Tag Archives: gardening

A Tick-Borne Summer

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As I listen to my surroundings, I hear the song of many birds, the hum of summer traffic on the road, and the wind moving through the thousands, millions, of trees on our land here in Maine. Every year, later than I would like, the leaves come back to the trees after months of absence. One day, they are tiny speckles of lime green, and the next, there are millions, billions of lime green leaves dancing in the air. Just before that, the birdsong comes back with the birds, and the silence of a wind-whipped winter is over. I love sitting outside in the wind, in the sun, in nature, in this tiny sliver of peace and paradise: a small house, green, with a nice porch, and plants all around.

I started feeling really crummy two Tuesdays ago, but couldn’t place the feelings; was it bad hummus? Had I drunk pond water on my Monday swim when it was so hot and clear the only thing to do was to swim? Or perhaps I had done that on my Tuesday swim, when conditions were similar only cloudy? On Tuesday evening I started to feel like there was a rock in my belly, or a beach ball, or something that was taking up all the space that I usually fill with tasty things like roast chicken or tacos or muffins in the mornings. My belly also became swollen out like a little kid’s. Usually my tummy is fairly flat with its fair share of mid-forties curves and wrinkles. I have been exercising alot on my elliptical and feeling proud of being stronger and my tummy flatter. But no longer. On Tuesday evening I tried to eat dinner as normal but barely ate half of it, saying I didn’t feel super well. I thought: tomorrow will be better.

Wednesday came and went and the stomach trouble became worse: it hurt very much and was very uncomfortable, and with it came this weird back pain across the whole top half of my torso. I had a hard time standing or sitting for long periods of time. If I could lean back, I was ok. If I could lie down, that was better. I was annoyed.

On Thursday I thought I caught the chill of a cool day that followed a few hot ones, but as I drove home from the gallery I recognized the familiar feelings of a fever. By the time I made it home, I was shaking, cold, and feeling rotten. So began my days of spiking 101 degree fevers (high for me as my normal temperature is about 97 degrees), breaking fevers into crazy sweaty messes, and the realization that something was wrong with me.

On Friday I managed to get in with a random doctor who told me that she thought I had a stomach bug that was roaming around. I asked her if she would run a tick panel just in case, and she said yes, so we did. I took the rest of the day to chill out, thinking I might be feeling better til the fever started again.

On Monday, I went to my regular doctor and told her I was worried I had a kidney infection and she said she was worried I had Lyme disease. Luckily, the tick panel was already being processed, and on Tuesday, she called and gave me the gross and terrible news that I have anaplasmosis and Lyme disease, together.

Blech.

She also told me I have to take antibiotics for at least 30 days and they are these fun ones that cause you to sunburn so easily you can’t really be out in it. She apologized for ruining my summer (I blame the tick, personally). And since Monday I have been taking two types of antibiotics, twice a day, and probiotics 1 or 2 hours later. I felt better on Thursday, and then yesterday I felt bad again. Today is Saturday, and I am very tired. I wonder if I am now feeling tired from not eating enough, because one of the things with that stomachache from Hell is that my appetite has gone on vacation. Somewhere good, I hope.

One of the strange emotional responses to these illnesses is that I am determined to not sweat the small stuff. That feels good, like I am doing something right in a situation that I cannot control at all. Anaplasmosis is super scary and can kill you in various ways (spooky!) if not treated early, so I am proud of myself for going to the doctor. So in the vein of not sweating the small stuff, I am trying to be a nicer version of myself, more understanding, and quieter. I am trying to spend time thinking about what I think about the state of the country, but not react to it as much as maybe I have been. I am thinking about the importance of creating art in times of dread and sadness, and trying to be participatory in that process.

The energy level is the challenge. Fatigue is real with Lyme and anaplasmosis. I haven’t felt this fatigue in a long time, but I am not unfamiliar with it; legs made of lead or concrete, not strong, dragging through space. I would like to go swimming or maybe just sit in a lake. Today is hot and I hope to fill up our cowboy pool with the cold, cold well water that comes from deep within the earth. I plan to put it on the leechfield, on top of the septic field; I think it’s mostly harmless to that process going on below. Last year when I filled up a giant pot to dip in on the hottest days, the water was so cold it was shocking! (There are photos to prove it!) This year, I will fill up the stock tank and let it sit for a day or two to warm up before I dunk myself in. Over by the leechfield I have planted lots of medicinal herbs and witchy plants, as MOFGA told me I could plant shallow-rooted perennials. Over there we have hops, madder, weld, motherwort, marshmallow, thyme, yarrow, blue vervain.

