Goodbye to the mansion. For my last two weeks there I had this view and the smell of lilacs from my office window.

Office View with Lilac (pencil)

And here’s my new desk.

Van Gogh said:

At times there is something indescribable in those aspects — all nature seems to speak; . . . As for me, I cannot understand why everybody does not see it and feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand. For this reason I think a painter is happy because he is in harmony with nature as soon as he can express a little of what he sees. And that’s a great thing — one knows what one has to do, there is an abundance of subjects, and as Carlyle rightly says, “Blessed is he who has found his work.”

(From Van Gogh: A Self-Portrait, W. H. Auden, ed., 1963)

Here’s a little painting from a place near my favorite marsh, a meadow verging on marsh, last fall.

Essex Meadow, October (oil)