Hilda Enjoys an Evening in Mrs. Edelweiss’s Opuntia Garden | Art Print

SKU: JR-04-GP
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  • Archival-quality giclée art print on a lovely heavy-weight paper with a matte finish. 
  • ​Print is 11" x 15" in size; image is about 7.75" x 12".
  • Each print is hand signed by the artist. 
  • Does not come with the frame, but is so very suitable for framing.  We recommend a 16"x20" frame with a white mat.
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If you, like me, are quite taken with jackrabbits and the equally intrepid prickly-pear, this is, of course, just the piece of art for you.  Perhaps you can look out your dining room window and see both in the flesh, as it were?  Or, indeed, perhaps or you find yourself in a classy sitting room in central Paris, or Ho Chi Minh City, far from lands where these admirable specimens of natural fortitude can be found, and you need a little armchair travel to be with them? Either way, they would be happy to be yours.    

Other Things You Might Like to Know:  The original artwork is watercolor and graphite on paper | © 2016 Melinda Nettles  |  Designed and printed in Oregon, USA   |  Printed on Hahnemühle Photorag 308 gsm 100% cotton rag paper, with Epson pigmented Ultrachrome HD inks.  
The Back Story:
When the young Mrs. Edelweiss arrived in sunny California, her native Alps fresh in her mind, she was well surprised to encounter giant-eared bunnies with scrap enough to take on prickly plants, and dusty edges, and coyotes, and suchlike.  As the years passed and her short-cropped tawny hair turned ever snowier, Mrs. Edelweiss developed a considerable admiration for these plucky souls.  She was thusly quite pleased to find that Hilda, a jackrabbit with no experience of towering snowy peaks, seemed to take comfort in what had become her very pride and joy: the well manicured cactus garden off her back patio.  For her part, Hilda, once she conquered her fear of the garden hose and became accustomed to the unusual tidiness, became a regular visitor.  Henceforth, the two cultivated a sort of interspecies friendship that depended upon neither being offended when the other skeetered away unexpectedly.  So it is, that on many an evening, as the sun slides a little low and the breeze picks up, you will find Mrs. Edelweiss employed with her small rake, or filling with precision the small hollows around the prickly-pear with her watering can, while Hilda sits in the shady edges, quietly watching, ever ready to hop away, both enjoying the beauty of the remaining day.* 

*Ever So Important Note:  In case you were wondering, which of course you were, those little birdies hanging about in the background like to make their nests over in the cholla patch, or sometimes in a suitable notch betwixt the pads of the prickly-pear, or up in a hole in the oldest of the saguaro, but not in the desert willow over by the bird-bath, because it is of course already occupied by a couple of very tiny wrens and their bustling brood.  They are adaptable birdies, not too picky, not too proud, but they do prefer a view of the mountains, a little morning light, and just a touch of shelter on the coolest of nights.