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Wanted to take a moment and send out our wishes for a wonderful Christmas to every one out there!

We hope you can be with friends and family, take some time away from the distractions of your busy lives, and truly enjoy your time this season!

God Bless and Merry Christmas...

...Bruce

(Image is "Frost In The Oaks" - oil on mounted canvas - 12X16)

The Winter Solstice comes tomorrow (Sunday the 21st) and now it definitely looks and feels the part even more than my last post. We've had around 15-16 inches of snow this past week and now the NWesters are bucking up and it's feeling like we're in it for the long haul!

Yesterday after blowing out the drives and paths (3 hours worth) I was walking some mail down to the box and a flock of Canada Geese at least a half mile long (I kid not!) came over the farm at that height you hear the wing beats...it was totally cool! I felt you could hold a conversation with them - they were so low and the air so still. The birds weren't in their characteristic "V" but one long string until near the very end they began to break off into a couple separate formations. I usually think of Canada Geese as autumn birds...but hey it was still autumn yesterday after all.

I've done Canada Geese in my work before but not in winter settings. Most of my winter work, whether photography or artwork, has served as Christmas card material over the past 40 some years. In early years I did pen and ink, transparent wash, or lino cuts for cards, but gradually graduated to serigraphs (silkscreen prints), photographs and paintings.

I should have opted for a photograph this year because my time has been too tied up, but I got this ...well, for a lack of a better word "idea", that I thought would make a nice winter painting so started one about 2 weeks ago. It wasn't till I was about half way through the piece that Georgie said to me something about how close to the "deadline" I was working. I pondered her warning and then realized, good grief - Christmas was somehow sneaking up on me! How did this happen?!

The Black-capped Chickadee header for this blog was a simpler "illustrative" card from 1984. I believe it was a ink/wash drawing. I did many more ink drawings than any other medium early on, in fact my first "sale" in the early 60's was an ink drawing.

The next year's design got a little more involved, it was a 6 color serigraph. One thing about silk screening is the "error factor" when you have miss-registrations, ink "accidents", and mixed colors running out before they were supposed to. On that piece I ran out of the two rabbit colors (the highlight base and the top color) before I wanted, so I had a lot of prints with no rabbit - just tree!

In recent years, I've done a few more color pencil pieces but I think the first one to be done specifically for a Christmas card design was one done in 2001 (titled "Winter in Iowa"). I really enjoy color pencil work but have not done many recently...it's a time thing...dang time!

Yesterday I finished printing, writing, and sending out the last of my Christmas cards for the year. "Time" really got in my face this year...I'll have to start this process around Halloween next year maybe?

If you want to see illustrations of the serigraph and color pencil I mention, you can go to my Prairie Painter blog at - http://prairiepainter.blogspot.com/2008/12/solstice.html

It's now 3 below as I write...they're talking -20 Monday morning! Keep warm out there!

I think the eastern 2/3's of the country is thinking the solstice must have come and gone already...we're definitely in the "winter" mode for the duration now!

Our hearts go out to the eastern part of the country that are still feeling the effects of the ice storm last week - many still do not have their electricity...that'd be disastrous here as our heat is electric...pipes would freeze and break the first 24 hours!

We got to 10 below this morning, which isn't so unusual for NW Iowa, it just came so quickly that we feel the affects more I think. The 35-40 mph winds and snow maybe helped it sting a bit more too. I hope we're up to it but they're telling us 4-6 inches of snow and colder still tomorrow.

I used to really get into winter...didn't phase me one iota. That changes with the years; get ready for it if you're a kid!

I do enjoy one thing about winter still though. The visual sense of it is quite engaging. As I blogged last year around this time, I have done my own Christmas cards since the mid 1960's. I am still at it, and maybe if I can find some time around here I'll post some more past examples. But time is the enemy right now...after all I'm working on the 2008 Christmas card as we speak. Maybe I'll show it around a day or two before Christmas - after all I don't want to spoil it for anyone that is on my mailing list!

The real solstice is this coming Sunday (21st); keep warm out there!

I had some difficulty putting a title to this post...nothing really makes sense descriptively, but I'll go on.

