Just Ambling, July 11

"What, he growled, is the real reason that she was able to make those flowers? Some things take living long enough to do, I said.  I was speaking from across the line, across the cut.  It just took time, I went on to tell him, and it wasn't purposive.  It evolved, first from silhouettes, and then from handiwork and collecting shells and designing shell grottoes, and then designing her dresses, and then from drawing and painting and gardening, and from being supported in her enthusiasms by her sister and her husband, and lastly from not being able to paint, from a feeling of the world dimming, and from the energy of the natural world and the way she was supported by her friend.

The whole combination of things amounted to how Charles Bukowski defined age.  Of all the sloppy, unboundaried, drunken poets I never thought I'd have a good word to say about, he nailed it.  On the radio one day I heard him wisecrack, "Age is the sum of all we do."  That's a bit of what happens to a plant, too.  It keeps adding up unti it blooms, but even after blooming, after mid-life, so to speak, it keeps going, because it has to start withering.  Only in drying does the real fertility begin, the seedcase forming, and only then are the seeds available to be blown apart and travel and settle.  The fierce winter of dormancy is part of it all - the biennial approach to life.

The Paper Garden, Molly Peacock

June Full Moon

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game           

                                    Joni Mitchell

A full year of this blog.  I wasn't sure I'd stick with it, but here I am.  It has given a structure to this year, like a skeleton.  A year seems so short these days.  Looking back I see that the front garden peaked around the time of the summer solstice.  This year it peaked about a month ago--this is more typical I think.  Today, an unusual bit of rain after some beautiful days.

Somehow, the watercolor sketches have turned up in a new form in some little still life collages.  Something fun and playful as a balance to more serious and spare paintings.  This is an effect I definitely was not expecting from this process, but I was hoping for surprises!

May Full Moon

The career of flowers differs from ours only in inaudibleness. I feel more reverence as I grow for these mute creatures whose suspense or transport may surpass my own.                        Emily Dickinson

Fresh lettuce! Salad straight from the yard with green onions, parsley, arugala, coriander.  What could be better?  A few clear, calm days, everything freshly rained upon.  The very full moon clearly visible.  A soft fragrance in the garden in the evening.

Nearing the culmination of this year's cycle of paintings, which usually runs from September through the beginning of June.  Thinking about "What is beauty?"  Meanwhile, lots of experimentation with smaller "designs."  A feeling of experimentation in general!

April Full Moon

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

Margaret Atwood

Bright orange poppies, yellow-orange gazania, reddish-orange African daisies, pale orange small African daisies, deep orange flowers of the plant next to the front stairs that I can't remember the name of.  Then there's lavender, purple, white, pink, yellow and the deep red of the maple leaves, not to mention green.  Full spring in the front yard.

Some of the more challenging and interesting parts of this project are the watercolor sketches and snapshots which are outside my usual artistic mode of expression.  A way to practice beginner's mind.  Smelling like dirt is also outside my comfort zone--another thing to practice!

Spring Equinox

Now the rain is falling, freshly, in the intervals between sunlight,

A Pacific squall started no one knows where, drawn east as the drifts of warm air make a channel;

it moves its own way, like water or the mind,

and spills this rain passing over.  The Sierras will catch it as last snow flurries before summer, observed only by the wakened marmots at ten thousand feet,

and we will come across it again as larkspur and penstemon sprouting along a creek above Sonora Pass next August,

Robert Hass

Spring is already established, the date only makes it official.  The time has changed--lighter in the evening.  Substantial rain at last.  A relief, if only partial.  The garden is flourishing--lots of new vegetable seedlings going in: lettuce, artichoke, parsley, tomatoes.  Summer starts to appear in the mind's eye.  Plans for household projects start to push up to the surface.

Lots of work in the studio. Paintings and design ideas.  A bit difficult to slow down to the tempo of the blog, but this is it's purpose. A chance to pause a moment, look around, to see where I am.

March Full Moon

Beautiful,  mild, sunny day. Still very little rain but enough to produce many wonderful flowers--calla lillies, poppies, geranium, tulips, wallflowers, and of course, the perennial african daisies.  To eat, there's lots of arugala, mustard greens, kale and lemons.

