stephanie lee - Semiprecious Salvage

Mama birds at The Art Nest

What an amazing day today was! Not just because I got to teach 21 incredibly talented and brave women and not just because they all did wonderful work. But also because I came here prepared to do a "job" and I'm being nourished in so many ways - more than I ever imagined. More than any old "job" could do! I'm reminded that there are beautiful women who radiate with the joy of life, with sincere enthusiasm, who are always open to learning. I saw no egos standing in the way of effort today. Not one speck. What a delight.

I must say, Julie and Candice have gone above and beyond. Their little touches are everywhere at this wonderful place in Park City. A little vintage letter banner hangs from the mantle of the inn's fireplace. Our name tags and little welcome packets put together and presented so thoughtfully. Sandwiches wrapped in cute little baggies with cookies to die for and pomegranate soda for lunch! I could live like this. I could live with two kind and thoughtful mama birdies keeping me fat and sassy. Yes. This will do just fine thankyouverymuch.

Today I taught Junk Drawer Metalsmithing to all the ladies (we're all together in this wonderful old restored school-house-turned-inn at the top of the hill within walking distance to the art center where class is held and to all things cool in Park City). The student work was amazing and I was blown away by the many who had never even touched a torch before become old hats at it by the end of the day. Can you say "perseverance?" My goodness!! And just look at this room where we held our show and tell!! Look at those beautiful trees!!

Tomorrow I get to be a student. I've LONGED to be one for a while. Missing that place. And tomorrow...I get to learn from the talented and beautiful Carla. And the next day from Alma. She had some goodies out on her bed tonight in our spacious and ridiculously comfortable room we three are sharing and Carla and I kept oohing and aahing and handling and fondling her fabric creations. I don't even know how to describe them so I won't, Just know that I am giddy with excitement! Giddy, i tell you. Feels sooooo good to be giddy. It seems like it's been a while.....

I visited with my dad and his lovely wife for the evening and morning before I came up here. I have family close and Park City is just an hour up the canyon from dad's house. The very canyon that I could see the mouth of when playing in the backyard as a kid. The very canyon flanked by the imposing and beautiful mountains I stared out the sliding glass door at...on Sunday afternoons, after Sunday dinner, still in my Sunday dress. Big brother and I would roll off our dining chairs into the neighboring living room and lie flat on our backs staring at the mountains (dad snoozing in his chair, of course) while listening to stories on tapes dad put on every Sunday at dinner. I got to drive straight through those mountains yesterday and it occurred to me that it was the first time in my life that I, as a driver, traveled that road and the only time I've ever done it alone. I've been up once as an adult with my little family (and many times as a kid) and how strange it was to notice that all my energy shifted into childhood mode. It didn't make sense for a while...and then I remembered that i've only known these mountains as a child. Really known them...in a way that is in my bones that I don't even think about when I'm not seeing them. Strange. Fun, but strange. These grand Rockies can do that to a girl.

Here are the lovely Alma and Carla in front of the Inn. See that lamp up top? That's our room. With my cot tucked in the dormer facing south east and the quaking aspen outside my window. I awoke to it's quivering int he morning breeze...the breeze that came right through the open window and across my face. The aspens that sit in my bones like the mountains.

More tomorrow.....

Homeland

I've been savoring these past two weeks. Resting a bit after the Farm Chicks show (which was intense in preparation, I tell you!) and doing a few things I've been wanting....longing to do. Gardening mostly. The smell of dirt and water and the sun on my back...an abundance of feathered friends conducting my work from above. It's been delicious. I have our veggies in. A VERY small crop for us this year. I remembered that I'd rather have a small well-tended garden than a large neglected one. Still, we will have an abundance of delectable edibles come harvest time. I'm MOST looking forward to the heirloom tomatoes!! YUM!!

Our pile of uprooted, potted plants tenderly lifted and moved for transplanting here is getting smaller and smaller. More and more are in the ground now, where they can set deep roots and gift me with their many attributes...not a one, of which, I will not be in utter awe over. Have you ever seen a pure white baby leaf like that of the Nakashima Willow? Have you ever been slowed on your journey to rub your hand up and around the stem of the rosemary to then lift it to your nose and breath in the heaven? Have you ever been guided down a dark path at night by the white rimmed leaf of a hosta? Have you ever thinned your sunflower seedlings (when just a few inches tall) and munched on the pickings as you go? Have you ever needed a gift for a friend and found none better than the blooms in your yard, the fronds of the ferns, the nubs of green blueberries, with a few sprigs of mint and lavender tucked in? THIS is my heaven and I feel most at home among my phytofriends...with my girlies nearby singing and playing and digging with me. Heaven...and I can't wait to get back....I'm leaving for a week to my "homeland"...or rather, place of origin as this state I'm in feels more like home than the one I'm going to. I will get to see my family and visit for a bit. Always a treat. Sometimes I lament that I moved so far from my folks (all of them :) ) and then remember that there are those whose parents are on the opposite coast, or another country, or no longer on the planet at all...and I am grateful that in 13 hours of driving I could be with mine. I am grateful and i can't wait to share pictures with you! I also can't wait to join my friends and fellow artists for three wonderful days at The Art Nest in Park City, Utah. It will be grand, I'm certain. How can it not be with all the care and attention Julie and Candice have given already!?!

See you when I get back!

