style that does not resemble that of England, Europe, or anywhere.  Most people evolve a simpler form as soon as they leave elementary school, age 10. Most of my letters look like printing, although some are still loopy.

To continue with the school theme, here is the former high school in Ashland, NH.  It sits high on a hill and is a Victorian era gem.  My father had his first teaching job here, in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.  He taught all the mathematics and science classes for ages 14–17.  As a first teaching job, it sounds very challenging.  I was about 4 or 5 years old. 

My memories include my pet hamster, and the five and dime store down the street.  It was not a Woolworth chain store, but similar in concept.  The counters and shelves were so low I could see all the assortments of lipsticks, frilly handkerchiefs, and fake pearl clip-on earrings.

The next year we moved to Massachusetts, where the starting salary for teachers was greater.  We lived in Westford, moving into three different houses, until I was fourteen. 

Brookline, NH borders the state of Massachusetts in the south.  I seem to be drawn like a moth to yellow buildings.  This is the large square building of the town offices.  It is the former home of the Daniels Academy, founded in 1905 for girls and boys.  It looks dignified and solid, and well worth repurposing.

New Ipswich is a small town along the Massachusetts border. I bought a coffee and a cookie at a small store, for a break.  The coffee shop was next door to this elementary school, the New Ipswich Center School.  I really liked that green awning that shelters the students from the weather.

My father-in-law was not a very hard working student in high school.  He was sent off to the New Hampton School in New Hampton, NH for a year after he graduated, for the purpose of bringing up his grades so that he would be accepted to a university.  This was accomplished through enforced study halls.  And the lack of female students in his classes helped too, I’m very sure.  My father-in-law had a facetiously pompous way of speech. Right now I can hear his voice, from the hereafter, urging me to use the word ‘pulchritude’.  Which is a very awkward sounding word meaning beauty of females.

Anyway, this is Lane Hall on the campus of the New Hampton School, built in 1919.  The planter has a date of 1890 on it.

This building has what I call cowboy style architecture.  It is the Deadwood Junction in Greenwood, British Columbia, Canada.  It has wonderful coffee, pastries, and rooms of arts and crafts.  And very friendly owners and staff.    

I read that Greenwood, Canada’s smallest city (a form of government distinct from that of a town), with about 700 people as it says on the sign, just won the top award at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia—the international competition for the best tasting municipal tap water in the world.  This is one reason why their coffee is so good, no doubt.

We happen to pass through Greenwood when we drive from Spokane, Washington to Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada to visit our family, including our three grandchildren. We got a recommendation from some people walking down the street in Grand Forks, a mere 40 miles or so east.  Even though it is spring time, the climate is very dry here as indicated by the yellow hills in the background.

Sometimes we do a bit of exploring on our own while we are visiting family in British Columbia.  One sunny day we decided to explore the Father Pandosy Mission.  In 1859 a group of Oblate priests made a home in the Kelowna valley, the first group of white settlers.  My quick online research tells me that Father Pandosy was born in Marseilles. France. And that the word ‘oblate’ means sacrifice.  I believe the fathers started farming and planting orchards.

So I decided to draw this barn, as I had never drawn a saddlenotch log construction before.  And I drew, or attempted to draw, the complex farming mower or reaper on the right.  It was just one of many highly mechanical farm implements on display there.  In the background is Black Mountain. I moved it slightly to the right. (Yes, I move mountains.)

And now there is an upscale shopping district in Kelowna called Pandosy. The building on the left is not old at all.  Just a funky, contemporary nod to the old, which houses the Marmalade Cat Café.  I can’t resist yellow buildings.  And yellow, blue and rust colored buildings really hold my attention.  I can’t explain this and that doesn’t bother me. There is still snow on the high hills.  

We sat in a lovely coffee shop while I drew this.  And knowing that the new building will block the view.

And one more last one, including our grandson playing in a toy train. It is a stationary train.  Only imagination makes it move. We go to the park often when we visit. It’s a grandparent thing.

 The climate here in eastern British Columbia, the Okanagan, is semi-arid.  It is the northern end of the Sonoma desert which starts in Mexico. So the ground is dry with desert type plants and animals.  But it has lots of lakes and beaches too. We get ourselves there as often as we can.  Which is often.

New Hampshire!

I was unsure what to draw in Alexandria. Several scenes appealed to me: a building, a vista, a field, but I kept driving for some reason. I had not noticed on the map that the northwest edge of the town borders Newfound Lake.

Suddenly I was out of the woods and staring at the water and islands as the lake came to view on my right. I parked the car immediately. The blue waters were clear of winter’s ice, except for this eastern end of the lake. The strong wind and wave action had broken up the ice into minute pieces, all uniform in size. and sparkling like diamonds. And floating on the waves like a blanket of jewels. I am forced to describe in detail because that sort of sight is not possible to paint, draw, or even photograph. But I saw it and will remember it.

The white area just above the fence is the floating jewels. Squint and imagine.

A few miles to the east of Alexandria is Bridgewater. When I drew this I had driven entirely around the lake, without any intention of doing so, really.