A very outward time for me--galleries, celebrations, small commercial ventures.   A time of letting go, taking risks, not clinging, finding that lovely inner stream that flows from one thing to the next.

I have always kept ducks, he said, even as a child, and the colors of the plumage, in particular the dark green and snow white, seemed to me the only possible answers to the questions that are on my mind.               W.G. Sebald

February Full Moon

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills

When all at once I saw a crowd

A host, of golden daffodils . . .

William Wordsworth

Daffodils! Cyclamen! Primroses! Rain! 

New opportunities! 

Spring!

January Full Moon

In January
it's so nice
while slipping
on the sliding ice

to sip hot chicken soup with rice.
Sipping once
Sipping twice

sipping chicken soup with rice.

                      Maurice Sendak

No ice, not even rain, but plenty of soup: cream of broccoli, chickpea and kale, sweet and sour cabbage. Last summer we had no summer, now we have winter without winter. Hard to say what season it is—not warm, not gloomy, just cool, gorgeous, clear weather, chilly at night. Growing anxiety about no rain—such a contrast to last year. Started to water a bit, but soon may have to get serious about it.

I enjoyed the holiday socializing , now enjoying January solitude.  A slow time, working solidly in the studio.  Photographed the last series on mulberry paper—somehow surprised at how well they all came out.  Have three different composition “themes” going--focusing on one for awhile, then returning to another.

Winter Solstice

Among several tribes on the northern plains, the passage of time from one summer to the next was marked by noting a single memorable event. The sequence of such memories, recorded pictographically on a buffalo robe or spoken aloud, was called a winter count. Several winter counts might be in progress at any one time in the same tribe, each differing according to the personality of its keeper.                                                                                                                         Barry Lopez

Cold nights, beautiful clear days.  No rain -- the third-driest December on record.  The lemon and tomato trees are at their peak.

What would I choose for my winter count?  A number of events come to mind.  The death of a good friend stands out.  Other deaths and impending mortality of friends and family have colored this year.  And yet, not a sad year--just a reminder of the transitory nature of our existence.  A call to appreciate the beauty and camaraderie while it lasts.  I often have a vision of my friend up in the sky, smiling and waving to me from the beyond.

The day of solstice feels like a pause, a moment of stillness in the ongoing turning of the year.

December Full Moon

This cold winter night,

that old wooden-head Buddha  

would make a nice fire

                      Buson

 An early morning eclipse!  A small bite at 5am, by 6:00 the moon was a dusty red globe.    

I am often up at that hour but beyond going out for the newspaper, I don't experience outdoors at that hour very often.  From the deck the sound of the freeway is noticeable in our very quiet neighborhood.  I've often thought about how little I experience our yard during the dark hours since it is so rarely warm enough to sit outside comfortably.  I will try to get outside early again to watch the dawn. 

It has been very cold at night but no rain lately, just a hazy sky.  Many of the plants are confused and blooming--some roses this month, California poppies right now.  I don't feel my usual winter inwardness.  Busy with a computer project, paintings coming along.  By 3 o'clock the sun is low in the sky and I feel the evening coming on, and of course the vegetable garden is ragged and brown, otherwise could be almost any time of year.

November Full Moon

Ten thousand flowers in spring, 
the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

Wu Men 

Cold at night now but clear sunny days. Dampness and dew in the mornings. Daylight savings time has started so the afternoons close in earlier.  The vegetable garden foliage is drying up but lemons are starting to ripen. Succulents still flourishing. Lots of new bamboo in the last month.Trying to keep up with weeds and grass in the front garden. I'm going to plant tulips and iris today.

Flow in the studio.  Moving along from one collage to the next.  Working with limitations of size, color, black and white.  Letting it evolve, studying the details of line, materials, colors, and layering.

A feeling of lightness, of potential for change.  Unusual communications from people--past, distant and unknown.

October Full Moon

Spider season. Hard to walk anywhere in the yard without getting caught in a web.  Also raccoon season.  Matt chasing them off the deck in the middle of the night and battening down their hoped-for nesting places.  Unusual amount of rain this early in the season but some warm sunny days in between.  Still plenty of tomatoes and apples.  We ate the first winter squash.  Bidens goldilocks and lantana are the main show in the front garden.  Gazania doing a new round.  My favorite sunny sitting place in back is now in shade.