Ho hum. One of the good things about having peaceful, slow hobbies is that when you are slow yourself, you can still do them. Today I want to work on jewelry, so I am about to head to the studio to do just that. I am working on a series of rings, and I need to order some materials for a custom project I am working on. One of my recovery plans is to wake up early and write in the mornings, as I have much more energy when I wake up than when the afternoons roll around. By then, I feel quite ploddy, like I am going through mud, mentally and physically. These illnesses don’t make me sad, exactly, just tired and a bit disappointed. I like having lots of energy, high vibrations, and excitement. I am sure those will all come back; I just have to let this ride out.

Current projects are:

1.Working on the second edit of the book and finding all the photos that go into it

2. Power rings of various interesting stones and two pendants for a show in August

3. Finishing the third quilt in a series, photographing the three, and sending them to their destinations. The third one has no home, so I wonder who will claim it?

I am drinking coffee now, still listening to those same sounds but the wind is stronger, the sun higher in the sky, the air is warm and dry. My living room is orange and bright with sunlight. We are on new journeys in this life, new career paths, so much exploration! We asked for an adventure and we got one! Who knows what the future holds, but we have managed to pay for everything so far, and I can only hope the blessings continue and continue to grow. Every night I look at the vast spiderweb of stars and ask them to keep helping us, protecting us, guiding us. The Big Dipper right now is just above the driveway and, every night, reminds me that “my cup runneth over” and ain’t that the truth.

I hope you are well, wherever you are, and if you are not, that you can figure out some ways to make it work while you are sick.

xxP

Perimenopause, Truthtelling, Medical Trauma & Intimate Partner Violence

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Recently, I learned that my father lied for my entire life (longer, actually) about being a father of twins who were born in 1967. One of them is coming to visit my brother and I in August, and I literally could not be happier about a thing happening; all I want to do is hug him and look at his face and take a photo with his tall self (during our first chat, I asked them both how tall they are as my brother and I are very tall, too).

Since discovering the existence of my brothers, I have been meditating on lying and why we do it. Why did my dad do it? Why have I done it (not very much, but I have been guilty of hiding myself and parts of my selves). All of the artwork I have done since December has been of eyes; iteration after iteration of eyes. I make them even when I don’t intend to make them. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Paths. Eyes surrounded by paths. The path of the past to the present. Yesterday I was in my amazing quilt class and we had a guest speaker, Zak Foster, and he said the most interesting snippet “There is no history, not really. There is only the present, and many, many presents.”

I loved that and it made me think. Right now I am going through perimenopause which is this insane journey of weird physical symptoms, overwhelming rage, quick tempered emotions that spin out of nowhere, pain, decisions that are hard for me to make, a sense of perspective, a sense of looking backward to look forward, and a sense that there isn’t as much time in front of me as there is behind. It’s a bit of a mindfuck.

Today I was getting an ultrasound to check that the Mirena IUD I had placed last week to provide me with progesterone is in the right place in my uterus. I had it placed last Wednesday and it has been very painful and exhausting: surprisingly so. It has reminded me that I am older now, and it reminded me of my past presents. When I was getting the IUD inserted, my cervix kept “running away” (the words of my midwife as I have no idea what this means but it sounds weird and sad) from her. She finally had to dose me with some extra Lidocaine and hold on to it with forceps. As I lay there waiting for the inevitable, this wonderful nurse Caroline was holding my hand and telling me that I was a wild horse running free on a beach, like the horses of Chincoteague from those old books. I felt my body tensing up over and over. They kept telling me to relax. I kept apologizing. I remembered something.

