An Oklahoma Eden

Not only does Debby Kaspari create beauty on her drawing board and in her sketchbooks, but she creates it all around. Here's her Oklahoma deck, where she and I shared a bottle of Australian wine and talked about everything and nothing.

The water garden, just off the deck, astounded me. There was a biological filter of iris and other water plants, the roots taking the nitrates out of the water, aided by a recirculating pump. Obviously, it was working perfectly, in stark contrast to the cauldron of pea soup that my little water garden is this spring. Ploop, ploop.

Larkspur all around.


And later in the season, coleus and zinnias in perfect bronzy harmony. Debby is a colorist of the first rank.


Deb's garden was a painting in itself, ever-changing, an outward manifestation of the creativity and beauty within her.

On May 4, Debby posted this photo on Facebook, with the tagline:

Why spring in Oklahoma totally rocks!Lazuli and painted bunting at the feeder at one time. And she also had indigo buntings, plus an indigo x lazuli hybrid.


Her artwork celebrates the beauty of plants as much as it does that of birds and animals.
Irises from her own garden:
A jack in the pulpit found deep in the Harvard Forest:
When I visited in April, we took an evening walk around the circle of her rural subdivision. The honey locusts were in full bloom. It wasn't just the wine--we were drunk on the Oklahoma spring!

People are fond of saying that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes I believe that, and sometimes that platitude just doesn't fit. The tsunami that hit Banda Aceh, Indonesia in January, 2005 is one thing that didn't need a reason, and can't be glorified or justified with a reason anybody could come up with no matter how convoluted their thinking.

But I would like to think that my trip to Oklahoma to appreciate all that Debby and Mike have done to make the world more beautiful had a reason. I feel blessed that I experienced that, blessed to have seen the gardens and listened to the waterfall and slept under their roof, blessed to have nosed around her upstairs studio and peeked into the flat files full of her paintings and drawings.

Blessed to have walked out that evening to put our noses to the honey locust blossoms, blessed to have witnessed it all.

Meet Debby Kaspari

a later DK antbird painting, but you get the idea. Shazzam!

I first became aware of Debby Kaspari (then Debby Cotter) when a bitchin' antbird illustration, lush with color and strong of drawing, showed up in an issue of Bird Watcher's Digest, the magazine my husband edits, and the whole family publishes. I remember, in fact, where I was standing when I opened the issue and saw the double-page spread--in the old production room where there were little waxed lines of type stuck to everything. It was that long ago. Probably 1992, because we weren't married yet. And my head snapped back, because nothing computed. How could I have missed her? Who WAS this woman who could paint antbirds so beautifully, and why didn't I know her name and her work before Bill did? I whirled around and accosted my editor husband-to-be. "Who did this? Who is she? How did you find her?"

He started talking, and I gathered little scraps out of the cascade of words. I remember hearing "painter" and "sculptor" and "bluegrass banjo player" and "she's in a band" and then my eyes rolled back in my head and lemons came up where my eyeballs should be like a cartoon slot machine and I remember thinking, "Oh, great. He's going to fall in love with this fabulous California mystery girl who paints antbirds, just like he fell in love with me when I started painting for BWD and then what??"

Well, that didn't happen, probably because I'd met him in person first, and I gradually got used to the idea that there was this painter/draftsman/sculptor/musician out there and then she sent Bill a CD, "Heart's Desire" of her San Francisco bluegrass band, The All Girl Boys,

and the picture of the beautiful brunette in the middle "all dipped in girl dip," as she put it, set me back another couple months...but I eventually got over it. And despite my Leonine fragility we became friends, fast friends and she came out to visit us in Ohio and we threw a summer music party in her honor and Debby played bitchin' banjo breaks on tunes like "Don't Fear the Reaper." This is a song which, having always made her own music instead of blowing out her ears to rock like the rest of us, she had never heard. Bill and I still marvel at that. And I loved her, as I knew I would.

As the Internet slowly loomed up and infiltrated our lives I could keep up with Debby's doings on her web site. I got to see her every now and then, twice, in fact, at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's "Birds in Art" show. Here we are, having our pictures taken in Wisconsin with dear friend, pastel artist Cindy House.

She's painted a bunch of covers for Bird Watcher's Digest--a mockingbird in moonlight; a rufous hummingbird staring a long-eared owl in the face; a painted bunting on cannas; three rubythroats in bougainvillea... We invited her out for an Artist's Gathering at our place and she was enfolded into the loving and supportive arms of our bird-painting artist friends. The emails fly thick and fast, with jpegs, and we pass critiques and praise back and forth through the electrons. We are connected, and we share each other's victories and sorrows alike. Debby's drawings and paintings always take my breath away. I would love to be able to draw like that.