When we first moved here in the fall of 2002 we found Woodchucks nearly everywhere here on Prairie Hill Farm. Heads would pop up out of holes in the storage shed dirt floor whenever I'd walk in to get the mower or find a shovel. A head even popped up between my feet one day in the crib lean-to when I sat down to do some welding. (that was a little disconcerting)

I'd had plenty of exposure to Woodchucks growing up. Woodchucks (Ground Hogs to some) were something we marveled at - once we caught one in a cage trap and totted it home for a "pet". The snarling and gnashing of teeth made us decide it wasn't the "best" candidate for a "pet", so we carried it back and let it go. (Mom did have something to say about it)

I've taken a few photos of Woodchucks through the years...they're fun to watch in grassy meadows or wood lots where they readily climb trees. The young ones are really fun to photograph as are just about any small mammal, but I'm afraid the "fun" had run out on Woodchucks here in the yard and buildings some time ago.

I've repaired many doors on the out buildings here...all Woodchuck damaged, they love chewing through wood doors to get into any building. I've had to fill in huge tunnels under supporting walls and big holes in the middle of floors. I even caught one trying to tunnel under the house!

One day Georgie and I were sitting at the breakfast table looking out toward the barn and saw a Woodchuck up on the barn roof running around. What the heck!? Well, sure enough there was a new hole chewed through the barn roof! They love to climb into the hay loft, and chewing through the wood shingles and roofing planks to gain access to a roof frolic was not beyond these guys.

Since that day Woodchucks were no longer "cute" or "fun" here...the neighbors probably just shook their heads and thought "I could'a told you that!" Funny how it takes large doses of reality to look at something in a different way.

Well these guys were no longer welcome in the yard or buildings and the "enforcement" of this curfew has held pretty well over the past few years.

Last week I went out to the shop behind the studio to use the table saw...the shop is a metal lean-to attached to the back of the studio...its unheated with a sliding door and has a dirt floor. Right next to the table saw was a "big" hole in the floor with a lot of dirt piled around it. I guess someone snuck in for last minute winter quarters...

It's too late to do anything about squatters at this point. Woodchucks hibernate non-stop till early spring. I don't blame them...I understand. So I threw a door over the den entrance...no need to give skunks or coons the idea I'm running a bed and breakfast for them as well! Come spring, I'll notice if our stow-away is up and about, then I'll put out the unwelcome sign again.

We're having great sunshine for Thanksgiving this year. We're not going to complain about the weather as all the snow has melted once again and that's just the tip of the ice berg as to what we have to be thankful for!

I do want to stop and take a moment to wish all of you out there a great Thanksgiving as well...God Bless!

Something we always look forward to in the late fall is the return of Bald Eagles to the Waterman Creek Valley here in NW Iowa. We are not the Eagle magnet like the Missouri or Mississippi River areas that bring them in by the dozens or hundreds, but we can usually count on a small number on any given day. The Prairie Heritage Center had over 50 eagles during their Eagle Watch last winter....now I grew up along the Des Moines River valley back in the 50's and 60's and my first Bald Eagle sighting there was around the time I was 15 years old...it was quite a sight back then!

On Monday Georgie and I were at the Prairie Heritage Center south of here and watched 4 Bald Eagles (2 sub adults and 2 adults) settling into the eagle roosting area just off Waterman Creek and the Little Sioux River. This is a fun thing to see and it's heartening to have the eagles come back in this state and the lower 48 as a whole during the past 40 years! I believe there was an estimate of less that 600 Bald Eagles in the lower 48 states back in 1960!

I had posted ( http://prairiepainter.blogspot.com/2007/12/december-studio.html ) on local Bald Eagles almost a year ago, but they are something we'll never grow complacent or bored with, and it's really neat to have them back again.

We used to have to go north to Georgie's folk's Ontario retreat along the Wenasaga River to see Bald Eagles and nests. I did an oil painting years back of the sight of an adult Bald Eagle catching a thermal high above the Wenasaga River, just upstream from the cabin Georgie and I honeymooned in 38 years ago.

It's a neat bird and it's a fortunate thing to still be able to hold a sight such as this so dearly in our hearts.

In the mid 70's in November...doesn't get much better than that! Love Indian Summer!

I looked up the meaning of Indian Summer and I must say we sure make things complicated. I think the term Indian Summer is much more personal than the "strict" requirements thrown about from various sources.

