Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Old Florida Cracker House & Royal Poinciana Tree Painting!


I just finished this last week.
Love painting the "Old Florida" culture!
This is an 11x14 inch on canvas original painting.
Everything about a "cracker" house was efficient,
(the word for that escapes me right now). For instance,
the house was purposely built up off the ground.
It not only provided crawl space for the dog & chickens to escape the heat, but
there were spaces between the floor boards to provide
air circulation in an era of no air conditioners!
The shade cooled air would rise & help keep the house comfortable.
As for the bugs, (and we have many in this tropical clime) the chickens
foraging took care of this! Oh there is more that I cannot recall...
just google cracker house for more info!
And leave a comment if you know the word for a building that is
uh..er... ergonomically correct..sorta...that works with the geography instead of against it.......What IS that word?

3 comments:

KeRobinson said...

13 hours later & still cannot find the word I am looking for but found this very cool house!
Now this is Florida!
http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~liz/home.html

ericmiami said...

Great Poinciana and house, Karen. A lady poet who is dead now and whose name escapes me, wrote a poem that starts out: "Peacock proud, the Poinciana, wrapped up in her red bandana...."

KeRobinson said...

Thanks Eric! :) Yes, peacock proud! it's a showy tree alright....and MESSY!