Back on the trail

Sycamore trees in winter 1, 10x7" watercolor

Sycamore trees in winter 2

My first date with my late husband included an afternoon at a State Park near Faribault, MN. When I asked him the names of particular wild flowers, he couldn’t tell me. “If I was from Minnesota, I would know them,” I responded. I wasn’t being nasty; I simply spoke the truth. Moving around all my growing up years as a “military brat” involved getting to know new regions and their vegetation. We picked blackberries in England, mangoes in the Philippines. I think my mother was responsible for instilling in my brother and me, a true appreciation of nature and its wondrous beauty.

I spent the day last Monday observing, appreciating, and painting a few of the glorious sights offered by nature at the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill. With the prospect of a show next year in the new Education Center’s art gallery, I was given a quick private tour of the Center’s Display Gardens. Afterward, I headed down one of the Piedmont Nature Trails where I found many striking Sycamore trees, naked in winter with veins of white bark exposed on their upper trunks and limbs.