A Little Visitor

Lizard peaking in the kitchen window

The other day while I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  When I turned around my breath caught as I saw the cutest little lizard peaking through the kitchen window at me.  I spoke sweetly and said hello and the lizard pulled its head down into the flower pot a little.  I said a little verbal prayer that the lizard would stay and ran upstairs to grab my camera.  She/he stayed quite a while actually and allowed me to snap away and even took a little cat nap closing its eyes every now and then (it was the cutest thing ever) and just resting. 

I am always so thankful for the little visits I get from lizards and frogs, from birds and butterflies and dragon flies, and from the rare sitings of the elusive praying mantis or roaming turtle.  I feel like the visits are fortuitous omens.

Have you had any unusual visitors lately?

Seahorses~Framed

Seahorses framed

I finally finished framing the Seahorses and hung them yesterday afternoon.  I just love walking into the bedroom and seeing them, especially since the wall above our bed had been empty after I painted the walls and decided the last painting no longer fit. 

The framing technique is likely unconventional but thankfully with my husbands engineering mind and talent with a razor blade combined with my ingenuity this came together.  Basically these are standard frames purchased with matting.  The back of the frame was cut out to insert the canvas and then I bought foam board and used double sided mounting tape to secure the foam to the back of the frame and create a lip to hold in the canvas.  I then covered the entire back with brown craft paper using thin double sided tape.  Here are a few pictures.

Back of frame showing foam stabilizers 

Back of frame with paper

Female framed

The verdict is out as to whether or not the paint will go funky (not sure of the proper term) because of being enclosed in glass but I did cut a triangle in the backing paper so the canvas could breath.  I did a lot of research on the internet and there were mixed results as to whether or not an acrylic painting should or can be covered in glass.

Has anyone else framed their acrylic canvas paintings and have tips they want to share?

A Must Read on Creativity

I just read this and had to share.  There is such brilliance in these 4 truths.  This is a REPOST from Bryan Franklin's blog.

I was talking with a man who is responsible for envisioning the future of how we will light our world (He’s a VP in the marketing department of Philip’s LED division, Lumileds, who is reducing the power needed to generate light by up to 85%) and he was sharing with me his ideas. I can’t tell you what they are because I’ve signed an NDA, but suffice it to say they are REALLY cool.

Is Creativity A Trait Or A Condition?

He wanted to know from me how he could get the rest of his team to think as creatively as he does. Maybe they just aren’t as creative as he is? I think they are.
As a thoroughly mundane attribute of being human, each of us has a connection to what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, and it is my experience that moments of heightened creativity have more to do with tapping into a universal creative archetype than any unique attribute of a specific person.
Performers, athletes, writers, computer programmers and professionals of all stripes attribute their most creative acts to being in a state of ‘the zone’. While in the zone, parts of themselves seem to disappear, and creativity moves through them, from a universal source, out into our world.

Where Is The Zone And How Do I Get There?