Settled on a painting program.  Making progress in tai chi--started a second class.  Beginning to feel some of the connections between painting and tai chi.

Feeling the fluctuations of dark and light in the weather, in my physiology, working with black and white in the paintings.

Swinging on delicate hinges

 the Autumn leaf

Almost off the stem.

Jack Kerouac

Autumn Equinox

Autumn slanting light and summer weather.  This is our Bay Area climate.  The vegetable garden is winding down.  Time to freeze tomatoes, pesto, applesauce.  Shell the dried beans.  Soon the sad day will come when I have to buy lettuce.  The peppers have been great this year.

Flowers winding down too, things starting to look overgrown.  Trying to keep the new plants going until the rain starts.

A feeling of unsettledness. Uneasy about the national and international news.  Family complications.

Getting back into the painting groove.  Aiming for "lightness".

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.

Elizabeth Lawrence

September Full Moon

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, 

of gathering together.

For nature, it is a time of sowing, 

of scattering abroad.

Edwin Way Teale

I made the first batch of applesauce.  Tomatoes are starting to pile up and we had pesto for dinner.  In the last month the caterpillars formed cocoons--a green one on a green anise stalk and a dark one on the dark red lettuce.  The bean plants are drying.  Birds in the buckthorn, squirrels wreaking havoc on the apple trees, tasting as many as possible.  The sunflowers are almost finished but the Japanese anenome, lantana and plumbago are blooming.

A feeling of not-knowing. Gratitude for all I have materially and for the relationships I have, even with their difficulties.  Not knowing the direction ahead with family, with art.  A sense of waiting.  The sun is lower in the sky, the light is different, not as clear.

August Full Moon

It's still mid-summer in the bay area but somehow autumn and turning inward is in view. Still chilly and foggy in the mornings, clearing up a bit earlier.  Tomatoes ad zucchini are kicking in.  Swallowtail caterpillars on the anise plants.  Pincushions are nearly finished, I need to take them out.  Hibiscus is almost finished.  For some reason the blackberries weren't very tasty this year--maybe too much rain?

Suddenly back in the studio--a series of small collages.  Thinking of flowers in the wilderness--beauty that no one sees and is short lived.  Art can be like this.

The feeling is of consolidation, deepening.  Not reaching out but allowing the relationships I have to deepen, unfold, blossom.  Not of effort but of letting veils drop.  Relationships with people but also with art, tai chi and nature. This somehow feels somewhat overwhelming, stressful even, though it is about letting go.

This is just to say

I have eaten

the plums 

that were in

the icebox

and which 

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

William Carlos Williams

July Full Moon

It's been a chilly, foggy week.  Earlier in the month the weather was warm and beautiful.  Many days getting the garden into shape--pulling out poppies and love-in-the mist that had gone wild. Planted the succulents from Gordon's garden.

In bloom now--purple and white potato vine, honeysuckle, succulents, plumbago, pincushion, oxalis.  I counted nearly 100 ornamentals, what a surprise!  Roses still sickly.

From Matt's garden: strawberries, mustard greens, zucchini, peas.  Blackberries getting going.

A feeling of maintenance, cultivation, rest.  Letting go of things as they are.  Working with activities that I find difficult: tai chi, gardening, attending art community events. Taking a break from painting.  Catching up on household maintenance. 

Enjoying my quiet life.

Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose 
your Original Mind.

A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.

Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;

Elegant beyond words, he chants his song night after night.

Ikkuyu

Summer Solstice

The lillies!

The stems, just as they are,

The flowers, just as they are.

  

Basho

Beautiful clear, warm day.  A sudden heat spell yesterday and today.  We were able to eat outside last night. Many birds and bees, the sound of birdsong.

Highlights from Matt's garden: peas, potatoes, boysenberries, beets.

The front garden has peaked: poppies, gazania, geranium, bidens goldilocks, angel's fishing rod, crocosimia, alstroemeria all in bloom.  Roses don't look too good.  Maybe next year I'll know the names of more of the flowers. Oxalis, love-in-a-mist, fuschia in bloom in the side and back gardens.

A feeling of completion: of a series of work  and of outreach efforts.  Finished the first level of tai chi. 

A sense of abundance, effortlessness, ease.

Intention: more focus on the garden