Two weeks ago, Tom and took a leisurely walk through Cook’s Meadow and noticed that the Redwing Blackbirds had returned for the spring season. It’s warm and sunny again, but after the intervening storm, I got to thinking about those optimistic birds, and what they made of the intemperate weather. Finally got around to drawing it out.

Actually, the warm temperature has created trouble of its own for us. All the melting snow is slowly puddling up on our property, and Tom spent the day digging a drainage trench and carrying buckets of water out of our crawl space. Fortunately, DNC facilities let me borrow a sump pump so that we’re not going to have to do that in shifts throughout the night! Tomorrow’s forecast for warm rain over all that snow uphill of us still has us biting our nails, but it’s going to be ever so much better with that pump!

In a certain twist of irony, as we battle too much water in the crawlspace, we’re also dealing with no water in the tap. The county guys have been here for a couple of days and with all the snow and melting they can’t even find the source of the leak, much less work on repairing it. The water has been out for about a week now, and the county has decided to save money by not having their crews work through the weekend.

We’ll be fine, of course. It’s like camping, with the bonus of heat and electricity, but after the big storm, lots of us are ready for a return to normal, and of course the renters that had planned to stay this weekend weren’t very excited about the lack of water. We found them a place to stay in El Portal, at Yosemite View Lodge, so they’ll be fine, but we’re sad to see them go.

The last few weeks have been all about working and trying to get the downstairs apartment ready for the renters who are arriving June 1. Fortunately, a few days ago we had a brief power outage – just a few hours in the evening, which gave me an excuse to do a bit of sketching. Copied this pic off the front of a Rotarian magazine (Tom and I are both proud members) by candlelight that evening.

I get an occasional tip here and there on how to use Photoshop from the amazing and creative in-house graphic designer in our office, but just in case I get to thinking that I know how to do a thing or two… there are images like these which are in a completely different league.

It’s not that I can’t start to figure out now, how someone would start to put an image like that together, but coming up with the ideas, planning the shot out, taking different images and figuring out how to put them together. Truly cool.

And while you’re there, check out some cool wildlife pics. I’m not sure some of them aren’t also examples of very clever Photoshop-ery, but they are neat anway.

Memorial Day weekend is historically one of the busiest. So, as a local, my tendency is to want to get out just as everyone else is trying to get in. Unfortunately, a substantial trip is not really in the works this year, for various reasons, so I’m left with trying to figure out what to do.

Here’s an idea.

Yosemite Association has taken charge of free art classes held in the Park. Classes are given by a wide variety of artists, so each week the lessons, style, and media are fresh and new . I’ve attended one or two before, and have gotten some great tips.

This week, (May 20 – 23) the classes are being taught by Pam Pederson – Travel Sketching Pen/Watercolor – which is absolutely perfect for the kind of ‘artwork’ that I like to do. There is something truly magnificent about finished paintings, but I like the fast and loose feeling of sketching without having to go back and painstakingly, well, work. I am sure that I will have to promise my husband not to buy things – I already have reams of paper and art supplies galore, but I’m hoping that this will give me incentive to dig those things out and rub off a bit of the rust.

April is almost over, and I’m just getting around to collecting some ideas about in one place. Being busy is good, but if someone could slow the clocks down and give me a chance to catch up again that would be nice.

In addition to the big things (Easter, Earth Day etc.) There were a bunch of interesting things going on to distinguish the month (as if the beginning of wildflower season wasn’t distinction enough around here). I don’t know if they are interesting enough to actually get me to participate – which is probably why it took me so long to mention them – but definitely interesting enough to get my head going around a bit. Helping out with the Yosemite Sentinel brings a lot of these random events to the surface, and is one of the most rewarding things about working on it.
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I found out today that the Mariposa Symphony Orchestra is giving a free concert at The Ahwahnee featuring New York violin virtuoso, Lewis Wong. Fascinating, because until this point I didn’t know that there was a Mariposa Symphony Orchestra. The concert is going to take place in the Great Lounge from 1-3pm on Sunday, April 26. Seating is first-come, first-served, and I haven’t been to a Symphony Performance in ages, and I’d love to drop in. Sometimes the things that go on here in Yosemite can be quite surprising, and not quite what I expected.

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This is a strange weekend for me. It is filled with activity options that wouldn’t normally occur to me as Things to Do in Yosemite. When I got here 5 years ago, my list was pretty short – climb, hike (to climbs) and backpack (for far away climbs), but the more I’ve lived here the more I get exposed to all of the other things that are going on in Yosemite.
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