outdoor cafe – inspired

Watch this oil painting “Pumpkins and Mums” come alive in 2 minutes (time lapse)

This is a good one to start October with. Imagine that we’re sitting at that cafe table enjoying warm conversation, a hot mug of tea, coffee, cocoa, or cider, and enjoying the fresh autumn air. What would we talk about?

Perhaps you’d tell me about your day, and I’d tell you about mine. The theme of my day seemed to be about leaving things unfinished. I worked a painting session, but it’s too dark in the house now to finish it or get a good photo of it. It will have to keep until tomorrow. Also keeping until tomorrow is my assembly project: putting my new garden cart together that was delivered today (garden supplies are on sale, by the way, since it’s the end of the summer growing season).

My new cart is a raised planting container on wheels that I plan to grow romaine lettuce in. I got it ready to put together, but it looks a bit beyond my abilities so I’ve left the smaller pieces in an organized pile on the patio for now. Wouldn’t you know, it looks like it might storm tonight and the cardboard box containing the two heavy main pieces will likely get soaked. Oh well, it won’t matter much. I can remove the soggy cardboard later.

I’m taking this lifestyle change of growing my own food very seriously. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years. It pushes me to be outside more, which always lifts my spirits (well, except when I have an encounter with fire ants or some other incident happens). At this point, I expect that our autumn visit at the pumpkin patch has evolved into me telling you my stories of comedic misadventure, and we’ve shared some great full-belly laughs. Maybe you’ve chimed in with something that’s made me laugh until I cried. I hope so!

Imaginary visits with people we’ve never met, but would like to think of as friends who “see” each other every day by dropping by our blog, video, or art space on the Internet, are pleasant to think about. When I paint inviting spaces with empty chairs, I feel wistful to be inside the painting, but not alone. I imagine being with a friend, maybe someone like you!