When I was about 20, I had this seemingly wonderful boyfriend named Ryan, who was so cute with long hair and who liked to go camping. He was from Midland and we went out to west Texas and camped alot on forestry land and cooked rice for dinner in the dark. We went on an ill-fated road trip out west one summer and discovered we didn’t travel well together, but in retrospect, my part of that was that I was/is/always will be desperately afraid of intimacy as I don’t trust it. The model I was shown was irregular and broken and weirdly sad and incomplete. Now I know that at its center was a big lie, which must have contributed, but isn’t the entire explanation. Either way, I discovered that I was pregnant with Ryan’s baby later that year and we both decided we didn’t want to have a baby then (I haven’t investigated how I feel about this just yet but think it is mostly ok with me). Ryan came in with me when I was having the procedure – the doctor must have been very open-minded? – and he told me later that I tensed up and looked like I was in the most pain of anyone he had ever seen. I remembered this vividly in that moment last week when I was getting the IUD. I couldn’t stop tensing up, I was very quiet, and I kept squeezing Caroline’s hand. At one point I asked if I was hurting her, and she said no, to keep squeezing, so I did.

Today I went and got the ultrasound to check its placement and everything looks good according to the tech. She was very nice and her name is Jane and she has been doing ultrasound for 35 years which I find amazing. While she was ultrasounding, she kept asking me if I was ok and I kept telling her that I was, but I was tensing up and was trying to get myself to relax. She took about 30 photos of my uterus from on top of my belly and inside my body, showed me the IUD (it looked good!) and off I went. I apologized to her and told her I had a lot of medical trauma associated with my childbirthing body parts, and she said she was sorry, and I told her it was ok as it wasn’t her fault.

After Ryan and I had the abortion, everything was hard and I think we started fighting about everything everywhere for months and the fights got worse and worse and worse until his neighbors didn’t want us to live at the co-op anymore. He moved into a little house with a friend and we kept trying but it was done, somehow. The fights got worse, and then 9/11 happened and I remember noticing there weren’t any planes in the sky when we sat on his porch. I was supposed to go give a presentation at UT about something and he was threatened and we fought and he pushed me into a wall. Later that day he broke up with me.

Girl, so confusing.

Last year, last May, a friend of mine was killed by her partner. He killed her, set fire to the family house she was living in, and then killed himself. He did make sure her horses were safe, which is some blessing in all of this. When she was killed, no one described the incident as domestic violence, only murder-suicide. She worked with my husband, and his boss never spoke about it again. It was as if they weren’t allowed to speak about it, but I don’t think that was what is was. I think he didn’t know how to talk about it, deal with it, wrap his heart around it, and so passively coerced his coworkers to do the same. It was horrible: it festered. Just before her death, Cody’s other coworker lost his father, and his wife thinks that because of the lack of space for discussion, that her husband felt that losing his friend and coworker was more painful, was worse, made more of an impact, than the death of his own father.

This week I went to Willowind, a therapeutic horse farm that teaches people how to ride horses peacefully and provides horse-based therapy to people who need it. A friend who teaches there had saved some horsehair for me, some special ashy blonde hair from a huge dappled draught horse named Abel. His fur looks like stone and he is a giant. I am planning on taking the horsehair and combining it with a design of a horse, making my friend’s mother and sister a necklace each. I want to do something with the loss of this person that is beautiful and special just as she was.

It has been a hard time of loss and of change. Growing older is not for the faint of heart, let me tell you. I have a hormone patch on my tummy that I switch left to right twice a week and it is helping me sleep better. I hope the IUD helps other things. My skin on my face looks better, my boobs are droopier and I want to make a corset for them and be a little radical. When I walk around my garden I am amazed everyday at my plants’ abilities to grow a little bit more. I wonder what it would be like if our only stimuli were light and water?

Circling back to eyes and lies, I have made (almost done with the third anyway) three quilts about it. They are all the same size, baby sized, and have various iterations of eyes and repeated patterns that are a little spiky. One is spooky, one is sweet, one looks like a flag somehow. I wish I could ask my dad why. I wish I could call my brothers ask them over now, but I have to live up to my name. I plan to make a quilt about us, but it is a bit of a dive into a deep well, and I am not sure exactly where to start. Zak told me to talk to my fabric, and that seems like a good idea. He also said to write, so here I am.

One of the things my therapist shared with me is that she thinks I don’t exactly know how to have a real partner, as the example given my brother and I was so fraught. I agree, but it makes me sad as, for the most part, Cody is so great and I wish I was better at being a partner. I am trying very much to integrate with him, to think about him, to not be afraid to share stories with him. It is amazing to me that we have been together for 10 years and there are still stories we haven’t shared with each other. I am lucky to have him and he me but there are lots of things that I have yet to learn to be a whole person and the best version of myself. I have always been so good with kids, but adults scare me quite a bit. The brothers, though, don’t scare me at all. Why is that?

