The Roses

When my mother was a young teenager she wanted very much to study art.  But this was during the Great Depression (as it was called) and her parents could not afford to pay for lessons.  So she got herself a job in order to pay the 5 cents a week she needed for art classes.

But life, as they say, intervened and she never managed to pursue art the way she would have liked.

Her creativity has taken many forms - cooking, baking, knitting, sewing, stitchery, rug hooking, flower arranging and eventually she took up quilting which she still does.  But she never lost that appreciation for, and drive to do herself, drawing and painting.

After my father died she re-did the master bedroom, buying white French Provincial furniture and painting the walls.  On the wall at the foot of the bed she painted these large bright cheerful roses directly onto the wall.

When it came time to re-paint the bedroom a number of years later she talked to Doug and he installed a frame around the painting so she could continue to enjoy the roses she had painted.  She can no longer do any painting or drawing due to arthritis and shaky hands.

Now mom has moved out of the house and she misses her roses.  Doug is hoping that he can cut the wall board out of the wall (the room is finished with a product called donacona - I'm not sure how that is spelled, but it was a common finish before sheet rock became the standard for walls).  He says it is still available and he should be able to just fill the hole in the wall and repaint.

But just in case it all goes horribly awry, he took a photo of the roses today and I'll find out how much it will cost to make a photographic poster.

We are still waiting to hear when she will have her surgery - it's been dragging on longer than they estimated so we are hoping that it will happen soon.  She is getting a bit antsy that the surgery will happen at Christmas but I told her that if that is the case her Christmas present this year will be a new heart valve.  :)

Reading The Pirate King by Laurie R. King (finished this morning and started Shatner Rules by William Shatner)