Creativity is an emergent property that arises from specific conditions, and if those conditions are present and are not at risk of degrading, every person will be able to tap into creative genius. People who are considered to be more creative are those that are more able to self-generate these specific conditions. The ‘zone’ is a byproduct of these four conditions.
1) Spaciousness
Give your self mental time and space. Allow time for the habitual thought patterns to dissipate. My friend at Lumileds does all his thinking on Airplanes, because there he has time and space that he literally can’t do anything else with. Drive time and shower time are great for this. Take a walk. Designate an area of your workspace for creativity and keep it absolutely clear of debris. Do what ever it takes to give your mind the experience of spaciousness.
2) Constraints
The reason most sequels are not as good as the originals isn’t that the filmmakers run out of ideas, its because they usually have significantly more time, money, and latitude from the studio for the 2nd movie. The first one was a huge success, so budgets and egos expand. Then, as the constraints decrease, the quality of creativity decreases as well. The beauty of human creativity is born of the constraints of being human. From arbitrary deadlines to iambic pentameter – find constraints that inspire your creative mind.
3) Model Of Inspiration
Inspiration basically comes in two forms. The first is: I want to be like you. Writers emulate writers. Musicians emulate musicians. Businesses emulate businesses. Choose someone that inspires you and study how they do everything they do. Neither compete nor idolize your inspiration. Just observe.
The second form of inspiration is: I want to express what its like to know you. Ravel’s “Une Barque Sur L’ocean” is a musical expression of what its like to be at sea. Write like Monet. Work like a gladiator. Love like Bobby Fisher. Take any idea in one context and express it in a non-compatible context. Be explicit about your inspiration and hold he/she/it in your mind as you create.
4) Love Your Ideas Into Existence
Each idea fragment that spills from your mind must be met by a resounding “YES”. The more you love the seedlings that sprout in your mind, the more fertile the mind itself becomes. Your objective is to open the channel between you and the universal archetype of creativity (creation), not to evaluate how the fruit will taste from the tree that might grow from the seed you see. Each “YES” loves the channel more open. Each “NO” closes it. Put your ideas in a context where they will be loved into existence by you and met with a “YES” both by you and by others. Once each idea begins to develop and mature, then step back and evaluate it. There will be a point when your channel is so open that trashing your ideas cannot close it – and that’s when you will experience brilliance.
Until that point, your job is not to come up with good ideas, but to love every idea that you come up with. 

Playing with Words

I decided to incorporate words into the Sun Painting (that I am still working on).  I gathered the words and placed them on a black foam board I bought for the frame work of the Seahorses (they should be framed by the end of today!)  The other evening I decided to group the words together in preparation to adding them to my painting and the words started revealing the most beautiful imagery.  I would scoot a word here and a word there and form these stories and even mosaic pictures from the word shapes.  Now I am am having a hard time finishing the sun painting because I am attached to these words.  The thing with creativity is you never know where it will take you.....words for my painting became a poem of their own, the opening for lines for a novel (perhaps), and the inspiration to begin a project that has been in the dark long enough.

Strolling down the geranium bathed sidewalks
I find kindess water offered at the
corner of incarnation and fiction.

What an adventure in solace
this heirloom light
awakens.

I dance across pools
of wild cosmos
lingering under the mosaic moon
while you write suitcase poetry
from the Shangri-La gardens.

On Journal Keeping

 

 The above picture captures the books and journals that I am currently reading, re-reading, generally refering to and/or writing in.  I often choose books just for their titles and the  The Elegance of the Hedgehog intrigued me for that very reason.  Choosing books like this is similiar to choosing a wine for the beauty of the bottle which I have also been known to do.  One thing for sure with this method is you never know what you might get.

While reading this book I have come across so many words and lines that I have circled or underlined that had an eloquence to them that I wanted to remember.  While reading last week I came across these words and they reminded me of this post that I had done earlier:

The lines gradually become their their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know.  The painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certaintiy but the joy of frank astonishment I follow the pen that is guiding and supporting me.
~The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

I have not kept to journaling as much these past few weeks and this was a nice reminder of what I am missing.

Saturday





On being outside

Backyard

I just came back inside from mowing the back yard.  This morning as I was having my cup of tea and going through my usual routine of opening the blinds and opening the front door for Butters to look outdoors the morning birdsong was interrupted by the hum of lawn mowers being started across the fields and backyards in our neighborhood.  I smiled at the sound and at the sunshine that came to greet us creating a spring in every one's step. Prior to yesterday we have had about a week of non-stop rain.

After I painted a few strokes on my sunshine painting and on another small painting I started I decided it was time for me to head outdoors and join the chorus.  As I was mowing and smelling honeysuckle that is still in bloom and an unusual cotton candy like smell coming from through the trees from the neighbors yard (what was that smell) I thought "I love mowing".  Then I thought how my Dad would laugh at this as he always complains that I never mowed when I lived there.  In between stopping to pull a weed from a flower bed I was passing or stopping and rescuing a little hoppy toad, I still continued to think of how I love mowing and pondered where had this desire come from.  I have long wanted a yard full of clover for the bees and so we would not have to mow the yard.  Having a lawn means sowing the lawn every season and fertilizing it and weeding it so it seems contradictory to want a lawn and to want all the little creatures in my yard safe too. 

