Rosemary Smith Art & Books

I am painting. I have a show to prepare and I need a lot of pieces. I like to have extras so I can pick he best to hang. If anything good happens, I will share it here. Wish me luck.

Okay..I have been writing crazy stuff again........the prompt was.......Drum Roll please.......It was a dark and stormy night........lol.......classic......can't you just see Snoopy sitting on top of his doghouse with his typewriter? well...........here's what I did with it......

It was a dark and stormy night, just like every other night lately. The ebony sky was streaked with electric energy flying in every direction. I went to bed early. The cat curled up beside me with one paw resting on my leg for protection. I wasn’t sure if she needed the contact or thought that I did. Thunder boomed again, shaking the windows and sending poor Fluffy deeper under the covers. It made me wonder if it was just another storm or if something worse was headed our way. There hadn’t been any warnings of a hurricane, but I turned on the television weather station to find out what was happening out there.
The young female with obviously dyed hair, a big grin and augmented assets pointed to our city on the map and cheerfully informed me that we were in for a series of thunderstorms that would probably last all night. With the click of a button, I made her disappear, wishing that trick would work on a few other folks I know. Then I covered my eyes with a pink satin eye mask and stuck squishy earplugs into my ears to give me peace and quiet.
At some point, I realized that I was flying around the neighborhood. The rain had stopped. I looked down to see several damaged houses and the fire and rescue cars and trucks were scattered all over the area. My friend, Tootie and her dog, Shep were walking up and down my sidewalk. Shep barked at me and I told him to settle down, that everything was all right. He looked straight at me and said as clear as a bell,“That’s easy enough for you to say, but what about Tootie? She is pretty upset by all this.”
Several paramedics pushed a gurney containing a body covered in a sheet out my front door and down the sidewalk to a white van in my driveway. They loaded the unfortunate someone and left the scene. I tried to figure out who on earth it could have been since I live alone and don’t have overnight guests very often. Tootie and my other friend, Lilly were hugging and crying. I tried to eavesdrop.
All I heard was something about a tornado and a tree falling on my roof, so I followed them to the back of my house and was amazed to see the old oak that had kept my room so cool in the summer had fallen smack in the middle of my bedroom rooftop. They seemed to be very upset. I touched my feet to the ground in front of them and tried to reach out to touch Tootie to get her attention but my hand passed right through her ample body. I thought Hold on now that isn’t right. I tried to speak to them both but they ignored my efforts completely. Lilly said that she had the phone numbers for my children and would call them in the morning. Then they both noticed that the sun was coming up and hugged again before heading to their own homes for rest or breakfast or whatever needed doing.
Shep told me goodbye and I asked him, “Shep, am I dead?”
He said,” Yep…looks that way. We probably couldn’t have this conversation otherwise.”
I said, “What do I do?”
He said…..”I don’t know. I’ve never been dead before.”
I said,“Okay then ,I think I will wait right here for something to happen”.
He said, “yep. That’s what I would do, I reckon.”
I went inside my dilapidated house and looked at everything I was leaving. Before long I heard a series of bells, like wind chimes and my mother appeared. Mom looked great.
She said, “You about ready, Baby?”
I said, “Ready for what?”
She laughed and said,“ Come with me. I will show you what to do. It’s nice up there. You will like it. Your daddy and Harold are waiting for you on the other side.”
I said, “Why didn’t Harold come for me?”
She said,” I got the short straw.”
She laughed.
I didn’t know what to think. She said in that voice that mothers always use when kids don’t move fast enough, “Come on Hon, You have things to get done. Let’s get on with it.”
I felt myself rising above the ground and passing through a tunnel of soft light. I saw stars and felt the breeze on my skin. I smelled cookies baking and the scent of Jasmine and then, I saw my husband smiling and holding out his arms to me and remembered that I had always said my Heaven was in his arms. My father was there. He was holding Fluffy. They looked glad to see me.

I wrote a little story.....feel free to tell me what you think.

The Veggie Patch

Mary Lynn Gates and her garden were famous in her small town. She’d taken ribbons at the county fair for her peach preserves as well as her home-made salsa and was always generous with her produce.

She insisted on doing all of her own gardening chores even though her husband and children had offered to help many times. She said it was her kind of therapy and could always find other chores to make her family feel useful.

After Mary Lynn’s sudden death from a heart attack, the garden was neglected. No one worked in it because they felt it would be trespassing on Mary Lynn’s sacred territory. After a couple of weeks, Bob Gates began to feel sad because the garden was full of weeds and the vegetables needed to be picked. He and the kids spent Saturday morning gathering the crops and passing them on to their neighbors.

Mrs. Walton, who lived next door cried as the boys handed her a zip-lock baggy of yellow squash and tomatoes. She told them how much she had loved their mother and promised to think of her as she ate the veggies as part of her dinner that night.

During that morning, Lynn Gates discovered that her mother was well loved by the neighborhood and it made her regret some of the bad thoughts she’d had about her lately. She began to see her mom as a real person instead of the person most likely to embarrass her to death before she could get out of high school.
Since they’d given away most of the veggies they’d picked that morning, she grabbed her mother’s shovel and headed out to dig up some new potatoes to go with the handful of green beans she had left in the kitchen. It made her feel closer to her mom and she was sure her dad and two brothers would feel the same way if they were also able to share the results of mom’s hard work at dinner that night.

