
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/buy/auction/1445374
Buck the Cat Descending a Stair….hmmm, that has a bit of a ring to it, eh, Marcel?

Buck the Cat Descending a Stair….hmmm, that has a bit of a ring to it, eh, Marcel?

Buck the cat grabs at a fishing lure. Such a nimble cat. Meow.

Buck the Cat is in Wisconsin visiting his in-laws. He’s about had it with all the snow and sub-zero temperatures.

Buck the Cat sometimes goes up and beyond. Meow.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/buy/auction/1444928

Daily Cat 256

It’s almost cold, leaves clatter in the wind, it’s the season of the witch.

In Octorer, 2023, Buck the Cat was considered as a nominee to be United States Speaker of the House. He declined, not having sufficient support from the rest of the Congress. He’s an independent.

Buck the Cat surveys his realm from is six foot cat tower in the living room. It’s good to be prince.

Buck the cat is doing well in Wisconsin I am told. He’s highly adaptable, probably hardly misses me at all…sniff.

This painting shows landscape design in the city, the pollarding of a formal grove of trees. Pollarding involves the removal of tree branches to improve the fullness and shape of new growth that will follow. It’s a labor-intensive, tedious practice centuries old.

This is somewhere I’ve been before. Come with me.

This is a long view of a Stockholm Avenue, bordered by buildings built in the mid to late 19th c. The city is planned to have wide transit corridors that direct train, car, bike, scooter and pedestrian traffic all along the same path, accommodating each mode safely in parallel. The result is lots of wide urban space without buildings encroaching on it and a sense of openness in what is, in fact, an overall densly built environment. There’s an abundance of trees and flowers in these spaces. Lovely.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/jean-krueger/valhallawagen-se/1062388

We walk a lot while we’re in Sweden, usually 5 to 7 miles daily. I’m always looking on the ground for interesting stuff and picked up this pair of little cones. I spent awhile Googling to identify their species, but not much luck, maybe some sort of Piñon. If anyone has an idea, let me know. Thanks.

Stockholm has beautiful street paving. Much of it is granite, a hard material that resists the freezing and thawing that destroys softer pavements. On hills, and there’s many of those, the arced and diagonal patterns prevent slips and sliding. Each stone is four to five inches, a tedious fan shaped mosaic. My shadow breaks the monotony.

This pair of birds float around the waters that surround Stockholm’s islands. Although they’re Mallards, they look different than the North American birds I’m familiar with. They are longer and sleeker and not as iridescent and squat as American mallards. Their bills seem longer, as well. But they behave the same, swimming in a line with the male in front, dabbling with curly tail feathers to the sky.

We walk by this Church with some frequency. It’s named Adolf Fredriks kyrkogard, it’s a cruciform shape, that is, cross-shaped. I really can’t guess its age, maybe 150 years or much older. Anyway, it has a graveyard on one side and the ground is covered with drifts of early spring flowers. they’re call ‘Glory of the Snow’ here, Chionoxdoxa botanically.

We were walking on Easter Monday in Stockholm and the rose was laying in the cobbled street we were crossing. Easter was over, it had done its job and awaited smashing by traffic. I rescued it. It has dried and I, lacking energy to paint more ambitiously, rendered it. Now it will live a bit longer.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/jean-krueger/easter-rose/1060940

This bird, the fieldfare (Turdis pilarus), is a new one to me. We saw it in a Stockholm park. A member of the thrush family and lives in northern Europe according to Wikipedia. It’s about the size of a robin and looks similar plump shape with the same cocky attitude.
Pollards in Sweden, watercolor, 9×12″, 2023. Copyrighted with all rights reserved by Jean Krueger
Ted’s on sabbatical and I’m with him in Sweden, Stockholm mainly, for now. I like it here, clean, civil and non-confrontational. We catch weekly pipe organ concerts, walk a lot, the foods quite flavorful and chocolate’s cheap. It’s seems to be a very cool society. But the climate’s cold…much too cold for me, it’s mid-April and still wearing 4 layers, hat, scarf and gloves.