A Lion And Some Chickens

The golden, warm weather of yesterday's January thaw has gone and now we're having a wild blustery day up here on the hilltop. Lots of reading, lots of sorting through the seed bin, lots of dreaming about chickens (we're getting some!) and a little plotting about new bees (our hive bit the dust). Its a homestead dream day. I have been researching chicken coops and planting dates and talking to beekeepers on the phone about what I might have done wrong. After I push "Publish" on this post I'm off to the upstairs to rummage around in my homesteading book department and fuel the dream. This weekend I am hoping to put up a hoop house or two over some of our raised beds to get some early cold weather veggies started.

While I dreamed and researched and scribbled notes the boys have been having a playdough, graphic novel and drawing, drawing, drawing kind of day. Lots of interesting masterpieces making appearances. I am kind of smitten with this lion Ru created. I love his cheerful face, his humpy back, his tassely feet and his brush-bottle tail.

And Then One Day He Drew His Daddy

I love the stage where my child's art starts getting representational. I love it for the same reason I love hearing their first clear words, not because art or language starts there but because me understanding them starts there. My kids have all happily colored and scribbled away from the time that they can first hold a pen. We do very little coloring book play at our house, and the boys almost exclusively attack blank pages with whatever is at hand.

The first experimentation with color and line is lovely but the step into portraying life more visibly feels significant to me. The first thing Ru drew that was clearly decipherable was a balloon. A happy first choice. Dee, has hit the stage with a human subject no less, a portrait of his daddy.

 Love that great big smile, the long, thin legs and the open, spidery arms that are reaching hug-style clear off the page. Oh, to be a symbolism soaked art therapist and be able to dig significant meaning out of these little things, tiny windows into the inner boy.

The Grey Part of Spring

Our speckled orchid, blooming in the sunroom window.

I was talking on the phone the other day to Mama (Big Grandma in the sidebar to your right) and she mentioned hoping that their recent trip to South Carolina to visit my sister, Lockbox (see the sidebar again for her) wouldn't sour them on the dregs of winter that they had to go back home to in Northern Michigan. Now that I am so newly returned from parts further south myself I have to admit to being pretty hungry for the vibrant colors of warmer weather too. I understand, Mama, even if I didn't head home to two feet of snow and maple syrup season.

Our fig tree, making a baby fig.

There isn't a flake of snow anywhere on our third of an acre but spring is still dragging out very slowly. We're living in those long cold days that hang heavily and greyly over everything...a dim, dirty light is all we seem to get for days on end and my photographer's eye is just hungry for some clean bright light, some warmth, some vibrant living thing.

My birthday plant, a little Meyer lemon, blooming (smells amazing!)

Yesterday I went out in the yard to check on the hyacinths (leftovers from the kind previous owner) and we found them up but producing only straggling buds mostly in white and pale pink. Monday is never a good day, I am prone to rash and irrational thought patterns. I gave up on the garden, and spring, and all plant life. And then A and I promptly had an argument. Overtired much?

Darned if the coffee plant isn't looking like its making flower buds again. See em?

Today, a night of sleep under my belt, marriage re-assembled and a little bit of light slurping through the morning blanket of grey I decided to take stock of the garden again and get re-inspired. One does not give up on the garden in the spring. It is just not done.

A single, tiny blue squill blooming in our backyard...one of my favorite spring flowers.

I was surprised what I found in the yard after a little investigation. There's a surprising amount of life and color starting to show. And folks, I have to tell you that it really looks like we're going to get great blooms on our inherited lilac! I am super excited.

Big fat, lilac buds.

All enthused, I decided to play hooky from my painting group and headed out to scope some local garden centers instead.

Lenten rose, blooming at the nursery.

Endless flats of pansies.

I can never resist the purpley pinky ones. They're my favorites.

There is something so boosting about garden centers, greenhouses, public horticultural centers and those tall, spinning racks of seeds in the hardware store....even if all of them tend to make me spend more money than I like to admit. Spending money on living things somehow seems less evil than many of the spendthrift possibilities.

My new watering can.

I found the perfect watering can (which I've been looking for for a good while), bought some pansies, and loaded up on crabgrass pre-emergent for our lawn. And bought, um....only a few dozen packets of seeds.

A straggling, but alive lemon yellow primrose.

Tiny purple veined violets which are blooming in our lawn!

I think I'm gonna make it. And until the real sunshine shows up, I'm drawing forsythia...sunshine on paper for foreshadowing.

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Pencil Drawing

Image by vancouverfilmschool via Flickr

Somebody asked recently to hear and see more about the drawing class A and I are taking together on Monday nights so, I thought I'd give an update. I am still really, really enjoying the class although I have been frustrated a couple of times now in the process of drawing. I know that charcoal is a really hard medium for me to work in...so strong and permanent and messy and so little flexibility in value. I know that I overdue my piece just as easily with drawing as I do with painting. I wish art came with turkey timers that popped up when the piece was at an ideal stopping point. It is so easy for me to just adjust and adjust and adjust and pretty soon I have adjusted what was a beautiful drawing into oblivion. Bah!