How can so many worlds exist within our minds and our hearts at the same time? How can there be so many both/ands? It is a great mystery this life of ours. Nature gives me some rhythm which is comforting, but I want to be more honest about how I feel and what I am thinking about. I am too scared I think to voice these things out loud, but I think I can write them down. Maybe I can get to a place where they come out in a more formal way, but for now, making stuff and writing stuff will have to do.

I had baby chickens in my studio for a month or two and it got all dusty, so I am off to go and dust it and get it ready to start making things again. I have about 8 power rings and an amazing pendant that are asking to be finished. When will I move on from eyes? Who knows? They are beautiful and it is interesting how many types of eyes there are and how many colors. Right now the world and my place in it feel very mysterious and spinny, but I saw this poster in the hospital today that said “Bloom Where You Are Planted” and I thought I could start there.

I miss my friends who have left the planet before me; I wish I could talk with them. Their loss shows me how precious it all is, how fast it goes by, and how important it is to notice the weird little plants and how they grow in the sunshine and the rain. It is all interconnected, everything. All of my feelings of fear and inadequacy that came from early days somehow connect to the lie my dad told that he kept so well hidden. How different things can be when we are just honest, even if it hurts in the moment. Right?

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  1. Camping in Lamoine State Park and being close enough to home to come work on projects
  2. Planting huge amounts of squash plants and expanding the garden
  3. The stars!!!
  4. Time and thinking about things differently in terms of the past and of self
  5. The birds that fly around our house and land all the time and eat all the birdseed

Life is harder than I had expected as a younger person. People are complex and all these things happen to us, and they are almost all unpredictable. It is all about how we respond: that is what matters. It is also really hard sometimes to be my best self. My mom’s neighbor, Mrs. Meryweather, is almost 91 and has taught me so much about all of this. She has taught me to garden and been an open book and a listening ear. She makes me laugh and I honestly want to be alot like her when I am that old, and even before. Her husband was equally wonderful; they are quite a pair to shine this experience of life upon, having done so much good for everyone around them, in small ways. That’s all I have to say tonight. The garden is gorgeous and I am happy to be busy with that and everything else. ❤

What Are You Really Thinking About Right Now?

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I keep thinking about the bigger picture.

At night, I walk on my driveway and look up at thousands of stars, and every night I try to find the Big Dipper. When I do, I then look for Orion, the Little Dipper, and some planets. I find it soothing, and so I talk to them, making wishes for their help on this tiny floating blue dot. I know that they are so much bigger than me, and that there might be tiny floating blue dots orbiting them, and probably nobody there (if there is someone) even knows that I exist. Somehow though, every night I see them as this web of lights, connected across space, protecting me on Earth.

Life in the United States right now is very strange. I am convinced that the government is trying to make everyone afraid and divided. I think that the powers that be are using social media to do this, and there are now so many channels that can capture your attention.

I currently use Instagram and Facebook; I just deleted X because I found it mildly horrifying. I think I am about to delete Facebook, though, as I think my brain isn’t big enough for two social media accounts. It is filled with other things like plants, stars, sewing projects, and making jewelry.

Today is April 21st and it was sunny and cool today. The sun shone on the ocean and it twinkled and sparkled. Through a window, it almost looked like if you jumped in, it would be refreshing. Of course, it would actually kill you. Oh, Ocean – you’re a beast. So powerful; in reality, the most powerful thing on Earth. What a mirage of safety that ocean; birthplace of us all, so wildly different in different places. Where I grew up, in Houston, the water is always around 70-80 degrees. Here it is in the 40s right now and would make you hypothermic in minutes. And yet, this water, this cold water, is warming faster than any other body of water on Earth. All the while the climate is growing cooler, losing 1 degree of warmth over the last 11 years.

A bigger picture – a small and short life. I am about to turn 45. I just started hormone replacement therapy and now wear a tiny patch about the size of a dime on my stomach. I put one on twice a week and am hoping it makes me feel better and gives me relief from night sweats and hot flashes, brain fog, and a crazy hip pain that comes and goes. I am sure there are other things, too, but those are the ones I am most aware of. In a few years, my body will have changed again, as I transition into the second half of my short life.

I wonder why people in government would choose to do bad things, knowing how short their lives are, too, and how if they did good, more people would remember them after they’ve died. But then again, some people think they will never die; they are so afraid of its unknown.

