Carrasco Studio

Ollala Beach/watercolor

Last week we took the ferry to Southworth and on to our friend's farm for apple picking and pressing. Dick and Patricia Ramsey live in this beautiful Puget Sound  beach front property where  apple trees  grow in their yard below the house, and then from there is a long walk  down through old growth forest to the water.  I have an obsession about their beach.  For one thing it is so pristine, and another is that the beach has fascinating rocks and pebbles.... powdery surfaced agates and quartz and strange rocks that look like rotten molars. A primal greed consumes me when I go on this beach, and I find pebbles I can't resist.  I fill my pockets until I can barely stagger back up the path

 I've always been like this about rocks.  Men will say, "What have you got in this suitcase,.....rocks?  Har Har!"  I bob my head in assent. I have packed rocks from all over the world.  Rocks from beaches in the Philippines to quartz from the streets of Paris.

Anyhow, this time the beach had extra presents. Maple leaves had been pushed up by previous surf in orderly rows of russet and ochre .   The leaves were dry and made a lovely papery "swish swish" as I walked through them, almost like that sound a drummer makes when he uses his brush on the cymbals.

Later, after we cored and pressed the apples, we had a potluck dinner.  Dick made a  pot roast that was truly a masterpiece.

Can you make a cherry pie/painting?????

Okay … Here I am with those glorious red cherries. In your mind, hold one of them up to the sun, preferably a sun in a clear blue sky.  That's right.  Now compose them in a painting … put a red glaze over a yellow cherry shape. Place another pale yellow paint area where the sun hits. Put another transparent red glaze over that. Maybe another red glaze in the area away from the sun.          

It's about right. Now. Make a pie.