Hot Summer in the Garden

The hot humid weather has made some of the garden go crazy this year, but the color is drowned out by the jungle of weeds and invasive plants that went even crazier. But the old dependables, bee balm and daylilies came out in force. Amazingly, the checkerberry also did well. After many years, this is the first season they were not consumed by animal invaders. Perhaps even the woodchucks felt it was too warm to leave the den.

Finally Framed

I had been meaning to finish a frame for this painting since last year; the gilding was done on this and some others a while back, but I never got around to the finishing surface treatments until this week.

Normally I would like a wider frame, but the painting is small, and I wanted an excuse for a frame in this design. It is a simple, arts-and-crafts style, carved, water gilded and burnished.

The painting is an acrylic, a scene of lilacs on a side stree in Wiscasset, Maine.