I go back to work next week which is exciting; I am looking forward to seeing people and remembering how to do all the little things that make the gallery work. Every day I look outside waiting for leaves; still waiting. It’s ok. They are coming. There is a fox here who is eating my chickens as if she has access to take-out whenever she wants. There is also a porcupine who climbs the white pine trees at night, scratching with its big nails like a giant spiky cat. I wonder what other wild animal will come soon, the third in the series.

Writing has helped me understand that it is time to detach from the world of the internet and attach to the world of real life; plants, animals, sky, trees, making things to reflect those things back at themselves. I have many seedlings ready to put in the ground. I have already planted roses and made new flower beds for this year. The sound of the road at the end of the driveway is loud sometimes, but the land is pretty. We cleared out a streambed yesterday and planted dwarf willow trees at the stream edge. The apple trees are about to bloom, I think. I can’t wait to go swimming.

I have been listening to Radio Paradise a lot lately. It is really great; maybe you will like it too. I am off to go eat a girl dinner and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tomorrow is a new day? I think? I mean, it is. How will it feel tomorrow?

Gardening – A Personal History

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When I was a little girl, my mom and her best friend (our neighbor, Shari,) would send all the kids outside on summer days to thin the carrots. We were taught at a very young age how to thin carrots, and lettuce, and basil plants. We would sit for what felt like forever, but which most likely was about 15 minutes. I remember looking down at rows of tiny, fernlike plants in perfect lines in the dirt, figuring out which ones to pluck, and which ones to leave alone. 

 

During those same years, we would be wicked children and steal Shari’s lavender flowers and run up into the woods to our fort, which we had built out of scrap wood and plastic sheeting. We covered it with pine boughs for camouflage, and built a lookout up in a tree. Erica and I decided that it smelled terrible, due to the combination of Maine rain and the plastic sheeting, and we would make air freshener by smashing the lavender flowers in an old saucer on the floor of the fort. I remember desperately wanting to live up there, thinking it was a place in which all four of us could finally be free, but never having the guts to do so. 

 

When we were kids, in Maine, in the summer, the only time of the year when it is warm-ish in Maine, we were sent out of the house after breakfast and asked to only come back for dinner. We were not allowed to come into the house during the day, as the moms were busy making bread and jam and, probably, watching some television. In those days, we climbed trees, made canoes and kayaks into playgrounds, and took said canoes and kayaks out into the ocean, always wearing life jackets and staying close to shore, because even we knew that the ocean, given a chance, will kill you with its cold temperatures and hidden currents. We knew that each year people died in the ocean for failing to understand its power. If you respected the ocean, however, and stayed close to shore, you could scoot along the ironstone rocks over to the MDI Biological Laboratory and open up the fish cages on the docks, gazing down at the tiny sharks and horseshoe crabs, sea urchins and hundreds of starfish. We would gaze down at these creatures for as long as we could until we were spotted and chased back into the canoe by wary, and kid-weary, graduate students. 

 

These stories, I hope, provide the background for why, even as I now live in Texas, that I interact with and build my garden each and every day. I started gardening in the early 2000s when I worked at Whole Foods and would bring home dying plants from the 5 cent shelf. I lived in an old house in the French Place neighborhood, just east of Hyde Park, that had a beautiful front yard just perfect for a first garden. I remember the neighborhood cats would always mess with my plants, and at the time, I did not yet understand the interesting role of a housecat in the garden. (Hint: they think you made it for them). My first real garden was in the Hudson Valley of New York in 2006, when I somehow ended up living in Croton-on-Hudson and spent a few days before I had a job digging out a 30-by-10 foot space in the sun at the top of a hill for a garden. I remember digging and scraping, gazing down at the Croton River, with the Hudson River beyond, and a giant tree at the river’s edge in which lived baby eagles. It was glorious. The rest of the property was consumed by Kudzu, which, if you have never seen, you should Google. There were two rose bushes, which I hacked down to nubs in early March, and then thought I had killed, only to watch them leap into action come April; they exploded with blossoms. In the garden, I planted all the basics and watched my first corn crop grow sky-high, trapping a family of woodchucks one at a time, and releasing them in the park across the river. 

