Meet Hampton

Hampton is a practical, down-to-earth, tenacious bird of deep but usually unspoken feeling. He repairs and sells vacuum cleaners for a living, and his hobby is gathering and organizing complete collections of things such as porcelain tooth-pick holders from every state and match-boxes with pictures of the presidents. What he starts, he finishes. He does not easily fall in love.

Meet Loula the bluebird

I've had this little lady on my mind for awhile, and this evening I took a stab at designing her character. I think she needs a fancier hat.

She is a music teacher, cultured and kind, but too busy for love. The bluebird Hampton, owner of the vacuum cleaner repair shop, is determined to win her hand in marriage. I'll do a picture of him soon.

Some pictures by Ota Janecek

I'm out of the habit of writing blog posts, which means that I think about it a lot, but don't let myself get any actual ideas. Instead, I start making up rules about what I can write about. (It has to be outwardly focused and of general interest, whatever that means. It can't just be about me not being able to think of anything to write about. It has to contain and relate to actual new art made by me. It has to be brilliant.)

Those rules, of course, shut it all down. So as I lay awake tonight, wondering when I will ever blog again, I decided to get up and write about how I can't think of anything to write about and share some art by somebody else.

These illustrations are by Czech artist Ota Janecek, 1919-1996. This one can be found here.



 And this one here.

And this one here.

I love the lines of the leafless trees. To me winter trees seem to have distinct personalities, benevolent and actively protective,

I intend to be back soon, pushing perfectionism and unhelpful rules to the wall.

Alicia, artist

A few days ago my five year old asked me, "When I grow up, should I be an otter or an artist?" Unfortunately, her options are fewer than she thought. 

But I sure do like her art. I like her comfort with abstract design. It was satisfying to watch her slowly drag the loaded brushes across the paper. I felt her satisfaction in the way the acrylic craft paint made smooth, opaque strokes of color without crumpling the paper.

Though the upper painting is not meant to be representational at all, the shape reminds me of cave paintings of bulls. 

Beautiful soil

I am awake very early this morning, though I would like to have slept in. I have heard this early time called "the gray dawn." The air through my kitchen window is cool and clean, and I hear birds chirping, fluting, whistling. This spring I have often felt that I would like to gather bird songs into bouquets like wildflowers on long stems.

My husband does not have to go to work today, and I have great expectations for getting things done in the garden--putting up trellises for my cucumbers and pole beans, laying in a long bed for sunflowers (I use a no till method that involves killing grass with a layer of cardboard and covering it with soil, old horse manure, dead leaves, and any other good stuff I can scrounge up.) There's no other way I'd rather spend  a day. I'm happily obsessed. I am like Uzziah, ancient king of Judah, who, the Bible says, "loved the soil."

I grew up in a gardening family. We never bought fruits or vegetables in the grocery store, but grew them and preserved them in the summer, to eat every day all year round. I didn't like garden work as a kid. I certainly didn't love soil. I hated our compost pile. But I did love things the garden grew. I marveled at the unexpectedly beautiful cabbage plants that opened like giant green roses. I was amazed by the incidental, throw-away beauty of starry potato blossoms.  I rejoiced in Sugar Baby watermelons with my brothers and sisters, eating slice after red slice till my stomach stretched tight. I gorged messily on really ripe peaches. The fuzz on their blushing golden skin was a slight irritant to my own skin, but the dryness and roughness accentuated their yielding, drippy sweetness. I thought of our Mackintosh apples as gifts from God. No human could devise such simultaneous crispness and juiciness or the sweet-tart, winey flavor. (I had never tasted wine, but I felt they must taste like wine.)

Now, with a garden of my (and children of my own to feed), I love all kinds of garden work and I love soil at least as much as what I can grow in it. I love its damp smell and the first moist then dusty feeling of it on my hands and under my feet. I love to push seeds into it, especially when it is fluffy, moist and dark like a good chocolate cake, and press it gently down on top of them. I passionately love manure (really) and the wholesome decay of compost. I love earthworms and their tunnels and the helpful bacteria and all the other underground creatures whose names I don't know. I love my new friend mycelium, the magical underground network of fungus that moves nutrients from plant to plant. We live in a beautiful, intricately designed world, and right now the underground commerce of a healthy soil seems as beautiful to me as the wheeling stars.
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UPDATE: Writing this was hard. I had to think determinedly to find words, My experience of soil is more direct and wordless than most anything else in my life. This post has been about a week and half, maybe more, in the making. My husband's day off (in the first paragraph) was quite productive. We hauled in lots of manure, made some new beds and finished off some we had already started. The sunflowers are up now.

Here are a few pictures of my garden.

Baby beets and parsley.

 A jungle of snap peas and tomatoes.

Wee carrot plants. My first attempt at carrots this year didn't come up at all--old seed, I think. The second attempt was scratched away by our chickens. This is my third attempt. You can't see it here but it is protected from chickens and too much heat by an arch of  wire fence covered with white tulle. I've never been good at carrots and I'm determined to make it happen for real this year.

 I'm trying to stretch the season of my beloved arugula by shading it with a thrifted lace curtain.

Nasturtium leaves. I love how they often collect a bead of water right in their center.

Can't wait for tomatoes to get ripe. 

Trying to shade the lettuce a bit. Not sure if tulle will make a significant difference.

Cilantro and onions.

Pretty beet stems.

Cilantro, dill and flowering arugula in a lovely jumble.

I have given up on making art for the summer. I'll probably just be sharing garden pictures for awhile.

Morning has broken

I went outside with a camera this dewy morning, before my children were up. I kept thinking of the Eleanor Farjeon hymn, Morning has Broken, sung here by Cat Stevens in 1976, and here by boy soprano Aled Jones.

Nature's first green

In my ideal world, mild spring weather and the transition from winter bleakness to summer lushness would take no less than nine months. Gaunt branches would remain half bare, just softened by the airy lace of filmy yellow-green leaves, apple trees would cling to their frothy blossoms, gallant daffodils would keep fresh and yellow, and starry woodland blooms would bob above the dead oak leaves for months before being overtaken by the heat-loving undergrowth. As it is, every day or two or three there is a change which brings both beauty and loss. The particular beauty of the days before will not be seen again for a year. I grieve when warmer days green the trees with a rush and hurry the flowers to cast petals and make seed.

But while I regret every decorative change of spring's progress, I would draw my garden plants to maturity by force of will if I could. I've been spending hours in my garden every day, digging, mulching, weeding, seeding, amending soil with old horse manure and dreaming of snap peas and and arugula salad. There I am a practical farmer, a sensible hobbit instead of a regretful, backward looking elf. The contrast in these feelings interests me.

While in the regretful, backward looking mode, I think  about Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay," indulging in the pretty images and the neatness of the rhymes and rhythm. In the biggest scheme of things, I don't believe this poem is altogether true, but in the spring it fits my mood.

"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."

This painting by English painter Duncan Grant, 1885-1978, is from the Tate Gallery.