Thought I’d keep it simple this morning, showing the many faces of the red hibiscus blooming on the hedge. I brewed a cup of tea with the petals. The liquid is a pretty cyan blue color! Enjoy! ~ Rebekah
🌺
Keeping it simple
15 03 2021Comments : Comments Off on Keeping it simple
Tags: hibiscus, red hibiscus
Categories : About me, Food, Hawaiian
Minis in my garden
3 03 2021Coming out into the sunshine this morning, I noticed the blue ginger beside the front steps blooming. So tiny. I toured the garden and recorded more minis. Aren’t they pretty?
Blue ginger
Fern
Fig
Pōlinalina
Cherry
Calamansi
Red ti
Kupukupu fern
Noni (Morinda citrifolia)
Phalaenopsis
Cherry
Barrel cactus
Red hibiscus
Kukui (candlenut)
I love my garden!
~Rebekah
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Tags: garden, plants
Categories : About me, Hawaiian
Hello 2021
2 01 2021Hello studio fans,
No resolutions, no affirmations. This first post of the new year is more like a personal inventory—a pause to take stock of my likes and what brings me joy, as well as my wishes.
Just looking around, I see I like flowers and fashioning lei. I like to garden and grow food. Cook food, bake fruit pies. Play music, sing. I like to play with my dog; I know he understands English, he’s just not able to speak it. I like to create, as in making art, I like to write and make photos.
I enjoy visiting with our two granddaughters and hope I can be a good example for them.
I enjoy connecting with friends and relatives, remotely at this time. I look forward to a time when I can see them in person. How will we have changed?
And as for my wishes, but no promises, I wish to be kind. a good listener, an understanding mate, lighter all around.
Stringing kou flowers into a lei
Sweet potato stems peeled and prepped for cooking. Tasty!
Mountain apple pie
At the Yamaha
JJ the family dog
My most recent oil sketch with red and green complements
Our moʻopuna
Happy New Year!
All the best,
Rebekah
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Tags: 2021, Happy New Year
Categories : About me, Fine Art, Food, Friends & Family, Music
When to open presents
24 12 2020
It’s Christmas Eve at the studio, and there are presents under the tree. DH asked me, when shall we open them? I can tell he’s excited, but we haven’t hung up our stockings yet, and it’s still daylight in the Islands. He asks, maybe one?
Some families attend Christmas Eve midnight service and open gifts after they return home from church.
Some folks wait until Christmas morning, you know, to see what Santa Claus brought. Remember to leave him a treat.
Our granddaughters are allowed to open one each at 5:30 on Christmas morning, and then they have to wait until the rest of the family gets up to open the rest.
When I was a kid, my father would count the presents under the tree addressed to him and open one a day starting that many days before Christmas Day. So, if there were five, he would start opening on December 21. Clever guy, my dad. Who’s the kid, now?
Whenever you open your presents, remember that a gift isn’t a gift until it is received. Receive with gladness and acknowledge the reason for the season.
Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! Or, as we say in Hawaiian, Mele Kalikimaka! May all your dreams come true.
~ Rebekah
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Tags: act of receiving, Christmas, gifts, giving, presents, receiving
Categories : About me, Friends & Family, Memoir
Odd Christmastime
21 12 2020Christmastime 2020 seems odd to me. I can’t articulate my feelings well, except to note that Kilauea volcano started to erupt at Halemaumau last night. The video footage I saw was beautiful.
The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, the “Christmas star” seen over the manger 2020 years ago, is happening again.
We’re exchanging gifts of home-baked cookies with neighbors and friends, but with face masks on and from a distance because of the pandemic; no hugging.
I am making a pecan pie for my two painting students who are bringing lunch on the 23rd. It’s the final class of Painting I, and coincidentally the studio setup is comprised of the complements red and green Christmas colors.
Chef Logan, who usually delivers our mid-day meal, is taking a break, only to make it up by providing an intimate Dinner for Two for my darling husband and me on Christmas Day. We don’t have to cook!
All this seems odd to me because all I really planned to share was the reindeer Rudolf that my father-in-law—whose father’s name also was Rudolph—made to wish us a Merry Christmas.
Chef’s creation
Christmas colors
Rudolph
~ Rebekah
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Tags: 2020, Christmas, volcano
Categories : About me, Fine Art, Food, Friends & Family
On obligations
19 11 2020Besides taking care of your family, what regular activities during this unusual year of 2020 amidst the coronavirus pandemic are you doing that you classify as obligations? I mean obligations in a good way. What commitments do you enjoy? I have four:
• The first is the weekly class in fine art painting that I teach in person on my covered deck. Two faithful and lucky adult students gave me the honor to teach The Gloria Foss Color Course for what is probably the last time in my art career.
• Next is my study of Hawaiian language, ʻŌlelo Makuahine (mother tongue), with Kumu Keoua Nelsen who teaches the Kealaleo method for people who have tried to learn Hawaiian many times without success. 😃 Nowadays the three-hour Saturday class is online via Zoom, but it works and we have homework.
• I’m a citizen of Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi and it’s political action committee (KPAC) as “kupuna adviser.” Age has its privileges. We have facilitated community education, such as “how to navigate the legislature,” monitor bills, and write testimony.
• Last but by all means not least is choir practice with the Windward Choral Society directed by Susan McCreary Duprey. It, too, is on Zoom (I’m getting used to the technology, hated it at first), but our director is creative and an “Energizer Bunny.” She makes it work. Among other scores, we are rehearsing George Frideric Handel’s Messiah for a 4 p.m. December 13 performance on (you guessed it) Zoom. I love to sing!
Happy and safe holidays, everyone.
~Rebekah
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Categories : About me, Fine Art, Hawaiian, Music
Festive autumn lights
10 11 2020Autumn in the Islands is comparatively warm, but the trade winds can kick up, and we have rain. The holiday season looms as it does everywhere. I’ve been getting into a festive mood. I found new lighting by shopping online; so easy and dangerous for the pocketbook when self-isolating during the current pandemic.
Artificial Jack-o-lantern, battery powered, in the front yard
Moon rising on Halloween night
Gorgeous sunset over the Koʻolau Mountains as seen from Kāneʻohe Bay last Thursday. Flame torches provide ambiance for dinner with friends.
New tiny white lights decorate the house exterior. They are on an automatic timer for six hours a night for as long as their batteries last. An online catalog find.
I can’t wait until the day after Thanksgiving to put up our Christmas tree.
Be well and stay safe. Love,
Rebekah
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Tags: batteries, festive, holiday, lights
Categories : About me
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