Angel number eight

I thought of her before any of my other girls, but I waited because I wasn't sure how to do her skin tone. It actually wasn't difficult. My first idea--"let's try Goldenrod Verithin under Terra Cotta Verithin"-- worked well. Artistic intuition is mysterious. I don't know how I knew those colors would probably work. It still doesn't seem obvious to me that they would.

 

We're getting better, but everyone's still coughing and feeling really fatigued. I'll probably have another angel by the day after tomorrow. See you then, maybe . . .

Sick day two

Posted by Melissa

 

Some of us are doing better, some worse. Here is the most popular healing food of the day, banana strawberry "ice cream."  It's made of frozen bananas, frozen strawberries, raw eggs from our free range chickens, and secret ingredients like flaxseed oil, coconut oil, unrefined sea salt, and liquid trace minerals. You whiz it up in the blender till it's thick and smooth. Very nice on sore throats.

 

I got the outline done for my next angel today. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to add color. It's hard to wait!

Sick day

Posted by Melissa

I'm not sick. Well, not very, but other people in my family are pretty miserable with a nasty cold that has been making the rounds. I took the day off from drawing angels to concoct healing potions.

This chicken soup, made with a good, long-simmered stock, is hitting the spot.

Quiet

Posted by Melissa

I didn't mean to post today. I meant to take a dreamy walk in the woods, and I did. It was beautifully quiet, a deep well of silence with small sounds delicately treading the surface--a trilling bird, the tiny crunch of rocks beneath my bare feet, a squirrel scurrying up a tree. The woods are green with only a few small blossoms, but the blossoms were sweet and I wanted to take their pictures, so I went back with a camera. It was the same path but a different walk. I heard a mower, another machine that sounded like a great big vacuum cleaner, children yelling.

"Oh no, the pictures will be ruined" I thought, as if all the noise would blow away the tiny flowers. What really happened was my lousy camera skills couldn't capture what I saw, but here they are anyway.

Have a lovely weekend, and check back Monday for another little angel!

Angel number seven

Posted by Melissa

She is brushing an ant off a peony bud. (Why do ants like peonies so much?)  She is in her choir robe and is hurrying back to choir practice, but I think she should watch where she's going. She's a little too taken up with her flowers to be quite safe flying.

 

 These peach flowers remind me of another peach flower I once met. When I was in third or fourth grade in Maryland, my class took a field trip to that lovely city, Annapolis. We were walking along a shady brick sidewalk, when I saw leaning over a fence (was it a cast iron fence?) a peach rose. In its setting of red brick and well-tended green it was astoundingly beautiful. I had never seen a rose that color. "Look at that," I burst out to the girl beside me. She was embarrassed, slightly angry, and she said, "Don't be so enthusiastic. It's just a rose." I felt shaken, jarred into a duller, dimmer place. I learned a lesson about being openly enthusiastic over beauty. Maybe I had already learned that lesson, but I forgot it when that peach rose took me off guard.

And they remind me of something else. In fifth grade, near the end of the school year we had a school outing to a local city park. Near the entrance was a mature border of peonies in full bloom. Once again I was astounded. "What are these?" I asked. My teacher said "Oh, they're peenies." She was a kindly Mennonite lady who wore homemade dresses and a white mesh cap on the back of her head. I don't know when I learned that peenies are actually peonies.

Angel number six

Posted by Melissa

My childhood landscape was woods, creeks, cow pastures, cornfields and scrubby uncultivated ground, which I suppose had once been cultivated, or it would have been woods. That uncultivated ground was a treasure world of weeds, rocks, wildflowers, blackberries, poison ivy and  rare, lone wild strawberry plants with one or two tiny, soft, red, red berries. The flavor of those berries is, I truly believe, the most pleasurable flavor I have ever encountered--sweet and concentrated essence of strawberry. Surely this little angel has berries so delicious. 

The leaves in the photo are from a wild plant that I think is called false strawberry. It's a related plant, with pretty yellow blossoms and red berries that look like strawberries but are watery and surprisingly flavorless--no sweet, no sour, nothing.

One thing I love about strawberry plants is that they have on them  at the same time beautiful berries and beautiful blossoms.

Angel number five

Posted by Melissa 

The fragrance, the grace, the delicate colors of many garden flowers suggest beauty beyond this earth. Growing out of the earth, roses, lilies of the valley, peonies, sweet peas point to something beyond this earth, beyond our imagination. Geraniums don't do that. They typify wholesome, old-fashioned, completely grounded domesticity. They don't have divine fragrance, but they smell clean and fresh, like an aromatic vegetable.

This little bearer of a pink geranium is a practical, competent person. She's gifted with sunny common sense, and she is exactly the sort you want around if you're planning a garden party and you need help getting organized and cleaning up a few messes. Of course, that doesn't stop her from wearing pretty clothes. Why not? She's the kind of person who can get the job done while staying fresh, cool and clean.