All the artists, my friends who actually paint on site, are gone now, finished with lunch, finished with their fully completed artworks.
I only draw.

Chinese folks talk excitedly, stop to see my sketch, use long-lens cameras to shoot photos, of what?
A worker finds a snake and tells them with halting words, both sides of the conversation struggling to communicate in English.

The master gardener works quietly nearby, snipping spent leaves . . .
She tells me that few people see the beauty she shapes; not so many visit now.  But, she planned and planted here and lovingly waters transplants by hand.

I go through the garden again; my real camera broken, I use my cell’s.
So many lovely vistas of fountained plazas, charming nooks of Mission-style architecture, window boxes of red trailing geraniums, fragrant white roses climbing an arbor, a low rustic slat fence catching the sun under magnolia trees keeping in blue hydrangeas, a tiny shop with just-right jewelry, and appropriately, an art gallery.
Every view, a watercolor waiting to become, and I have sketches of them too, to paint someday.

But this day, the colorful lilies are what I want to capture, and the tree of course.  There must always be a tree.  And so I draw in color: red-orange, pink, deep yellow.

Patricia Nojima                                                                                                                         May 29, 2012