Yellow Tree Friend

Every year when my red maple tree turns yellow I write to my friend Lisa Chune in New Jersey. We go way back to the 80's when she hired me to come up to the BOSTON GLOBE with my brushes and ink and illustrate for the New Hampshire section. At 4:PM the news editor came up and said okay here we go and he took my art to press. Lisa and I had lunch together in the GLOBE lunchroom upstairs and I was too terrified to eat but we got talking. My high school art teacher Patti Bellantoni was her Color Theory teacher in college at School of Visual Arts. Amazing. Over the years Lisa would come visit and we would cook and bake all weekend. She taught me how to make Chinese dumplings and Spring Chinese soup which I still make.