The Garden Grows with Us

by Richard S. Kordesh

She’s helped to plant the garden, she’s harvested from its beds, and now our daughter, Kathy, has requested flowers from the garden for her wedding next year.

Which flowers we provide will depend in part on when in 2015 the event occurs. 

We’ll need to plan. 

For example, we’ll experiment this season with a larger volume of, and greater variety of, peonies than our three, current bushes yield. We’ll dig a new bed in front of the house in which to conduct some of this in-the-ground “R&D”.

Kathy holding some cukes

I half-joked to Kathy that if  she and her fiancé, Jake, can wait until August or September, then we can also grace the tables at the event with our lovely cucumbers! 

As vegetable gardeners know, it’s not hard to grow too many cukes. And they do bring forth their own small, lovely flowers! Cukes come in many lengths and with a variety of shapes, shades, and markings. 

For us, figuring out what to do with all of them represents one of the predictable challenges of late summer. A jar of pickles at each wedding reception table?  (For her part, Kathy appreciates cucumbers, but thus far expresses a little skepticism about including them in the wedding plans … there’s still time!).

But, just making the garden part of the wedding plans adds another way that it will have grown with us into another chapter of our family’s life. Kathy and her brothers grew up with, and in, its beds and seasonal manifestations. 

Next summer, we’ll celebrate anew, together.

Guest blogger Richard S. Kordesh is the author of Restoring Power to Parents and Places and has worked professionally in the community development field for 35 years. Visit Richard's website for more. 

Finding Time: Landscapes Painted in Stolen Moments

In the Surf by Jeremy Mallov

by Lisa Freeman 

What in the world does “en plein air” mean? 

I graduated from the School of Fine Arts at Indiana  University/Bloomington many years ago with a concentration in 3-dimensional arts; jewelry design, specifically. As I focused on designing, forming and constructing metals, I never held a paint brush or used a palette knife during my college years.  

“En plein air” I discovered, means “in the open air” or “painting outdoors.” 

The Impressionists are responsible for the popularity of this style of painting.

Aritst Jeremy Mallov has been painting impressionistic en plein air and studio landscapes for over 12 years, primarily using oils as his medium. He uses a palette knife almost exclusively to not only mix his paints, but to apply the paint to the canvas. 

Mallov captures the essence of what he is seeing by exaggerating and manipulating colors. He selects his subject matter for meaning and metaphor: the Jamaican seascapes double as reflections on marriage; Venetian canals symbolize freedom found and lost. Each landscape captures not only the look and feel of the location, but also the deeper meaning of what he was experiencing at the time and what the place symbolizes to him. 

For Mallov, capturing the truth of a scene has taken priority over capturing its reality.

Mallov creates art and exhibits in the Indianapolis area, including at the JCC Art Gallery beginning March 4, when he is not teaching art in the public school system. He, his wife and three beautiful daughters are residents of Fishers. 

Please plan to stop by, meet Jeremy and join us for an opening reception and light refreshments at the JCC Art Gallery on Sunday, March 9, from 2 to 4 p.m. 

More about Lisa Freeman