I think our teacher is a super lovely soul and I like her non-interventionist style quite well but I do think it would be fun to try taking for somebody more directive and see what that felt like. I like feedback and pointers and while she is very encouraging and open I am not sure how much this class is molding or directing my abilities. I struggle with this not nearly as violently as some of my classmates. It is amusing to listen in on certain students ardently suggesting that she might use more diagrams or give more statistical breakdowns or evaluate our work more stringently. Some people simply go into fits when asked to draw what they see and not criticize the life out of every stroke their pencils create.

The stuff I'm sharing is my favorite out of the produce from the course...there are of course several more clumsy pieces, nobody get the idea that I'm some sort of wizardly, mad drawing genius. I am ridiculously human, truly. I am surprised that after years of being nervous about color and concentrating on black and white art production....I am now struggling to go back into the simple world of black and white.

In some ways I think it is easier to portray something using color because some little bits of a scene are suggestible just by the shade of  green or red or whatever it may be whereas with no colors you must lean only on clean lines and honest shading. So much trickier after all.

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Titanic to Promising

I was having a bad morning. The kind of bad morning you're bound to have after Monday comes barreling down the road and hits you head-on, after a fabulously happy weekend. I headed in to paint with my friends with a bad attitude. I felt a little like somebody gave me a brain-ectomy and replaced all my wits with over-cooked spaghetti, given me a teaspoon to bail out The Titanic with and then waved blithely from the distance as they set a fuse to crackle slowly towards the ship. So overwhelmed and so hopeless and so alone. I am wandering through new parenting issues that feel super over-the-top and I periodically feel so alone in my marriage and am even feeling at-sea in my housekeeping routine (which, darn it, I was so on top of a week or so ago). Blast Blast Blast.

Image via Wikipedia

So, anyhow...there I was heading in to church...wondering if I should even be there...thinking that I might not even stay and in walks my sweet landscaping friend. So sweet, this friend. And with her gentle way, she flourished an onion-skin paper my direction and suddenly, there on my empty watercolor sheet (uninspired and unproductive in the painting department today) there was the most beautiful garden plan.

A plan. A solution. A stunning work of art, featuring my yard. And just like that, my day turned from ridiculously over-the-top sucky to absolutely survivable...yea, foreshadowing promise.

I feel like I felt when I had my portrait drawn by an artist friend as a surprise.

I feel like my life and my self and the world I am trying to live in and create are beautiful or at least look beautiful to some people or could be beautiful. So much of the time the problems we wade through every single day and the mind-numbing road blocks that zing stunningly up in the way start to feel like they mean something...I forget they mean nothing more than the fact that I'm alive.

A Weekend In Pictures

Here's a little photo-tour taste of weekend fun at our house:

Forget-me-nots and Ice Storms

I am not sure what the weather is doing outside right now as it is dark and I'm avoiding looking out the windows. It is after all doing it whether I notice or not. The weather man says we're getting an ice-storm just now and that we can expect to be covered in a glistening layer by morning. Here's hoping we don't lose our power.

That's a car.

This afternoon we starting getting a little spitting of fine, sleety rain and the world became very grey indeed. There are waist high snow banks and narrowed driving spaces on every street in town and some places they have taken to hiring front end loaders to come pile the snow in mega-heaps, mountains of ice balls and snow so high that that they will still be melting in April and May, far past when we usually have any sign of winter. It is a different year altogether, no question. I was asking some elderly neighbors the other day about their weather memories and I heard resoundingly that this winter has brought more snow, and more frequent storms than anything they can remember. Pretty darn impressive.

A street I run down when I exercise...not too far from our front door.

The bonus to this much grey, icky weather and the snowbound conditions are the cozy indoor times we're having. We are having long discussions about how different machines work, "Today Mommy lets talk about what makes a snowplow go and then tomorrow I want to hear about how a washing machine works." (That's Ru.) and we're also having snug fires in the fireplace, lots of storytime (We finished the first Little House book...EEP! I need to quickly find a copy of Little House on The Prairie which I thought I already had but didn't.) and I have been keeping up on the housework fairly well which is a big deal.

Happy boys, sledding.

Yes, and there has been some painting. I bought an easel so that I can set up serious shop in the studio/sunroom and today I gave it a trial run. I think as long as I crank all the appropriate bolts tight enough it is super fun and very helpful and I kind of like the active feel of standing while I paint as opposed to sitting at a table which, I didn't expect. Fun to notice these little things.

Messy studio, happy painter.

Most of my paintings are at the framer's because I'm having a few things framed and I accidentally left everything there while I was at it so, I have only two recent things to show you this time. Long time no share on the painting front so once my new display-ables are back I'll share more.

A rocky ocean shore we saw in California with me and Ru on the right side.

Forget-me-nots....also a California scene...flowers in the gardens one of the Missions we visited.

A and I are taking a drawing class together, on Monday nights for the next 10 weeks and I am very excited to see what we learn there and will hopefully have some drawings to share soon. Hooray creation!