Much better pictures of the new abode. There are a few glimpses of the house. It is buried into a hillside and camouflaged in greenery.

We inherited a peach tree that is awesome so we planted a fruit trees all around it to make a small orchard. Peaches, cherries, pears, blueberries, and fig.

Refugees from the old beach road. They are all planted now.

So I guess it’s obvious why I haven’t been around.

I’ve been completely lost in the limbo land between buying and selling a home. It seems as if all we’ve done this spring and summer is work on one or the other house or garden and move objects between them. Cats are confused. I am exhausted. My blog has been neglected. I’ve been painting walls and longing to paint again from a palette rather than a can. I am excited to move into my new home though and I love it madly even though it’s stolen all of my time. The most challenging and emotional part of all this has been moving the gardens, deciding which plants to keep and which to leave and where they go and all that jazz. These photos were taken last week at the beach house garden. Everything has changed dramatically again. Faded irises have given way to an explosion of daisies, coreopsis, and foxglove. So much inspiration. So little time.

I finally made it to Provincetown after three years of living just on the other side of the Cape Cod Bay. Even though I can see it from our landing, it’s a long drive around the tip of the Cape and it would be an even longer swim. I forgot to take pictures until we passed this amazing garden on our way home. The Ganesha caught my eye. I always forget to take pictures. Oh well. It’s a reason to go back. The other reason to go back soon is that I found an entire gallery of antique Indian art with hundreds of miniatures and yantras.

The garden gate.

The front entrance gate.

Long shot and close-up of the wizard sculpture.

An eclectic stone wall surrounds the property so I couldn’t see most of it.

I’ve been out and about more than usual lately. C.P. and I finally made it up to Salem to see the Joseph Cornell exhibition. To put it diplomatically, the choice of lighting and display were interesting. It’s Joseph Cornell though. I had to see it and the sheer size of the show made it worth the trip. There were a number of small paintings and collages from private collections that are rarely seen not that I could actually see them. Note to curator. Please turn on the lights next time. It would also be nice to be able to view all sides of the work since it is actually three-dimensional but I’d have settled for the front view. Lights? Please? I guess the person who designed this show thought showing shadow boxes required low lighting. It wasn’t the best choice.

We also visited the Fogg and Sackler museums. I had sort of forgotten about them. The collections are small, diverse, and selective. The lighting and display are exquisite. I was reprimanded for taking notes in my notebook with a pen instead of a pencil.

It’s much colder here here than it was in Boston. Somehow though, the winter here is less depressing. As intimidating as it is, dealing with the elements and having the ocean right there is energizing and inspirational. I feel more real here, more connected…more human. The beach changes dramatically in the winter. It looks like some remote primordial landscape at low tide. Beautiful and abandoned. The photographs are of high tide in the morning just after it snowed. I love how the mood and the landscape shift from month to month, hour to hour.

It’s well into spring and feels like early winter here. The ocean is rough and wild and loud. I find it comforting and invigorating. It worked out well for us on spring break. Most of the vacationers never showed up. We live right on the beach which means that our peaceful isolated life is transformed by weekenders and vacationers in the warm season. We have the place to ourselves the rest of the year and when it storms.

It seems to me that most people only love nature when she isn’t showing too much character. That’s when I love her best. On one of our walks against the wind, we saw the seals again. When the beach is empty and the sea is rough, they swim over from the rocky point and play in the surf. The wild ducks like to body surf. I saw a flock of young males playing that game in the smaller swells.

Chris and I have been building a garden from scratch. Besides working on art in the studio and watching animals surf, that’s how we spent most of our time for the past few weeks. Little Nemo is not happy about it at all. He does not understand why we are outside and he’s not. Poor little guy. The future garden is still just an empty lot so it’s a lot of work to get it started. It’s still painful when I think about the lush wild garden at the old place but there is something to be said for starting fresh. The best thing about starting over is that we are planning and building this garden together.