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| Verde River (boy isn't that the truth) |
Do you see the "GREEN" in the river - it's real, that photo was not enhanced. Amazing isn't it!
Ok, guess I'm getting ahead of myself as clearly I didn't see that prior to seeing who had arrived in the parking lot.
This day brought a "new girl" with it - we seem to get a lot of those. This is Anna and she's the person I mentioned in my last post whose husband stopped to ask us if his wife, who is an excellent watercolorist, could join us. They are part-timers as they have another home someplace for the warmer weather and will be heading there soon.
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| Anna |
I know, not a great photo, but sometimes that happens. She happened to have just been talking with Pat when I pulled up.
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| Pat |
I knew that Lisa and Betty would also be joining us and just as I was telling Pat and Anna that, they pulled in.
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| Betty with the big bag hanging off her and Lisa |
As you can see they're also doing some work on the parking area, I don't know for sure but guess they're going to pave it. They already had paved the drive down to it and leveled it off some, so while still a down hill, no where near as steep as before and that big pot hole is gone.
So we headed out to the water to see what changes occurred since our last visit there. This space seems to always have the most dramatic changes and it didn't fail us this time either, evidenced by the green grass or moss under the water in the picture above.
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| This is the section where it breaks off and creates that island |
Unfortunately, I didn't take a good picture of the island, but you can see it on the right side of the below picture.
Pat found her spot looking at the area where the water looks so still before it branches off toward that little island and goes around and back to join the main part.
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| Pat in her spot |
Lisa with her little pink palette went off to find her spot (look at what she's carrying in her left hand)
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| Lisa and her little pink palette |
Yes, that itty bitty palette, but look at what's on her back! Funny, no space for the little pink. (I know, I know, she wants t make sure it stays flat as obviously she keeps her watercolor paints moist.)
Anna found a tree she was compelled to paint and quickly settled into her spot.
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| Anna in her spot |
Anna did not have a plein air setup, so brought along a couple of folding chairs and bags of stuff. It worked out quite well for her.
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| Anna's view |
Wait'll you see her painting!!
So, while I was still debating I saw someone coming through the trees.
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| Kristen |
It was Kristen. I didn't know she would be joining us. Turns out her ability to join us is always a last minute thing -- a 3 year old grandchild is involved -- she says she's incredibly active 😊, she did smile when she said that. I suspect a 3 year old is keeping her and her husband quite busy, so getting away isn't always too easy.
But, she didn't waste any time looking around but quickly found her spot so she could take advantage of that time to paint.
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| Kristen |
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| Betty in her spot |
and, she wasn't far from Lisa
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| (L to R) Betty, Lisa in her spot |
There were a number of visitors there, young and old. Teens and parents etc. But this one girl had her hands full. Two little ones. Oh, that reminds me, while we were all bundled up, check her out.
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| Young mom with 2 little ones |
You see a hint of blue through the weeds, that was on of her little boys. When I walked past he was busy gnawing on her sunglasses -- she said, "anything to keep him from putting sand in his mouth". But, they were clearly all having fun. There were also a number of other people that wandered through, I didn't take their pictures though.
This was my spot - overlooking what looks like muck.
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| My spot |
But what I was really looking at is the view in the photo above that shows up right after we left the parking lot. Go on back and look, I promise not to go anywhere. You'll just have to scroll down to the photo that says "My spot" 😉
As you know, I seem to rush through painting, so, I started to wander to chat with who was there, Kristen came along with me because she already did 2 paintings and wanted to take some time to see everyone's spot and what they were working on. She said the time we spend looking at them in our little gallery is never enough. Lisa finished her painting and thought we were going to use Anna's tree.
But that spot while quite interesting, would've been difficult to place all our paintings on. So we opted for that cement platform thing that's there (what is that for anyway - anyone know??)
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| Gallery - not good lighting - sorry! |
So, besides the fighting with the falling paintings, cast shadows and poor lighting; it turned out I couldn't find my phone holder for the group photo. So instead we just gathered together as best we could within my arms reach out and pretty much laughed.
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| Peaking from the Rear (L to R) Anna, Kristen (L to R) Pat, Me, Lisa, Betty |
Hey, at least we all made it into the photo!
Till next week!
Cecilia