summertime and the livin' is easy....

I love this time of year when the green of the trees continues to deepen and the green in the grass becomes... well... yellowish brown -- at least in my yard.  These mid-summer days of sunshine, rainstorms and children selling lemonade; trips to Rita's for water ice and Merrymead Farm for ice cream and farm animals capture the spirit of the summer season for me.

Neighbors head to the shore, and streets are left with a quiet calm for a summer walk or my favorite -- a scooter ride.  I LOVE to scooter.  I always have. I'm not much for biking; it's not the same thrill.  But give me a scooter, and set me free.  Odd as it may seem, I have a collection of scooters from a lightweight narrow Razor scooter to a skateboard pivoting scooter.

But my absolute favorite is a scooter called a Slider.  I love it!  It's a challenging scooter -- a combination of a hard workout for my legs, core and upperbody and true scooter-riding pleasure.  If you can imagine it with me; it moves forward by the inward and outward motion of my leg strength which I can gratefully still muster, but bears a serious sense of the ridiculous to watch.  It's great fun, and truly hilarious!

So as I goober my way on a scooter around the neighborhood, I am filled with the elation that scootering provides for me -- wind in my hair, childlike pleasure for unfettered travel, and boundless delight in feeling young enough, strong enough and bold enough to be playful.  For me it doesn't get better than that.....

oh the holidays...

I like the holidays to be simple -- light on the decorations, bright lights in a warm house, children coming home, dogs and cats at my feet, on my lap, by my side.  Friends close and family closer.  

This year I have managed to avoid the malls and crowds, the shopping and the frenzy. Rather than engage in the tumult of the season, I have tried to enjoy the early onset of the evenings and chilly walks with the dogs.  I like Christmas when it's not about the giving or the getting, but the gathering and sharing of laughter, music, food, family, friends, fun -- no better gifts.....

I wish you the best of the holidays and may it to carry into the new year for you and your loved ones.

weather, squirrels and other delights.

Hasn't the weather and the colors and the breeze and the warm days and the cool nights and the long shadows and the orange pumpkins been a delightful change?  I like to sit on my steps in the warm sun and listen to the breeze in the trees and watch the leaves lift off their branches in a colorful ballet as they make their way to the ground.  I especially love when the wind gets itself stirred into a furious bluster making the leaves blow across the grass at breakneck speed heading for places unknown.  It's as if they are frantically searching for a place to hide now that the weather is turning cold.  The squirrels in my yard are so busy collecting and gathering the acorns and most of my bird seed.  Their boldness is making my dogs go crazy....

I was down in South Carolina recently and they have these strange squirrels there called fox squirrels.  They are so much larger than our squirrels here in the north and they have black faces with white noses and white tipped ears.  Some of them have black bodies.  I swear they look like lemurs.  Someone told me there used to be a monkey research facility near Hilton Head in South Carolina, and that a lot of the monkeys gained their freedom over time.  I wonder if those curious unfettered monkeys and some looking-for-a-date southern squirrels hooked up to create this very odd looking enormous fox squirrel.  I think that instead of hoarding acorns and bird seed in South Carolina, those squirrels could hoard coconuts ...

dynamic stillness...

It was cool today,  the sky was moody and the wind quite articulate.  The effect of the dry hot summer allowed the breeze to blow the unprepared leaves off their branches and into a stirring dance in the yard. That stirring is also affecting me...the end of summer, the beginning of fall, the end of playtime, the beginning of ... God knows what.  

Everything is preparing to shift -- summer's over, fall's not quite here; shorts don't feel the same, yet it's too soon for blue jeans and cowboy boots.;  holidays are coming but it's not time to shop.  There's an excitement of change, but a bewilderment of what that change is.

I recently learned a term called 'dynamic stillness." It means a time when there's no sign of outward activity, but there's an internal gathering of energy as preparation for what's next.  I love this expression.  It's where I am. So I'm going to sit in the stillness and expect the best .....

I’m up to so much

I’m up to so much these days, and yet it seems like I’m up to nothing at all.

With the temperature cooling and the tree shadows lengthening, I have been creatively and emotionally shifting gears. And as late summer sinks into its deepest shades of green and the vibrancy of the earlier-in-the-season foliage begins thinking about its autumn wardrobe, my mind too seeks a richer color pallet.

And with that I am focusing on art.  I think it’s funny how certain weather conditions or certain seasons seem more conducive to my working with vibrant colors of paint or fibers.

I have so many projects going that I find it hard to pick which to give my attention.  I think the warmth of the wool and fabric entices me to embroider, weave or rug hook.  Yet the desire to mix colors with paint and articulate a more “fluid” expression of myself has such an appeal.

I have a fairly large hook rug I am working on.  But it’s necessary to sit at the work table for long periods of time in concentrated effort pulling thousands of narrow pieces of colorful wool fabric through the backing…this seems to lend itself to cold weather and long nights.  So I guess I’ll wait a bit on this. 

I am an “uschooled” painter, and it takes a Herculean effort on my part to get in the “zone”.  But when i’m finally in the creative groove, I can work hours into the night experimenting and discovering the right blend of color, the proper shading or the subtle balance of the composition.  So as often as I walk into my art room to begin, I often walk back out until another time. 

Well that means the choice right now is embroidery.  It’s small, portable and extremely colorful.  I can create the feeling of spring or summer color on a fabric canvas with minimal disappointment if I’m interrupted by the phone, errands or the ever enticing call of the outdoors.

Not quite the overt artistic expression I am looking for, but for now-- it will do.