These beautiful flowers are from a larger bouquet. My

son Jay gave them to me for my birthday. Even though he's an avid, professional, large-format photographer, he only shoots black and white...and never digital.

From the color combination of these flowers, I can tell that he's learning about complementary colors. They are more red purple and orange gold than this image portrays. This looser, textured style of painting flowers is a stretch for me, but I feel that flowers lend themselves better than most subjects to this style. I'm becoming more comfortable with it.

"FALL BIRTHDAY BOUQUET", oil on gessobord, 5"x7", $50. SOLD.

Isabella leaves tomorrow. More available time to do what I want and need to do, less precious time without her.

Have a fabulous weekend.

Summer into fall is bittersweet for me. I really dislike the heat and humidity, but not as much this summer, since it was so relatively cool. I love that everything is so alive in the summer. The chickens and quail lay eggs everyday. They're dwindling now. The rabbits are thrilled with the cooler weather. The heat and humidity kills them much more than the cold. Flowers and vegetables thrive in July and August. There were a couple of weeks when I was literally picking five pounds of tomatoes a day. You just can't beat those "Whopper Tomato" plants. They're still producing several tomatoes a week. The heirlooms are cool to look at and paint and eat too. I'm still getting a lot of peppers.

I'm happy that the weather is turning cool, not cold and I am thrilled to see that the fall foliage is developing. My hummingbirds are already gone. I noticed how chubby they were last week. Hopefully I'll see a few migraters passing through. The morning glories are truly spectacular everyday. There are about a dozen moonflowers blooming tonight. That means they'll be magnificent over the next few weeks until the frost.

Isabella is just a delight. She gets so excited when we collect the eggs and feed the chickens and rabbits. She actually notices and loves it when the eggs are still warm. It's certainly tough to get much painting finished, but she's worth it.

I did finish one tonight, but it can wait until tomorrow to post, so that I can photograph it in the daylight.

I had to get a new little digital camera, because I dropped my other brand new one. This is another Canon, 10 megapixel deal. I really like it. Everything is going at the same time...the refrigerator, dishwasher, hot water heater and this laptop. Anyway, the painitng di giorno is of a sunflower from a bunch that Danny bought for me.

"Sunflower and Quail Egg", 5"x7", oil on gallery-wrapped linen, $50. SOLD.

Boy, the last 12 days really flew by. I know some of what I did, but it really is pretty much of a blur. Most of the time was just doing work getting ready for the party this past Sunday. My son Jay turned 30 on the 21st, which is the day after mine. My sister Amy's birthday was yesterday. Happy, happy birthday to the both of you.

My birthday was so nice. The painting on the left is the little birthday cake that Danny brought home for me. It's from the French bakery in Wayne. Isabella and I finished it last night. I've been savoring small bites of it over the past week and since I picked Bella up to spend the week on Monday, she's been helping me eat it. It was so delicious and beautiful...a piece of art all by itself... I needed to paint it. "PETITE FRENCH CAKE", 6"x6", oil on gallery-wrapped linen, $50., framed.

On my birthday, Celeste, my daughter-in-law, took me for a pedicure and we had dinner together. Just what I needed. Jay Sr. brought home my favorite champagne. I got the best birthday cards ever. The thoughtfulness of my friends and family made turning 58 worth it.

The food for the party on Sunday was almost too amazing to talk about. Chefs Joe Frost and Adam (he interned at Le Bec Fin) prepared rabbit and foie gras dishes that were beyond description. White truffles,foie gras, sweetbreads, chicken and mushrooms in a terrine, homemade gnocchi, rabbit coulis, foie gras creme brulee, rabbit, foie gras, duxelles, truffled brioche toasts, more rabbit, more truffles, more foie gras, Grand Marnier souffle with raspberry coulis, porchetta with roasted hot peppers and those habaneros from my garden. Danny dubbed them "homicide habaneros"...I had to put a warning sign on them. Asser was also going to put a disclaimer on them, that he wouldn't be of any help in the event that they stopped someones heart.

With all of that incredible food, along with the family and friends, wine and champagne (Danny Kane brought his usual magnum) that everyone brought, we'll be talking about it for a long time.

I love the French word for eggplant, it's Aubergine, that sounds so much prettier than eggplant. Like a jewel. Athough, loving eggs the way I do, eggplant is a very good word also.

I couldn't help doing another painting of eggplants. This time with three Meyer lemons. I needed to paint the eggplants again because I felt as though I should be able to paint them without struggling. I was able to do that this time and even upped the challenge by not only painting different ones, but also doing the painting larger.

I really like the colors of the lemons reflected off of the eggplants and of course I still love to paint Meyer lemons. The purple shades of the eggplants and the warm yellows of the lemons are perfect complements. They really bring out the best in each other.

This painting would have been finished on Wednesday, but my "adopted" son, Asser, stopped by. I just enjoyed his company so much I couldn't break away from our conversation until I had to go get ready to meet Penny Bird and Cine Braxton for dinner at Georges'. Man, did we have fun and the food was outrageously good. There's a new menu and Wednesday's special is venison osso bucco, which Cine ordered. Very impressive and truly outstanding. The creamy barley was wonderful. Get in there on a Wednesday. It's something not to be missed.

