Spring got a good start while it was still winter, this year. The weather has been quite a bit warmer in March than usual - for the whole Eastern half of the US and Canada (east of the Rockies - that is). Some places - especially Minnesota - had temps that were 40 degrees above average. Many places were breaking records - many for the warmest it had been that early in the year.

Here is has only been Spring a 2 days - but the daffodils have mostly bloomed and dried up. I took a hike at McCormick's Creek State Park yesterday - and the Spring ephemerals were all blooming at once. Normally, some early ones come out, then some others as the weather warms up a bit, then some more. May Apples were up all over in a way that resembled mid-to-late April. Bluebells are blooming.

Every year I take photos of the Spring flowers as if I had never done so before. I'll have to compare dates and see how far along the flowers were in previous years.

Painting-wise - I'm working on some images of snakes / cosmos / water / earth.

I plan on getting out and drawing some wildflowers before they are gone.

I have been doing a lot of painting. Not that I have created a lot of paintingS. One I recently finished is primarily of a mound of dirt (which suggests Mother Earth), with 2 green snakes, 2 green peahens in a tree, 2 young baboons, and a storm in the background. I'm nearly finished with a painting of a river, I'm halfway done with a field of wildflowers, and I just started a new painting which will be a movie/video.

It's been a hot July following a fairly cool, damp Spring. I'm looking forward to it cooling off. Feeling that global warming.

Just as last fall was dry - this Spring has been unusually rainy and cool. The good thing about it is seeing the trees and plants emerge slowly instead of all at once. (The bad thing has been flooding from here to Louisiana). Right now at 11 am the temperature is 47 degrees. The normal high is 74 for this time of year. I enjoy watching the weather - I enjoy the various information available at wunderground.com/ (Weather Underground). I enjoy noticing how plants react relative to the temperatures, wind, rain, etc. 
I graduated a week ago - with my MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in painting and drawing. The video I created was part of that experience. I plan to make more. I have gotten shelves and I am in the process of organizing what is worth keeping and getting rid of what is not. I have a large painting in the works and I want to get started on several smaller ones as well.
I haven't seen anything of the snake. It may have decided to go outside the day I saw it, never to return. I have wondered - what with moving and rearranging things if I may see it again - since that is what precipitated it's appearance before. But not so far.

I have been busy painting my women and nature series this fall. I had hoped to get out more to paint some plein air/ outside. I have been watching the colors, though. It's been an extremely dry late summer and fall - so many of the leaves just dried up on the trees and didn't change to their normally bright colors. Others changed, then promptly dropped their leaves.

I have a maple out front that I had painted in 2007 with bright red and red-orange leaves. That year was much more damp - and the leaves were holding on and bright all the way to Thanksgiving. This year - they are already mostly gone.

I am more aware of the colors of things that I have painted. I have painted the view from my driveway toward the South in summer and in fall. The colors in the fall seem to change daily and hourly. 

This morning they were not the bright colors one might expect this time of year - but the browns and deep reds were interesting nonetheless. The ridges in the background were blending in with the sky - the result of some morning fog.