So here's a little gallery, because I know it's hard to draw yourself away to another web site. I've dragged these off debbykaspariart.com. Go there for more.

Macaws over a giant ceiba tree. Pastel and graphite.

Orange-chinned parakeets, demolishing mangoes. Pastel and graphite.

Petersham, Massachusetts. Watercolor, plein air (done on the spot).

Did I mention Debby also teaches plein air drawing?Well, she does. Just another thing she does I'd be scared stiff to try.

Get a load of her line.
Wild turkeys, from life.

Furnariids, antbirds, honeycreepers, swallow tanagers...she's drawing so fast and furiously that she draws one bird over another. From life, Peru.

Coati studies. Deb's mammals just blow me away. Has she got the beady-eyed squint down or what?
Buttress roots, drawn on site. Just another of the things that scares me about Deb. She can sit for two days in one spot and produce something like this. We have to be careful when we're hiking because she might plop herself down and pull out her sketchbook and get all lost in tree roots or bark and then we'd have to bring her water and sandwiches until she'd recorded every last beautiful convolution.

Like the bark of this cottonwood in Oklahoma last month. She kind of murmured when she saw it and started walking toward it.
And before Tim and I knew it she was hugging that tree and I grabbed my camera because candid photos of actual tree huggers are rare.

To draw something is to love it. Gotcha!

So now you know just a little bit of why I love Debby Kaspari.

Hard-working Sod Poodle

Prairie dogs are eminently edible. Hawks, eagles, badgers, black-footed ferrets, foxes and coyotes all call them dinner. Being social animals, they freely warn each other of approaching predators with high, poodle-like barks. When they bark, they fling themselves upright, adding a visual cue to the auditory warning. It sounds like someone suddenly squeezed a rubber toy. Pfew!

Well might they bark. Though we missed seeing the pursuit, this coyote had just nabbed itself a sod poodle when I saw it.

You can imagine the salvo of barks that accompanied its passage along the fringe of the dog town with a young prairie dog dangling from its jaws.

You lookin' at me?

The dogs repaired to their burrows, their only defense against predators. I love this shot, by the way--absolutely impossible to get unless you are in a situation with tame prairie dogs. No wild sod poodle is going to let you see it in its burrow, no way nohow. You're lucky to be able to set up a spotting scope within sight of a wild prairie dog.

I wondered briefly what the little tamp marks were around the burrow mouth. Decided to watch the dogs until I figured out what they were. I had a notion they were noseprints.

This dog was building up the rim around his burrow. The rim serves a dual function. It keeps rainwater from pooling and running into the burrow, and it serves as a lookout seat for the watchful dog.
First, he threw a mound of soil through his hind legs, as a digging dog might.

He bulldozed the soil to where he wanted it.

He pushed it up onto the top of the mound.

Unnnh! Unnh!


More soil.


Gee, how'd your nose get so muddy?
Ah, I see. They do use that round nose to tamp the soil.

And thus is the dogtown built and maintained
with hideyholes to dive into when the coyotes prowl.

Also noted at the town: a lovely lark sparrow

with a penchant for almonds


and the loveliest of songs and cheek patches.


And a black crow, keeping watch.

Prairie Dog Interlude

iPhone photo by Debby Kaspari

I've gone on at length on this blog about prairie dogs. About what we've done to their populations--brought them to the brink of extinction--and about what we continue to do--poison, shoot, trap and even vacuum them into oblivion. I can't talk about that now; my heart is heavy enough. That's what the links are for, if you'd like to learn more. No, I'm going to celebrate them here, just roll around with them for a little while, if that's all right with you.

Being a heavily persecuted animal, prairie dogs are normally unapproachable. The only way to see them well is in a protected situation, as at Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. These dogs are extremely well-acclimated to humans, perhaps too well-acclimated! They looove humans and their junk food fixes, oh yes they do.

Zick knows a photo op when she sees one. Plopping myself down at the side of the prairie dog viewing parking lot must've said, "She's got FOOD!" to the boss prairie dogs with the prime territories in the Cheeto zone. They galloped over to investigate.

Oh, God. Here they come. I may keel over from cuteness.


The first order of business when mobbed by wild rodents is to keep your fingers up and out of the way. Rodents would just as soon bite you as look at you. That's how they discover if your finger is made of flesh or corn syrup solids.

All the photos below of me mobbed by prairie dogs by Timothy Ryan. Thank you, Timmers!

I dunno. You think this woman is getting good mileage out of her rabies vaccinations? Yeah, me too.

Well, hello, little guy. You are some cute.

I'm sorry. The sign says I shouldn't feed you.

It says that people food makes your hair fall out, among other things. I can add that it makes you really fat.

Phooey! Just hand over the almonds and nobody gets hurt.

The dogs showed their disdain for my stance with a deposit. Murr, this pair's for you.