Down the Rabbit Hole

A little pile of bronze potential, the first studio work I've done in I don't know how long. Seriously, I feel a bit like Alice (the wonderland one, not my dog). I've slipped into the rabbit hole and everything is different. Life here could not be more different than night and day. For one thing, it is summer and it is green and it rains. Six years in West Texas and I got used to thinking that summer was brown and dry.

view from my perch on the back stoop 

I am finding a rythm to the day now. I've been getting up just before dawn. (This is a total surprise to me. I love to sleep late.)  But there is just something so nice about witnessing the world come to life with the new day. I sit out on my back stoop with a cup of coffee and wait for the cicadas to sing and the owls to call good night to each other.  Yes, we have owls here. I love hearing the soft voice of the owls.

There are so many distractions. When the day gets light I pad around my garden in my bare feet, feeling the dew on the grass squish between my toes. A little bit of heaven. I inspect all of my garden beds. Yesterday I found this one little tomato.  This morning I found a beet just beginning to push its red stem out of the soil. Who knows what wonders tomorrow will bring. Carrots?

Growing vegies makes me feel connected. Not just to the food we eat or even to the earth. But to my past. Some of my earliest memories are of my family's vegie gardens. We grew most of our own food. Everyone did. I didn't know until I moved away that tomatos came in tins from the supermarket. Truth.

Sweet memories of sitting on the back porch shelling peas with my grandmother. Oma was one the very best things in my childhood. I think next spring I will grow peas.

It's starting to spill over into my studio work. There are all sorts of doodles of sprouts and buds on scraps of paper. Those doodles are waiting to come to life. I'm patient. Those designs will happen when they are ready.

This beautiful necklace by Patty Lakensmith pretty much sums up my experience of the garden. You can read her inspiration for this necklace here on Love My Art Jewelry. While we're on the garden theme, you should check out the nature inspired Art Spark theme for this month. Izzy will tell you all about it here on LMAJ.

The thunder is cracking and it's starting to rain. I think I'll go out on the front porch and watch the storm roll in. It's another thing on my long list of distractions.