 

Today, my garden is bigger than ever. My husband and I bought a 5-acre parcel with an old house on it about 3 years ago, and we steadily carve it, sculpt it, hack away at it with each passing week. When we bought the place, the house was shrouded on three sides by overgrown hackberry and yaupon trees, and you couldn’t even see the giant brick barns. Most of the property was also overgrown with hackberry, but now, there are trails through 1.5 acres of it. We discovered a giant, old, rambling post oak that was buttressed to the point of being choked by hackberry and mesquite. We chopped those down, cleared the site, and got married underneath it. This year, it roared back into beauteous growth and is covered with healthy, green leaves. 

 

What is the magic of gardening? Is it the soil itself, the rhythm and ritual of planting seeds and transplanting plants from one pot to another? Is it the mystery of spring when plants, hidden for months, peep out of the ground and then, seemingly in an instant, are three feet high and rising toward to ever stronger sun? Is it planting tomato plants and then noticing the baby, green tomatoes hanging on to every stem? Is it the sound of the wind, and the songs of birds, and the whisper of shifting branches? Is it wild thunderstorms that shake the house but don’t rattle the tiniest of seedlings, somehow holding on to their spot of the good earth? It is all these things, and more. It is planting wildflower seeds, afraid that none will sprout because they are notoriously finicky, and then having 5 appear! It is the first return of hummingbirds and listening to them fight over the feeder, and watching their ruby-throated gem-quality magic feeding on the geraniums by the kitchen window. It is the butterflies feeding on sap, and your puppy chasing them on the wind. It is the orchard, once dormant and cold, unfurling with green leaves, and the trees growing taller each day. 

 

I say to myself each year that I must spend 20 minutes a day in the garden, and I usually make that happen. Sometimes I plant, sometimes I weed, and sometimes I just wander. On especially lovely days, I just listen to the birds and the bees and the trees. So many trees. When I was a little girl in Maine, we used to listen to the locust trees along the driveway creak in the wind, and were always afraid they would crash down! And they never did; they bent, but never broke, not yet, anyway. 

 

There are so many lessons in gardening and being out of doors. Those lessons are patience and calm, tolerance, beauty, an appreciation of color, and soft sounds. Nothing beats the sound of wind running through grasses that are waist-high, or the feeling of the sun on your shoulders or face on a summer day, or the cool crisp chill on your shins in the mornings of spring. I check my bees each morning, taking them food, and telling them of the weather. Sometimes, on those mornings, it is yet still cool, crisp, almost cold as the dew touches my feet. 
If I could recommend gardening, and I do, to everyone, I would say remember the first line of “Desiderata” – “GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence”. All the answers are there; in this world of ours, when we all are able to move so fast, it is a wonderful thing to do something intentionally that is so slow, so colorful, so practical, so beautiful, so calming. I hope you have a wonderful day in your garden.

 

Date: 28 April 2020

Cases: 3,116,398

United States: 1,012,582

Deaths: 217,153

Mortality Rate: 6.968%

United States Mortality Rate: 5.888%

Inspiration

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Here, I watch the sunset over the neighbor’s barn 

Over the last month, 29 new people have started following this blog. Since I have not regularly posted to the blog in almost three years, and am rather a fair-weather blog friend these days, I am taking this as a sign from the universe and the second nod of inspiration to get to it again! A few weeks ago, my mother’s best friend Jean also asked me: “what is happening these days with your writing?”.

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A bridge in Hogeye, Texas…a few miles from my new home

Challenge accepted, and with gratitude, as I have discovered, in the in-between times, that writing is a way that I understand my own experiences, my meandering wander through this game of life, and, most useful, it helps me remember the things that happened. I was happy to hear from a friend yesterday (and she is younger than me!) that she is now depending on her 4 year-old to help her remember new peoples’ names and the details of the day. Memory is funny: it’s like there is only so much space in there and so many little things get deleted. Perhaps it’s a survival skill.

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Chinaberry blossoms: this year, I felt like I had never seen them before. Maybe I hadn’t.

The same friend also inspired me yesterday by carving out a writing nook in her home. My house is quite small, so there is not a space for this as such, but I have taken the “dining room” (sounds quite fancy but it is really just a small, lovely room with two windows that looks out into the garden and is a pass-through to the living room) as the sewing room and so decided, yesterday, that it will also be the “writing nook” starting, well, today. In this room, along with the two lovely windows, is my sewing machine, the sweet hutch my lover surprised me with a while back (it houses all the fabric, the patterns and the sparkly things in the two lighted cabinets), a nice round brown wooden table, two brass candlesticks, four chairs, a wool rug with a hole at one end, and me.

