Traditions with Equine Art and Lunch!

When you live in one place for a long time you develop traditions with people and places that are sweet and sort of comforting. Since I have been displaced due to caring for sick parents over the past couple of years, most of mine have fallen by the wayside. My best friends have made the effort to keep things rolling so I don't feel too out of touch.

This drawing stems from one of them. Muriel Herrick and Dianne Dervin help organize the Michigan Morgan Futurity Stallion Service Auction every year. Muriel owns Century Oak Farm, home of her ever-youthful grand stallion, Gradell's Wild Magic.

Every year now, one day in January for the past seven or eight years, Muriel and Dianne take me out to lunch! I deliver a piece of art and usually a Clifford book, and we sit and eat and talk. We talk about friends we know in the Morgan world. We talk about dogs. And we talk, talk, talk about horses -- especially Morgan horses.

In my current state of upheaval, with Mom being gone and Dad having been so ill this year, the farm lost and struggling to feed Clifford and Trudy this winter, I find moments of comfort in my friends, and in the things we have always done together. My heart is grateful.

Here's a picture of my donation for this year's Michigan Morgan Futurity Silent Auction: Oil Pencil and Conte, approx 9x12"