We have experienced at least 3 hard freezes since mid October, and it was in the mid 70's today; whether or not that qualifies it, that doesn't concern me - I'll still call it Indian Summer.

I've been working in the studio on a long project, entering lengthy information in an html document. Needing some respite and fresh air, Georgie and I went on a long walk out back together. It's a half mile to the back of the back pasture, it's a real nice walk along the ridge of a prairie remnant.

When we returned we sat on the studio's front deck and watched the harvest down in the valley out front. The neighbors driving by frequently pulling their wagons full of corn...a lot more traffic than we usually get here.

The air is crisp and the sun is warm...most trees have dropped their leaves but there's still a few stubborn ones around. As the afternoon light lengthens behind us, a wonderful magenta casts itself on the upper tree branches and the valley takes on a wonderful glow. Two bucks follow a doe and it's two offspring of last summer along Waterman Creek and the east ridge...one a 10 pointer, the other smaller. A crescent moon - waxing, rides lower in the SW and the breeze is now a more pleasant tempo.

This is Indian Summer to us; we'll cherish it and replay the sense of it, the smells and sight of it, during long winter nights ahead...

Georgie and I packed our bags for a road trip this weekend...it was short but long deserved as far as I was concerned! Too much work makes Bruce a dull boy. I needed some winter painting material too and hadn't been down the Loess Hills in Western Iowa for some years, so that's where we headed.

Even though the color of autumn was fading, the hills are usually good for nice pockets here and there plus the landscape has much physical character. You can always count on the prairie ridges (the grasses) for color though - without fail!

One area we always go through when we're in the Loess Hills is the area of Preparation Canyon and further north. It was very windy when we went through on Saturday but not nearly as bad as today! (Gale force winds sustained at 40mph and gusting a lot higher)

With real windy weather I rarely come up with publishable images, but they give fodder to work with on long winter days and nights in the studio. Winter - yikes, lets hope for a "long" fall first!

It's no longer summer! Well, it still feels like summer...except it's beginning to get dark a lot earlier than I'd gotten used to. The trees are beginning to turn here and there too, but not quite dramatic enough yet.

Probably the biggest giveaway here in NW Iowa is the crops. The soybeans are really turning yellow and then amber as they drop their leaves - this can be quite dramatic when the light is fleeting as cloud shadows dance across the larger landscape.

My favorite autumn effect here however is the prairie. The forbs and grasses here never fail to satisfy; I can't remember a fall without the grasses and the wildflower "plants" turning wonderful vibrant color. We don't have the benefit of the amazing autumn landscapes of the NE United States, nor the wonderful north woods transformation we've witnessed on the north shore of Lake Superior, but we've got something very special in it's own right.

Autumn here also means the last flowers of the season - mainly the asters, sunflowers, and gentians. The asters here on our prairie remnant are a real joy to behold. Tuck these great fall forbs between Indian grass, or Big or Little bluestem and they're even more beautiful and vibrant.

Ya the autumnal equinox has arrived and passed here on the tallgrass...this is definitely a time to enjoy, as we did last summer!

Mid September and it's still barely summer; the mornings and evenings are now sweatshirt or light jacket affairs out here in the countryside! One thing Georgie and I really enjoy watching is the Monarch Butterfly migration. You really know it's taking place when the acreage trees begins to fill with dozens, then hundreds of Monarchs each evening. The pasture is always full of lots of butterflies in the late summer, but when the Monarchs pass through, the numbers really swell!

I videotaped the migration in the yard this year. If you have a decent connection speed, try giving the video a watch at -

http://prairiepainter.blogspot.com

...there's a lot happening now at this time of the year, be sure and drop what you're doing on occasion and go out and look...and enjoy!

I may not be alone in this - I do like fall, but I sure hate seeing summer coming to it's end for the year. I also think I've developed this feeling over the years, it's not something I've felt strongly about all along.

With all the work I've been wading through these weeks, I've had to remind myself (or Georgie has) that I need to stop and take a breather outside every now and then.

I've been taking breaks out on our prairie remnant lately, trying to glimpse the last plants to celebrate the year. Among what I love the most are the Dotted liatris; I'd hate to miss out on theses beautiful magenta prairie flowers.

It's a good thing, to stand down during your day and take in the natural world; I hope you're finding a moment during your day to do the same. It'll be fall soon and, hey, it'll be a great time to enjoy as well!