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The sewing/dining room now writing nook

As I look out of the windows, I can see a windy crepe-myrtle tree and in it, a pair of cardinals. Mama usually shows up first and then is quickly chased by her partner, Red Papa. They are very sweet and chubby these days, no doubt from all the birdseed and everything else around the large yard. There are so many trees: trees in trees! In fact, in the center of the crepe myrtle is a small pecan. There is debate in the house about which goes. I vote for the pecan, as I love the crepe myrtles so much and a pecan there is too close to the house. There is also a blue ceramic birdbath that the doves love, and the grackles like to land in and splash everyone else. Beyond this scene is a white driveway shining in the early summer sun (when did it get so HOT?) and beyond that, the ever-expanding garden fence, a greenhouse, vegetable patches, and many flowers just beginning their pretty journey with us here at the new house in Elgin.

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The house with its first flower patch – now teeming with tiny flowers of myriad variety. I am sitting in front of those two full-sized windows near the back of the house in this photo. The small window is the window over the kitchen sink!

Paciencia, Paciencia is starting a new step in the journey it seems! I am leaving my current school in a few weeks and have transferred to the small middle school here in town. I will still teach the same things; the making of things, the drawing of things, the thinking of things, and the feeling better about ourselves way of things, but I will be able to bike to school on my wonderful bicycle, rather than sit on a highway in my wonderful car. My life is circling around me, the wagons of inspiration hugging a bit closer: more time for art, for garden, for writing. Here we are. Thanks for being along.

20180416_191831Is there anything as beautiful as a tomato and pepper patch in the afternoon light?

Spring Fever

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“I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.”

Brendan Behan

Feeling the seasons change in your bones, and in the bones of others, is a rather mystifying experience. All day today, in my travels over and across this island, people said the same thing to me: “are you enjoying the weather?” because, of course, we all are. It is amazing to feel the sun and warmth return after such a long time: my journal reflects our first snowfall from November 9th, and here we are April 4th, and although we may get another snowstorm or two, I think it is safe to say that winter is resolutely over, and spring is here. This season of spring is so short here in Maine: a mere two months, mid-April to mid-June, and then of course the shortness of summer, too, mid-June to beginning of September, then fall and winter find us, again.

But enough about that.

Spring fever is in the air: birds are singing about it, plants are bursting forth communicating their connection to our Earth and our position in space relative to the Sun, beautiful people near and far are catching each other’s eyes, gardeners are sweeping back the layers of leaves left on the ground after so many months. Ice is melting to reveal moss, no ferns or leaves just yet, but we all know they are lurking under there somewhere.

march 2013 7The Tarn, still frozen, two weeks ago!

Driving home from Bar Harbor today, I took the scenic route and noticed the sunshine on the top of Dorr Mountain, and followed the light all the way down the cliffs edges and onto the surface of The Tarn. When I was a little girl, we used to fish in The Tarn, but I don’t remember catching much. Today, the sunlight seemed to burnish the golden-colored reeds leaning out of the dark blue water. A mere few weeks ago, those same reeds were held up and in place by white ice, the same ice that spread across the surfaces of all the ponds and lakes, and up mountainsides and dripped off ledges in suspended animation.

This afternoon, the glow of spring seemed to beam off the surface of The Tarn, clearly communicating that warmth is back, the sun has returned. During the sunset, as I drove the long way home through Otter Creek, and then took Cooksey Drive onto the Hill of Seal Harbor, over and through the wooded, mossy roadway, lined with the granite walls of the fancy peoples’ houses, the light remained a bronze-y, brass-y, gold, a colour that left us for so long. The last time I remember it was in the fall, one bronze morning.

Transitions, even joyful ones like this one, are difficult because your rhythm and routine is disrupted; it takes a while to regain the swing of things when the environment is fundamentally changing. I have said it before, but this place connects you so strongly to itself. You are quite literally a part of the landscape and you feel its shifts within your body and mind. For the last few days, the only way that I can channel this shifting energy, this cacophony of nature expanding and exhaling and returning to us after sleeping for six months, is to handle stones and place them in a path, to feel their rough texture, their weight in my arms.