Coreopsis tinctoria

Gold and burgundy.

The Christmas Party

Chicken salpicon :


Sweet potato & feta empanadas with cranberry salsa :





















Corn & poblano empanadas

Chicken taquitos with adobo sauce :





















Green tomatillo salsa

The Garcia Family Chocolate Cake :

Ah yes, and there were people too !

I am unauthorized to post my favorite picture of the evening : Mom in the kitchen surrounded by the entire mids shift of Larimer County Sheriff's Department deputies.

Doux comme un mouton

Daydreams about bookshelves elsewhere

Illustration Friday : Music

Dry poppy seedpods, papery music.

(Click main picture for a bigger version.)
Illustration Friday . com

RMNP II

Rocky Mountain National Park, Two

The alpine avens, which turn the tundra red in late summer.

RMNP I

Rocky Mountain National Park, One

Illustration Friday : [You're] Welcome

Le 1er mai en Strasbourg (Alsace, France).

The telephone conversation included a "Merci" and "C'etais un plaisir"--a flowery stand-in for You're welcome. The chipper cafe waitress answered "C'est rien"--a more casual You're welcome.

Pennock Pass

A drive up into the mountains with Mom.






















I have a grass problem.


























































































The killer flower-weed that climbs up and strangles everything.






Mom hides behind a tree.



At the Poudre.

The Comforts of Home

Sleeping in my own bed.






















Living in the same room as all of my papers. Sorting through them, armed only with sticky notes and manila folders.


The new curtain Mom found for our bathroom.


Driving in the car with Mom.



My blessed bookshelves, my notebooks, my collected Natural Objects.



Folding clean laundry.

Remembering good food

Waffle trials--attempts to recreate this Strasbourg waffle--begin this week. If I can find the waffle iron. And if I don't start crying at the lack of cheap excellent chocolate.

A Kick-Ass Holy Lady

Sketch of Francisco de Zurbaran's Sainte Engracia, in Strasbourg's museum.

He is one of my most recent and beloved loves, seen first in Strasbourg. I saw his Saint Francois in Lyon, and (I believe) another of his intense women on loan in the Orsay.

Denver Botanical Gardens Part II

My old friend scabiosa. (Specifically scabiosa caucasia, variety 'Deep waters'.)










































Eryngium giganteum, whose common name--no joke--is "Miss Willmott's Ghost."


















Salvia pachyphylla, called Mojave Sage and native to California, Arizona, and Nevada.

























In the garden's "Perennial Walk", posing not just with the flowers and the hedge but ALSO with the Big Red Crane behind me, which I decided I want to learn how to operate.















Any trip to Denver means stopping at Sakura Square and our beloved Oriental Food Market.

They're not flowers, but if I could catalogue my childhood, each of these would have a Latin and common name.