painting the past

Many years ago, Kate Knapp started painting a bouquet in my kitchen annually. You can pretty much tell the time of year by the flowers that always appeared: tiger lilies, hydrangeas, sweet peas, Queen Ann's lace. July.
   This was the last bouquet, because after that I converted Claudia's Surf City into a house and started renting, so I was never here in July. The picture was made during a brief period when my living room/kitchen was upstairs, where the master bedroom is now. It had no plumbing—I ran a hose up through the window into a sink with buckets under the drain holes and had an electric toilet that burned the shit up.
   Yesterday Katie gave me this painting she said she had been working on for 20 years, and now it hangs in the living room of today.