Nothing Like a Fresh Tomato From Your Own Garden

It's been a tough summer for our tomato plants. We tried four roma tomato plants this year, planted in big pots because we have sand for a yard. We water and fertilized and the plants grew big and fast. Then the little, yellow flowers came and after that some little baby tomatos. Hooray! But as they got bigger, they got black on the bottoms and rotted. A quick spin through the net educated me to a condition called "blossom rot" that is caused by a lack of calcium.

The remedy is to dissolve some Tums and water the plant, the result being healthy tomatoes. I tried this cure a couple of times and it finally took on one of the plants. Today I got to pick the first good tomato this year. We've also been successfully growing some leaf lettuce and I can't wait to make a garden fresh salad with my very fresh ingredients.

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Meet Tlaloc, the God of Rain (and do we need him now more then ever)

It was another one hundred degree plus day, probably the hottest yet. Earlier in the day I got out for a four mile hike. It wasn't more then a half mile from the house when I was soaked in sweat. The sun beat down relentlessly, the heat penetrating through my hat down into my head and soul. It reminded me of the kind of heat I endured the first time I went to Mexico back in the spring of 1988. My friend Colin and I rode buses all the way from Virginia down into Mexico going all the way down and through to Merida. Along the way we went to Palenqué and visited the ruins there.

I saw a lot of this kind of sculpture on the temple walls. On the walk back, I decided to carry some of that heat and memory into a new drawing. Once again I picked an image from a book I have from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico and started scribbling. It wasn't until I finished the piece and was adding the description that I realized that I had unwittingly drawn "Tlaloc, the god of rain". A strange, accidental cry to the heavens to open up and give us some liquid love.

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Toltec Telamon, Tally Me Bananas!

It has been very hot here along the coast of Virginia lately. A perfect time to stay in the AC and do some drawing. I flipped through a big art book on the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and found this cool figure from the Toltec culture in Tula, Hidalgo called a "Telamon". I believe he was a support leg for an alter. What attracted me to this figure was the pose and the eyes. I exaggerated the face, especially the round, goggle-like eyes. He reminds me of something the French artist Mobieus would have drawn. Here's a close-up.

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Blue Ridge Bloodfest - My June Pick

And so, after the usual hand wringing, I have made my June selection for my "Shine Some Light" project to fund culture that I believe in. June's selection is a horror film festival that is the brain child of a child, a young man named Ammon Winder all of 12 years of age. Full disclosure, Ammon is the son of some old friends of mine (his Mom, RoseMarie has a great blog called "Random Acts of Poverty"), so he had a head start, but his story would have won me over regardless of his connections. The Blue Ridge Bloodfest is in it's second year and will be held in Charlottesville, Va. on the weekend of August 24-26. I didn't attend last year, but I hope to be there this year. From what I see of last year's program, it looks like Ammon is programming independent filmmakers both short and feature length films. There is both a web site and a Facebook page that you can visit for updates or if you have a horror film, send it in! Currently, the fundraiser has eight days left and nearly $2,000 left to raise. Contributions start at only $10, so I encourage you to get onboard and throw the lad a tenner.

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