This is another view of the eastern end of the lake with the last remnants of ice floating and considering melting. I just love the soft purple shades of the hills at this time of year. The new leaves are still tucked away, waiting and being cautious. The greens are the pines, firs, and hemlocks.

I have long time memories of this diner in Milford, the Red Arrow, on the Souhegan River. My husband and our dog took naps in the car while I walked around and found this spot to draw. A lot of my earliest memories include riding around with my father and grandfather when they were doing work in the cemeteries...cleaning the stones and carving in names and dates. I didn’t go in to the diner this time.

The small building on the left hangs over the river. It is a dining room part of the diner now, but maybe it was a mill structure to begin with.

The gold eagle is atop the Odd Fellows Lodge, a world-wide fraternal and benevolent organization. I read that the phrase ‘odd fellows’ refers to the origins in England. Members were from minor trades that didn’t have their own guilds, so it was a collective place to be. It is not a guild anymore. And women can belong, so it’s not just fellows.

We had lunch in Goffstown Village in a restaurant on the banks of the Piscataquog River. I can’t draw on an empty stomach. Too distracting. After a nice lobster salad, I stepped outside, walked a few feet, and drew the river and the mills reflected on the very calm water. The colors are those of early spring.

New Hampshire is the second most forested state in the U.S., by percent.....85%. This is why the houses, churches, and other buildings are usually made of wood, as it is the most abundant local resource material. And the trees grow back quickly I’ve been told. Something about the mineral soil is just right for growing trees. We have a small clearing behind our house in the woods. Little trees try to sneak in. Some might become Christmas trees!

Many of the buildings along the rivers are former saw mills, as well as textile mills. There is a dam at the far right of the picture. I saw in an old post card that this bridge was once a wooden covered bridge. But now it is modern concrete with quite decorative lampposts.

It is quite an adventure driving to every town in New Hampshire. I study maps and take along an atlas in the car, and sometimes GPS. I (sometimes we ) bump along back roads. Back roads is what we mostly have of course. This month the ‘Frost Heaves’ signs go up to warn of roads even more bone rattling than usual. The signs come down and the bumps flatten out, usually by themselves and mostly by summer.

The drawing above is the town common in Hebron. I had just bumped out of the woods from Alexandria into this open space. The common is surrounded by smallish, white, wooden buildings. No building was very unusual or large, the town offices (former Hebron Academy) being the most ornate. But a harmony existed and a pleasant feeling of shelter in configuration of the 360 degree arrangement of the structures around me. And this makes it a challenge for me in deciding what viewpoint to focus on.

So I went into the general store, bought a coffee and apple turnover. And a USA Today. And read that, which we know doesn’t take long. Then I brought my coffee outside, and decided to take shelter from the wind in the band stand in the center of the common. I drew an old maple tree, the structure of the band stand that resembles the tree, the library, and the office of the town clerk/tax collector. There are fewer than 700 residents, so a large library isn’t needed. NH has no sales tax, nor state income tax, but it does have a property tax.

Any town library user can borrow books from any library in the state now, so that is good. It evens things out.

After drawing the small scale library in Hebron, I had an idea to pull out my stacks of drawings of a few more libraries for compare and contrast.

This is the large, solid looking library and town hall of Dunbarton, with under 3,000 in population. This large ornate white wooden building is right in the center of the town common. It was built in 1908 to replace an earlier one that burned down. I believe it was rebuilt to look the same. The large twin doors with roof railing were lovely, and the bright sunshine and shadows helped me to draw them. Surrounding the doors there are complex leaded windows in clear glass. That much detail was beyond me and my little pencil.

I loved the looks of this dignified structure. There is a fund raising effort to restore the top floor for public use. And an elevator needs to be added. The librarian was very friendly, was interested in my DRAW-NH! project, and said she’d buy my book when it’s published!

There were several monuments on the lawn honoring veterans.

The library in Lempster is the building at the far right. The center one is the town offices. This town has decided to use its topography to generate electrical power. The 12 modern windmills (or windfarm) on Bean Mountain are a first for this state. They have been in operation since 2008.

The unusual name of the town is thought to be a spelled out version of the pronunciation of the town of Leominster (‘Lemster’) in England. The town of Leominster in nearby Massachusetts is pronounced ‘Lemenster’ with the accent on the first syllable.

Here is another library that I drew in the autumn. This is the Reed Free Library (not a misspelling!)in Surry, in the southwest corner of the state. In the background is Surry Mountain, once mined for copper, gold, and silver. I love historical markers that tell you these things.

You see the fall colors on the hills...yellows and reds of the maples and birch trees. The pink is my vision of a copper beech in full sunlight.

I was focusing on the southwest corner of the state last autumn. Here is the Silsby Free Library on the left and the town offices on the right. They are on the main street in Charlestown.

It was a very warm day when I drew this last September. When I look at one of my drawings I can almost always remember the weather, and usually what I ate for lunch. (A sandwich on a bench.) And other things like what music I was listening to, or other little details which are all wrapped up together in the memory files. That is one reason I like to draw when I travel.