There is an allure to the mowing though, to creating straight or even curved lines and seeing the beautiful pattern that you are creating.  There is an awareness of each inch of your space as you go back and forth across the lawn looking at how much a tree you planted has filled out or spotting the season's first bursting bud from the day lilly or saving a hoppy toad and taking the moment to smile and thank the hoppy toad for visiting.  And this morning I was reminded of childhood as well.  There was something sentimental about having the door open and hearing the start of those mowers that took me all they way back to pig tails and halter tops.

I may have a different post about mowing when the mercury hits 85 plus and the humidity matches it, but today I feel joyful just being outside and feeling the sun against my skin as I mow one careful row after another.

What is bringing you joy today?

Here Comes the Sun



My Desk



Today is cloudy and drizzly, one of those days where it could be morning, noon or early evening because it is just grey.  It is also green though and misty and delightful in a spring into summer kind of way. It is one of those days where I seem to putter here and there doing little bits of this and that.

 

After taking Butters out into the morning rain I decided to take out most of the house plants and put them on the front walk for a fresh soak and misting. After coming back inside I made a pot of strong coffee and folded one load of laundry, dried another, and stripped the bed linens to be washed.  Then I thought today would be a great day for banana oatmeal, but decided to do some stretching first.  Running and walking on the treadmill pounds out the grumpies but it also seems to leave my joints in knots.  A good stretch of my entire body was definitely needed. I stretched and did some gentle yoga to work out the kinks. It felt good to move my body in this way and be aware of its strengths and limitations and loosen it up a little more with each exhalation.

After stretching I did treat myself to banana oatmeal.  I make the oatmeal first and then add sliced bananas and cook it a few minutes longer.  The heat seems to bring out the sweetness in the bananas.  I added a dash of cinnamon and topped it with milk and walnuts.  I actually think I prefer pecans but we were out of those.

 

While I ate my oatmeal I caught up on e-mail and blog land and read a bit from The Book of Awakening. In the back of my mind while reading I kept thinking to myself "you need to do something creative today".  The response I got back was "but it is cloudy today and I don't create on cloudy days".  The more I thought of this the more I remembered that if I always waited for the perfect circumstances I would never get anything done.  And then I thought "well then why not paint your own sunshine".  So that is the plan for a new painting.  I really would like to try an intuitive painting approach and maybe I can dabble with that today as well.  I really feel like I have to know what I plan to paint before I sit down and get to work.  I am inspired by several artists whose blogs I frequent that paint intuitively.  They approach the canvas with the thought that "I am going to paint and see what appears" and just amazing things happen and show up on their canvas.  It is quite beautiful.  Anywho, today I am going to create some sunshine and perhaps I will start another canvas where I just play and see what happens.



I hope you are having a wonderful day today and creating some sunshine of your own.

Changing Spaces

Livingroom-view from kitchen

Yesterday I had the most fun changing around our living room.  I had the house to myself and moved every piece of furniture, plant, and picture out of the room.  I love starting with a blank canvas so to speak and then adding back pieces here and there and turning them around to see how they look. 

My first roommate in college never knew what she may come how to because of my love of rearranging. She often spent nights away with her boyfriend and said she always looked forward to seeing what I changed while she was gone. Then it was really how I cleaned.  I moved furniture and cleaned all at the same time.  It was also a form of procrastination from studying and I once sliced open my finger with a razor blade while scraping the wax off of the floor after one of my room overhauls.  Of course this was in the middle of final exams and I had to go to the emergency room to boot.

Livingroom-reading nook

When I got my first apartment after college I rearranged with frenzy as well, whether it was moving the patio table and plants or rearranging art work and accessories for an updated look. It was a small one bedroom apartment with bits and pieces of handed down furniture but it was all mine.

