Maple Sugar Season in Pennsylvania

That's me, next to a sugar maple. Today's latest technology involves plastic jugs and plastic conduit lines for tapping the syrup

Spring is late this year and I'm extremely restless to get out and paint. But it's still a little cool for my fingers to paint outside and the landscape is not quite in bloom yet. Nonetheless, maple sugaring season is well under way and my husband and I took advantage of a bright, sunny afternoon to attend this year's Maple Harvest Festival at Shaver's Creek Environmental Center in central Pennsylvania. I’ve included a few photos from our afternoon to share with you:

The evaporators in the sugar shack

The different stages of refinement as the water within the sap is boiled off to create syrup

Displaced glass marbles illustrate the volume of water that is boiled off and the change in density of the sap as it moves from a watery substance to a more viscous substance

Back from North Carolina

My husband, Tim, and I in the Sarah P. Duke Garden on the Duke University campus in Durham, North Carolina

We just returned from a great trip to visit our friends down in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. The weather was a bit on the chilly side (I was hoping for shorts weather, but it wasn't quite the season yet). Nonetheless, we had a wonderful time visiting with our friends and even our dog, Annie, managed to get along with their dogs. Annie had *huge* dog aggression issues when we first adopted her in 2002, but she's doing better with each passing year. And we all re-charged our batteries in the North Carolina sunshine, so it was a relaxing trip. We didn't even encounter a single traffic slowdown through the DC metro area. Always a plus.

I'm looking forward the next month because I have no trips planned. It will be a quiet time for me to hunker down in my studio and get some new pieces completed as I build my inventory of paintings for the summer art show season as well as for my galleries and other exhibition opportunities. Things get crazy with my schedule beginning in mid-April, but until then I'm going to enjoy the peace and quiet. I'm also going to keep my fingers crossed for some warmer weather so that I can get outdoors and paint a bit, too.

Work in Progress: "Memory"

An on-the-easel detail of "Memory"

The image above is a detail of a work currently in progress on my easel. I'm planning to call this piece "Memory" because I was so drawn in by the woman's pensive gaze; it seemed to me that she was mulling over a distant recollection. I caught this at a neighborhood coffee shop in the trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. I've spent much of the past week working on this piece. It's a bit of a self indulgence because I've devoted a lot of attention to commissions this winter, and this idea represents a change of pace for me. It's somewhat eccentric and 100 percent pure inspiration for me. We're due to travel to visit friends down in North Carolina this weekend, so I'm not sure if I'll finish it before that point, but I'm pleased with how it's progressing thus far.

And just as this work symbolizes a new direction for me, I'm looking forward to the upcoming months because I have some new experiences on tap. In April, I'll participate in a plein air painting event along the Eastern Shore in Maryland. And in May, I'm planning a midwest road trip and painting excursion. My itinerary is still taking shape, but at this time I'm looking forward to visiting the Cuyahoga Valley in Ohio, Detroit, Chicago, and my old hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. I'm totally stoked. Further updates as events warrant...