Nature Archives - Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

The Colors in Nature’s Palette

September 2, 2015 by Ashley Hackshaw

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walking to get frozen yogurt last night Boo and I wandered through a gravel lot to get a closer look at the train and we found this:

I don’t know what kind of plant it is but we stood in awe for a few minutes wondering how that many hues could come from one tiny green vine. Here are a few of the actual color matches found in the photo:

Too many to even name but if I tried: mulberry, wheatgrass, camel are a few that come to mind.

I uploaded the photo to Palette FX to get a few names:
Butterfly Bush
Limed Spruce*
Horizon
Tom Thumb
Flax Smoke
Pale Oyster
Pippin
Petite Orchid

*my favorite

This morning I stumbled across this watercolor painting of the old Bethlehem Steel Company in Pennsylvania. It was painted in 1881 by Joseph Pennell and what struck me was how ominous it looked.

Source

I started trying to come up with names for the colors used and most at first had a sterile theme of ash, coal, pollution, and alchemy. But what if I ran it through the same palette generator? Stripped out the colors are beautiful:

And check out the names (from left to right):

1. Pink Flare
2. Mountbatten Pink
3. Amethyst Smoke
4. Smoky
5. _____
6. Casper
7. Fiord
8. Pattens Blue
9. Elephant
10. Pancho
11. _____
12. Sambuca
13. _____

I don’t know why 5, 11 and 13 don’t have names yet. Maybe you have an idea for them.

The Desert Wildflowers

March 2, 2014 by Ashley Hackshaw

It was overcast and rainy in the desert yesterday. Boo and I headed up the hill to the annual Wildflower Festival. We live about a mile from the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument.*

*Congress created the 272,000-acre Monument in 2000. Read more about it here.

We haven’t had much rain this season so the wildflowers are few but we still spotted some. There were lots of blooms on the Desert Lavender plants:

How cute is this little guy:

This is Brittlebush:

We took the short little hike around the visitor’s center. Most of the plants in the desert are not very friendly, but still pretty to look at:

An Ocotillo plant. It always looks like it’s just a bunch of dead sticks to me, but even sticks can be pretty if you look hard enough:

A Smoke Tree. It’s leaves are gray which I guess why it’s called that:

This little hummingbird was so pretty…silver and purple:

The types of plants in this area are called “desert scrub”….I love that name. Here’s more prickly desert scrub: a Prickly Pear cactus:

This is a Chuparosa bush…it has little red flowers. It’s also called the “Hummingbird Bush” for obvious reasons:

No clue what this one is but I love the wispy desert scrub. These are what turn into those pesky tumbleweeds:

I think this is a Cholla cactus:

I think this is Cholla too:

A cute desert tortoise:

Crafting activities. It must be extreme considering the protection the guy next to Boo is wearing:

We ate lunch and listened to the Shadow Mountain Band play some bluegrass.

Boo bought a CD. Because she loves this song…so do I:

Wildflower viewing is definitely different in the desert. I’m taking a plein-air class in a week with a local artist. Excited about that.

They Kidnapped my St. Francis…..

August 12, 2009 by Ashley Hackshaw

…I’ll get to that later in my post. First, I’m always writing down quotes in my journal that make me catch my breath….such as when Pita in Man on Fire prayed:

“Dear God, I do not ask for health or wealth. People ask you so often that you can’t have any left. Give me, God, what else you have. Give me what no-one else asks for. Amen.”

I wrote it on a rock*. It reminds me to not take my prayers for granted. It reminds me to thank God for his blessings and to pray for humility, forgiveness and the weak and the innocent.

They Kidnapped my St. Francis via lilblueboo.com

*I paint on rocks with white gesso. It ends up being pretty durable and water resistant.

Here are 2 other quotes, I can’t list them all or it would take up an entire blog:

“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and… this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… and I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” -from American Beauty

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.” -from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

On another note, isn’t it funny that someone broke my St. Francis statue, kidnapped him for a few weeks and THEN returned him with his head glued back together?!

They Kidnapped my St. Francis 2 via lilblueboo.com