The past five years or so I have not rearranged at all.  Some of that has to do with being married.  I have to have an empty house with no one around to get into the zen moment I require to rearrange.  Someone popping their head into the door mid process and making comments does not do well for me, unless of course I am helping with someone elses space. The few times in the past that Alan helped me he became frustrated because I may move something one time or ten times before I get it just right. 

All this to say that yesterday was a treat in deed.  I didn't buy a single thing but I feel like I have a brand new room.   I still have a few revisions to make but overall I am happy with the feel of the room.

Livingroom-view from the front door

Running Away

 Grandmother's Suitcases

Much of my childhood was spent under my grandparent’s roof.  This was the same home that my Mother grew up in, where my great aunt lived when her husband was away while enlisted in the military, where great-grandparents lived out the last years of their lives, and the home that my uncle and aunt lived in after getting married while they built a home of their own. 

Upstairs in the house were my bedroom, my brother’s bedroom, an alcove where my dollhouse sat and a wall of hanging garment bags that contained years and years worth of clothing with suitcases piled underneath.  Those garment bags contained a treasure trove from my mother’s tu  tu’s to my cousins hippie dresses and probably even my aunts wedding dress.  The suitcases though are what I was thinking of today.

Today for some reason those suitcases popped into my head along with the idea that I needed to run away.  Thankfully it is not for the same reasons today as it was when I was little. 

When I was a little girl I remember a specific summer in which I ran away with frequency.  There was surely something that made me upset enough to decide that I was not wanted or that everyone would surely miss me if I were gone or even the dramatic they won’t even notice I am gone.  The thing is I don’t think that my grandparents, mother or brother ever did know I was gone or if they noticed that I was gone that I had “run away”.  I had so much freedom as a child and I played inside and outside so much blending these two worlds that perhaps my family just thought I was playing “vacation”.

Today’s thoughts of running away are still about escaping but not so much from something but too something.  I just want to take a trip, an adventure of sorts.  I want to take a train or plane or even automobile.  I want to see new sites or familiar sacred places that I have been away from for too long.  I want to smell the musky forest that is unmistakable even with my eyes closed or maybe it is the aroma of grilled food as I walk along the city sidewalk, or even the salty air and misplaced perfume wafting in from the shore. I want to plan what I am going to pack and try on all of my clothes and pare it down until it will all fit into one bag.  And that one bag? 

I keep imagining that it was some small powder blue soft leather suitcase that I packed when I ran away.  For the life of me I cannot remember what I took with me.  Maybe I packed my dolls, a blanket to lie on, and a book to look at. I do remember specifically where I would go though.  There were trees that lined the street by the church baseball field.  It was just a half a mile or so from my grandparents’ home. Just past the preachers’ house and across the street from the Parker homes.  I was a little adventurer then and thought the whole earth was available to me and did not know a thing about trespassing. It was on one of those running away days that I discovered the most wonderfully cool and deep creek. It was beyond those trees and past a fenced cow pasture.  I just walked and kept walking, determined that day that I was really leaving.  Until I heard the churn of running water and found what  I knew even then to be an oasis. I climbed into the creek with all my clothes on and floated in the rushing water with just my elbows holding me up from the sandy bottom.  I felt like a pioneer woman, like little Laura Ingles Wilder and I soon made believe that creek was my spring where I kept the milk and butter and also came to wash the clothes.

More often than not I became distracted by my findings like this and forgot that I had run away and just played. I would soon be back at home, out of breath and likely with a bundle of flower like weeds, a bird’s nest, a turtle holed up in his shell and maybe even a broken eggshell or butterfly wing  and bursting to tell someone (anyone) about my adventure and what I had seen.   