Amherst has a lovely harmonious village green with dozens of Federal style (or Georgian) homes, churches and town office buildings surrounding it.

And that makes it really hard to choose one view. So once more, I chose the library.

It is off to the side of the green, and it’s a fine stone structure first built in 1892. And it was enlarged in 1911, 1971, and 1987. The front door is especially attractive with its copper and green glass details. Mexican tile roofs are a rarity in New Hampshire. The modern addition is off to the left.

The girl on the bench is enjoying an ice cream cone. I think there may have been an ice cream social at the library that day. It was very crowded.

The weather has been very odd this spring: unusually snowy, then exceedingly warm and dry, then wintery and colder than average.

We drove to Merrimack one Sunday when the weather was hot, and like summer. But there were no leaves yet on the trees and the grass was still hibernating. Twin Bridge Park in Merrimack was absolutely full with happy families enjoying the sunny warmth. The baseball diamond was still waiting for the season, but look at the castle-themed playground. And the kids on the swings! I felt their joy as I drew them.

British Columbia, New Hampshire, and Maryland!

We are all starting to have a hankering for spring, so I’d better get these snowy pictures out to you. This is a view drawn in January of the ridge in Kettle Valley, a neighborhood in the southern part of Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Our grandchildren live here, and this is the sight as they walk to school. The turreted buildings house a coffee shop, gym, and pre-school among other necessities.

The climate is dry, and the stubbly trees are remnants of an unfortunate forest fire in 2003. A part of a natural cycle they say. Many houses were destroyed, but everyone evacuated safely.

I drew this looking west from the top of a sledding hill behind our grandchildren’s house. Parts of the scenery include the west bank of the Okanagan Valley and Lake Okanagan. There are vineyards and orchards near the lake on both sides. And on the lower left I drew two children’s parks and the tennis court. Do click on the image to enlarge it. The houses are actually crayon-box colors like this.

One day after running a few errands, I stopped at this beach for a quick sketch. I call it Apple Beach, but I believe the correct name is Gyro Beach. The apple is a concession stand, selling snacks in warmer weather. This region is apple growing territory. It was a hazy day and I tried to capture that in watercolors. The hills in the background were very indistinct as the long lake bends around to the left.

The serpent-like shape in the lake is my imaginary version of Ogopogo. Sort of the Loch Ness Monster of British Columbia, but friendly.

I was visiting during sledding season. Here is part of the school that our younger granddaughter attends. Most of the students carried their sleds with them to school. The fashionable sled this year is lightweight, and decorated to look like a surfboard. The children sped down the hills before the school bell rang, during recess, and after school was let out. And then we walked home and they went sledding some more.

After our younger granddaughter gets out of school, we wait for her sister’s bus. Here she is in her pink and purple coat with a friend also dressed in the same colors. You can see the incredibly rugged terrain here, and see too the small house on the top of the hill. Actually, it is most likely a large house with a great view.

Higher up from the valley is a community called Joe Rich. This is the view from a dining room, on a very snowy day.

Our grandchildren love our iPads and have figured out how to do lots of things with them. Here is the three year old, sitting on the bed, being creative. The cats are watching, and keeping warm. And one is listening to the pencil sounds on my paper.

On my way out of town, I experienced a 12 hour delay. Oh, joy! I ate (three times), I read, I shopped, and I pulled out my watercolor set. Here is my corner with my purple coat, sketches, water bottle, red suitcase and grey duffle.

I usually don’t care to draw people who are waiting or traveling. But I had to do something to fill the hours. Here are three waiting people, my red suitcase, a red coated airport greeter. (Who didn’t greet me.) And the little sparrows that live in every airport.

It is very foggy out. That is why my flight was cancelled...the incoming flight the night before couldn’t land in the thick fog.

On our first day back in New Hampshire from a trip to Baltimore, we drove to the town of Lempster to hear Rebecca Rule speak. She is a story collector and a story teller. Both orally and in book form. It is a good idea to go to one of her presentations first if you can, before you buy her books. Then you will be able to hear her talking when you read! It makes it even better.

We have heard her speak several times. But this time I was inspired to draw because it seemed so very New Hampshire-ish for the speaker to be sharing the stage with local historical artifacts....like a black wooden hearse, set off with yellow fringe curtains. Note the iron runners for winter transportation of the body. I’m guessing the two vertical objects behind the hearse are part of the horse pulling part of it all.

One day I decided to drive the short distance to nearby Andover (NH) to draw the ski hills which are right off Main Street and part of the campus of Proctor Academy, a private high school. The building in the foreground is the old carriage house according to the sign.

And now for something completely different. This is the southwest corner of Calvert Street and 31st, in the Charles Village section of Baltimore, Maryland. It is not too far from the campus of the famed Johns Hopkins University.

I knew when I saw the roof lines that this is what I wanted to draw on that day. I drew quickly with the sheer joy of allowing myself to get lost in the complex architecture. There are little bits of accuracy here and there. Hopefully enough to convey the spirit of the block....the ornamented brick facade, with tile roofs and a vaguely Dutch shaped repeating roof folly. Thanks, A.G.