Visited the outcrop--pictures tomorrow

We went back to the outcrop today, and it was beautiful, but it was remarkable how much it had changed since the other day. The colors of the mosses and lichens had lost some intensity in dring. Indeed, some of the mossses had blackened up. The stream area was reduced. The light was different. Resurrection fern growing on the biggest cedar was lush and green. That growing on a smaller cedar a few feet away had already shrivelled and curled. A Virginia pine grew at the base of the outcrop, looking visibly different from all the loblollies. Pinus virginiana looks craggy like pines in a Chinese painting. Even stunted loblollies never look like that. This is a great place to look at vegetation zones. The plants and lichens grow in distinct pockets that relate to water and soil availability and probably other factors as well.

Tomorrow I'll get the pictures out of the camera and onto the computer. For now, this is an ink painting of a sleeping tabby cat. I did this a couple of years ago, using Chinese ink and a Chinese brush on Chinese paper. I'd been practicing painting orchids in the style I was learning in, you guessed it, a Chinese painting class. I was well warmed-up when I saw one of my cats dozing on a chair. I put a sheet of paper on the red felt and sketched her. SHe is constructed of her stripes. I had this image put on some items through Cafe Press.