Perhaps this trip down memory lane (cliche intended) was just what I needed.  This soul safari as I think of it, is a trip into my past as a way to understand my present and future. I don't really want to run away from this life, I just want to discover the newness in life.  I want to stimulate all of my senses and I want to pick up a treasure or two that the Universe has gifted to me in the form of a shell or weather worn rock.  A talisman, a provocateur of adventures and correlations previously unnamed, to borrow and stash inside that powder blue suitcase case as I continue on this journey.

Summer is Near

Multiflora Rose

Summer is near.
I smell her perfume of
tangled honeysuckle and wild rose.
I hear her laughter in
the rolling thunder and dazzling cracks of lightening.
She leaves the treasure of sparkling
diamonds on the lawn in the early morning and the promise of the evening tree frog serenade.
Every bloom and buzz
deliver a reminder to pause
and savor the enchantment.

From My Mother's Garden



Peonies in kitchen

Every Tuesday my Mother and I spend the evening together.  It has been this way since I was in college and as long as I have lived locally.  In college she came to see me on Wednesday evenings and took me out to dinner and listened to me talk giddily about whatever struck my fancy at the time or weep in frailty at whatever I was struggling to come to terms with.  She was always there. No matter what. 

After college when I moved back home we no longer had our one night a week because we had every day and every evening together so to speak.  Then I moved to Asheville and then later to Virginia.  The years that I was away we burnt up the phone lines and also the roads going back and forth to visit each other.



Peony close-up

Eventually I came home again and took refuge in my parents home enjoying quiet days on the farm and walking through the woods.  I think this was the year I talked them into to planting one of their biggest gardens yet and later disappeared to be with my friends instead of helping pick and can and freeze all of the bounty it produced.  Before long I was back out on my own but living close by and that is when the Tuesday evenings started.  I bought my first home in the summer of 2001 so it has been 10 years now since we started this tradition.  Sometimes we have taken classes together but we have always been together.  We share secrets, stories, memories, joys, triumphs, defeats, food, poems, books, back scratches, hugs, and the quiet presence of understanding.

In the spring and summer we enjoy talking about, shopping for and sharing plants.  This year she has brought me fern and vinca vine and last night along with the beautiful peonies she brought me blue salvia.  I cannot wait to see how big it gets.  Vila had the first blue salvia I had ever seen when she lived in Virginia and I remember falling in love with it then.



The peonies are transplants from my grandmother's garden.  I remember exactly where they were planted beside the red rose bush between her driveway and the neighbors.  This same rose bush served as my drive through bank when I was a little girl playing make believe and I would drive up to the "teller" on my pink huffy bicycle.  My grandmother would always ask my Mother or me to go cut a peony for her and two rose buds for ourselves for Mother's Day Sunday at church.  She wore the white peony in remembrance of her Mother who had passed and we wore the red roses in remembrance of our Mother's who were still very much alive.

Peonies outside in the sun

I love that these peonies are a gift from both my Mother and my Grandmother.  I was struck with the heady aroma of them as soon as I walked into the kitchen this morning.  And then I thought, the best things in life really are free.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

Seahorse Pair



Seahorse Pair



I have been working on these paintings off an on now since late March and they are at last complete (I think).  Now I just need to find frames for them.  I painted the sides of the canvas blue, gold and silver to "create" a semblance of a frame but the more I look at these the more I want to frame them.  I picked up a gloss varnish for these and some other paintings several weeks ago from Michael's.  I do love a glossy finish on some things but I think it made the seahorses too shiny and also difficult to photograph as the paintings reflect the light heavily now. I may come to love the shine, but for now I am still trying to get used to it. I also incorporated some stenciled leaves into this piece (my first attempt at stenciling with painting) and while it was not the exact effect I was hoping for (I think my choice in paint color may have had more to do with it than anything else) I was happy overall with the experience. 



Female Seahorse

 While doing research prior to painting the seahorses I learned that the male seahorse is the one that actually carries the baby and that seahorses mate for life. I tried to capture the delicacy of these creatures while also giving them the majesty and strength they are due.  Seahorses are said to be the truest barometer of the health of our Ocean's.

Male Seahorse