She was digging in the garden when her shovel hit something strange. It felt softer than a rock but stopped the blade as she pushed it with her foot. Lifting the load of dirt, she expected to see small red potatoes rolling to the ground. Instead she saw a collection of small white bones that appeared to be wrapped in fragments of red plaid shirt. Bending down to poke at them with a stick, her heart jumped to her throat and her knees were threatening to let her fall to the ground beside the body parts she’d found. She told herself that there was nothing to fear. A dead person could not hurt her. And she was curious. As many episodes of Bones as she had watched on television, she refused to give in to the creeps.

She recognized the bones as phalanges…fingers…human fingers. She carefully dug a little more and found a pair of jeans with a leather belt still threaded through the loops at the waist. Her first reactions screamed panic, but her curiosity and refusal to accept that her mother could ever be involved in anything that included a dead person in the garden kept her from giving in to it. Even so, when her father drove up, she dropped the shovel and ran across the garden as fast as her shaky legs would take her.
As soon as her dad saw the remains, he whipped out his cell phone and called the local police. He held his daughter close and reported the find and was told not to leave the area. The black and white patrol car drove up and the lives of the Gates family were changed forever.

Within hours, the garden patch was completely torn up and all the plants destroyed. Two more bodies were found. All were well known, but unsolved cases that had plagued the Chief through his entire tenure. One turned out to be a local woman, who’d been missing for five years. Another was a homeless person, the locals had known as “Shorty” who had disappeared the summer before last. The young man Lynn found was a teen-aged boy, who everyone thought had run away from a neighboring town six months before.

Bob Gates had no explanation. The police asked at least a thousand questions but he couldn’t answer most of them except to say that he had no knowledge that might be helpful. He and Mary Lynn met in Texas and had been married nearly eighteen years and had lived in Madison for over eight of those years. Before that, they’d lived in Birmingham for nearly ten. Their lives had always seemed normal and he never had any reason to suspect that there were people buried in the vegetable garden. He did have to tell them that they’d had a big garden in Birmingham too.

Autopsies on the victims showed they had all been beaten with a shovel. Mary Lynn’s shovel, the one Lynn had been using to dig for potatoes was found to have blood mixed in with dirt where the handle was attached to the head.
The out-pouring of sympathy and support that had sustained the family after Mary Lynn’s funeral turned sour very quickly. The broad sides of their white clapboard house were sprayed with hateful slogans and the sides of their car were scratched with labels saying “KILLER” and MURDERER”.

Lynn thought back on the day and how many people had sworn their love and support during the morning and how drastically things had changed by nightfall. She’d missed her mother so much over the past few weeks and wanted so desperately to tell her about all the positive changes in her own heart and mind about her and about their family. Sitting there watching the yellow crime tape flutter in the breeze made her feel alone. She was completely detached from all the reality she’d ever known.

Lynn dumped the raw green beans into the trash can and swept the kitchen floor. Her brothers came in and made peanut butter sandwiches for their own supper. On the way out , her younger brother, Jimmy said, “ Sis? Do you think mama could have killed those people?”
Lynn looked up at the ceiling, trying hard to keep the tears from spilling over and said,” I don’t know, hon. I would like to say no but I just don’t know. “
He took his sandwich and glass of milk to the den and sat staring at the television with a blank look on his sad and confused little ten year old face. His twelve year old brother, Pete sat beside him and kicked his foot because he didn’t know what to say or do and kicking out at his brother seemed the most normal thing he could think of. At ten that night they got bathed and pj’ed and fell into their beds hoping to sleep and dreading the next day at school.

Mr. Gates came home from the police station after eleven and sat in his recliner trying to digest the day. It ran around inside his head winding his brain so tight that it ceased to function and he finally passed out. The light of day woke him by shining in the sliding glass door. He hurt. He was just as confused as anyone else. He let the kids sleep late. He didn’t want them to deal with the ugliness any sooner than they had to. He walked into his bedroom and opened the drawer that held his wife’s nightgowns. He picked up his favorite soft white one with blue ribbons at the neck and holding it against his face, he finally cried.

I painted cotton last night......It was fun. Hmmmmmmm.light makes it look a bit flat.....guess I will work on that tonight. lol

I got a Royalty check yesterday. I like those..lol.......now.......what to buy.......hmmmmmm..more books maybe....good to see my habits supporting themselves.

Well...hmmmmmm....it won't let me delete the wrong book and when I tried to post it again....it did a strange thing.

http://goo.gl/gqANjb

Amazon Search Online shopping from a great selection at Books Store.

OOOPS!!! wrong book

Monday I went to speak to the members of the Crowley Art Association about Water Mixable Oils. It was a great bunch of folks and I enjoyed it as usual. I love to give talks....it brings out my Inner Diva......lol.......Anyway.......I told them my own experiences with the stuff. I started using them back in 1992 when Grumbacher came out with their MAX line and I use them sometimes and sometimes not. I guess I am lucky that I don't have any allergy problem with turpentine or mineral spirits so it is not something I feel the need to do and.well........I actually like the smelly stuff. Since I knew a few months ago that I was going to do this talk, I went out and bought a new set and did a couple of small paintings to take with me and we had a nice question and answer session too. I don't know if anybody ran to Michaels to buy their own after we got finished....but I came home and painted. I like oils. I like acrylics. and I LOVE watercolor. and now......I want to try working with oil pastels. yeahhhhhh......I stopped at Michaels on the way home.LOL.......Oh well.....I can't resist a new toy.

How many of you oil painters out there have used water mixable oils? If so, please give me your thoughts about them. I would also like to know which brands you used and how they compare to regular oils for the work that you do.
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Tiny Bones is now Available as an e-book on amazon.com.....and........it is listed for $2.99 for Kindle.............Yippppie!!