My Trip Home

I've returned from yet another trip.  This time it was much more inspiring than my previous trip.  I was in Cincinnati for a very good friend's wedding.  While in Cincinnati, I visited many of my favorite places from when I was growing up.  Such as, Eden Park, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens, Mt. Adams, the and Loveland Castle (where the wedding was).  We even drove to our old houses.  It's weird how they are pretty much the same but different.  For example, at the house I grew up in my mother had planted a weeping cherry tree next to the driveway.  I remember this day acutely.  I remember all the mulch, plants, and dirt from that day.  It was the first time we were attempting significant landscaping of the property.  Any way! The weeping cherry is huge!  Easily 8-9ft tall now.  I remember when it was as tall as me, 4-5ft at the time.  Other members of my family have gone back to Cincinnati several times and maintained significant relationships.  Me.. not so much.  I believe this trip was the first time I've been back to Cincinnati in ~7yrs and almost 15yrs since I've see our old house.

I'm so happy that I still find the Cincinnati area beautiful.  The smells are the same, the Ohio and Little Miami Rivers are the same, how lush the rolling hills are, all brought forth real nostalgia.  Of course things are different, they're building a huge casino in downtown, a bridge that was once blue(or grey) is now yellow, there's a hospital where it used to be a field and its full of shopping centers and restaurants.  It used to be a more suburb-rural-ish area, now there's sushi places, a Target, even "Asian massage" places. It seems like a much smaller place now.  Then again, I was a much smaller person when I lived there too.  It's more crowded and congested than it was when I grew up there, but thats what happens. 

All in all I came back with some really great photos that I have some big plans with.  Some are way out of my ability range (a great view of the Ohio River), while some are just right like 2 drawings I am currently working on.  One is a prismacolor of a beautiful purple-pink hibiscus and the other is graphite drawing of a great heron, both I captured at the Zoo.  I've put up the first phase from my great heron.  I hope to complete this over the weekend, but we'll see what happens.  In the meantime I'm going to enjoy my time at home before we head out to MT in a few weeks. 



"Heron"
14x11 Graphite