Chef Perrier himself has been there cooking along with Chef Joe Frost, almost every night.

We were there for hours. We practically closed the place. It was a great time.

Yesterday, even though I thought the painting was finished, as sometimes happens when I photograph it, I could see that it was lacking, so I got up early, reworked it and shot it over again this morning. "Meyer Lemons and Aubergines", 8"x10", oil on deep, gallery-wrapped linen, $250. framed.SOLD

Notice that the price is $100, less than usual for this size painting. I will reduce the other same-sized paintings as well when I don't have the grandchildren here. I was looking at the prices of other art work of the same dimensions. I was on the high end and I like to be more mid-priced.

Last night Jeanie, Derek and the children arrived here. The kids will be here for the weekend, while Jeanie and Derek are in Massachusetts for Chrisite Phillips' wedding.

We're already having a little too much fun. I doubt that I'll get back here until next week, so have a great weekend. We're expecting some chilly digits in the 40's...very exciting. We'll have to get the wood stove going.

These Chinese eggplant were given to me by Enrico Gamalinda. This painting has been in the works since Sunday. I finished it last night. It's only 7"x5", but it took a long time to paint and it was difficult to do. I thought that an egg and eggplant would be perfect partners for a painting. Well, I still believe that's true, but when I finished the painting, I took the eggplant up to the kitchen so I wouldn't be tempted to paint them again. I'm very happy with this painting, but I'm even happier that it's finished.

I did find some pleasure in putting the quail egg in there. "Egg and Eggplant", 7"x5", oil on gessobord, $50, framed. SOLD.

Even with the very warm weather, I enjoyed this weekend. We went to Georges' for brunch this morning. It was so good. The new/old baker used to work at La Mas Perrier, then went to Balthazar in NY for a few years. We used to go there and get the croissants to bring back home for gifts. They're the best I've ever had. I had one today, which I thought had a raisin in it. I was wrong...it was a core of chocolate. Wow, was it good! The perfect complement to the Bellinis.

We watched two movies this weekend, the first I would strongly recommend, Roberto Benini's, "The Tiger and the Snow" and the second, Billy Bob Thornton in "The Astronaut Farmer". Obviously, I am a totally hopeless romatic and dreamer, so both of these made me cry....well sob, really.

Since there was nothing huge planned this weekend, I got to catch up on some studio organizing, which only made a tiny dent in the disarray, but it was in my immediate workspace, so it will help. The gessobord for oil painting is almost used up, so I will soon get to use the linen canvases that were just delivered. Can't wait.

I know this week will be busy, so I finished a painting yesterday and started another today. The one from yesterday was photographed outside today.

"Hot Hot Hot", 5"x7", oil on gessobord, $50. SOLD. To go with it, Jay is upstairs playing some Santana.

I'm really enjoying painting these peppers. I love their vibrant and varied colors. The little blue sake glass is also fun to paint...and drink from. "Double Shot of Hot", 5"x7", oil on gessoboard, $50.SOLD Here's something that my hacker husband sent to me. Click here: Ordinary Stars « TMZ.com Photo Gallery

The painting di giorno is finished, but I won't post it until later today. It's useless to photograph it in artificial light, so I'll wait until the afternoon and shoot it in daylight. In the meantime, I got a very interesting email about wine. It's terrific news for all of us vino lovers. Click here: The Red Wine Diet

Here is a better version of the "Hot Shot" painting from the previous post. The reds still aren't accurate, but it is better. SOLD

The color on this image is way off. The pepper is a rich red where this one is brownish, the stem is green at the base and the background is a golden yellow, not nearly as red...it's slightly too dark also. I'll try to reshoot it tomorrow in the daylight. In any case, this habanero painting is titled "HOT SHOT", 5"x7", oil on gessoboard. $50.SOLD

There are some more pepper paintings coming, then it's back to the lemon paintings with the limoncello process.

My CT scan was clear-thank you God.

Jeanie and her family made a surprise visit for the holiday weekend which halted all painting. What a treat. It was Derek's idea, so he needs to be credited for his kindness. Thanx D.

I didn't paint today either because I had to schedule a CT scan after my last doctor's visit and today was the day for it.

It wasn't terrible, but it was kind of scary when they inject the dye. It's really weird. The technician was so kind. She knew I was a wreck. Now comes the waiting....well, I'll leave you with a photo of one of my moon flowers. These are huge, white, morning glory type flowers that bloom at night, which is where they get the name. The wonderful thing about them that you can't appreciate here is their fragrance. It's so fresh and clean, like soap.

Jay and I planted them several years ago for Amne Shipley's wedding. The evening reception was at her parent's house, which is just incredible to begin with, but the moon flowers bloomed abundantly and were the size of dessert plates! It was just spectacular the way they wound their way up and around the stone pillars. The moon was full and they just glowed in the light of it. I'm back to painting tomorrow.