Add one to the pile

For years I've been fascinated by cairns. Ever since I was 13 and, with a gaggle of cousins, ventured out in the blue-black, pre-dawn light to the top of King Mountain for a sunrise witnessing. A radio tower stands tall and a few pines, but mostly it's open and you can see the sky from ankle to ankle and the valleys below and all around. Somewhere along the way - years back - someone stacked a cairn....and didn't stop. Rumor was amongst us cousins that it was a hermit who lived in hiding somewhere up there.

Years later I became aware of Andy Goldsworthy (before I knew anything about "art") and felt so strongly pulled by the beauty of his work that it burned an imprint in my mind I have no desire to heal. It's there for good. His cairns - shaped like giant eggs - are built mostly of stone or ice in areas of low tide, where the rising tide, as it ebbs and flows, washes away the sandy foundation from underneath the massive construct causing it to collapse over the course of the tide changes. Intentionally. Photographs are taken through it all so people like me can see the art evolve and morph and eventually "decay" in a way. It's achingly beautiful and the vision this man has...well, leaves me speechless.

King Mountain and Goldsworthy have both left a little rock dust in my mind and I have had visions every since of cairns dotting my landscape. I've made my own small cairns here and there. At rivers, mostly, where the rocks are abundant without stepping more than once in any direction. (These inspirations blend beautifully with my love of Scotland and the fact, of which I was unaware for many years, that cairns are a Scottish/Gaelic tradition. Marking many things - graves, passages, points of importance, symbols of landmarks in a human's life.) In other traditions, the cairn is meant to be added to by those who come later. "I'll put a stone on your cairn", says the Scottish blessing - an act to acknowledge the passage of a person - the respect for the path they have walked. Imagine, if we all set a stone and everyone who passed (including we who pass others') placed a stone of respect on top. Imaging the towers that would silhouette the skyline!

Our new property is rich with stones...no matter how much I grumble about this fact, they do not raise themselves to the surface of the soil and roll away. Nope. They are too jagged and stubborn. Vinnytheman made concentric paths on the lawn mower around the fields while I picked up large stones and moved them out of the way. Stacking them seemed like the best idea. Before I knew it I had created a cairn - though pathetically humble compared to the work of Goldsworthy - I was still proud. A marking of a new beginning here perhaps? An act of meditation, in a way...walking slowly, looking intently for stones. Lifting walking stacking lifting walking stacking lifting walking stacking.

I've fallen in love with this one I've built and intend to add more to it, and to build it companions elsewhere on the land. And while I wander the hill, I'm never alone. Sadiethewonder dog is always in tow...along with Oak, the Mighty Oak (kitty boy) not far behind. If you remember, I've complained a few times about Sadie's mysterious fear of the camera. I point it at her and her whole energy shifts. Her eyes look suspicious, she lowers her head...this if she can't just run away. This is the best picture of her by far to date. Yay! I'll sit here a while and pet her head and the go swing for a bit.

Funny Momma

I just have to share this. Maybe it's so funny to me because my momma is so funny to me. Maybe it's a kind of "you have to be there" thing, but here it is anyway.

Picture this: a woman who is fully deaf in one ear and half deaf in the other who uses that to her advantage (for a laugh many times. "WHAT?!?! I can't hear you! I'm deaf, you know!" shouted as if I'M the deaf one.) This same woman and her dear husband put on "comedy routines" where she, in her best Barbara Streisand dialect, belts out show tunes and monologues for anyone who will audience.

So, I'm on the phone with this woman, my momma, just now and chatting with her about this and that when the children there start plunking the piano. She tells me to "hang on" and then shouts to the kids "Can you please take the piano in the other room?! I'm on the phone and can't hear!"

She makes me laugh SO hard. I adore her!

Heart Tickles

I get heart-tickles easily. You know the feeling...that butterflies-in-your-chest feeling that causes you to catch your breath from something wonderfully smacking you upside the head to pay attention and see how wonderful life is. That kind. This weekend was full of them. (I get them Monday thru Friday on along about quitting time for Vinnie...when I hear that truck rumbling up the gravel road....my man is home.) So here is a little peak into what has brought me this feeling lately.....

Biggest sister making time to take little sisters on horse rides. Little sisters who ache to be with/like biggest sister and to have their very own horses. (how did that one on the right get so tall? I birthed her just the other year!!)

In the midst of a big party expecting to see my girls in the thick of the crowd playing horseshoes or dancing and instead finding them at the bottom of an almost-dry pond catching teeny-tiny frogs in water bottles with the gentlest of care. How they begged to bring them home!

Fuzzy soft horse antennae.

Lily pads and lotus blossoms ready to burst open, daisies in fields and barns backlit by the setting sun. Seeing my shadow disproportionately tall and laughing at myself when I realized I liked the shadow better than the mirror at home. :)

I'm leaving for The Art Nest in a week and have listed a few items in my etsy shop (finally.....along with a fresh batch of my book) which will come with me to the retreat if they are still lingering in etsy land by then. I hope you find something in there that brings you heart tickles...Here's a peek:

There's much more I want to share...so much more. Another day.

Farm Chicks Report

    An entire decade has gone by these past few weeks. I've mustered up enough doings to fill every one of those ten years and maybe then some.

I'm delayed in reporting to you all how the big show went. I must first thank you all for your well wishes and enthusiastic cheers. Not a single on went unnoticed or unappreciated. I could fill an hour with stories from the show, but I will condense it as best as I can. :)

As wonderful as the show was, the best part was the trip. The actual driving in the car with the world's best traveling companion, Vinnietheman. My goodness, the skies were amazing the whole way both going and coming. It was a full 10 hours of driving to get to Spokane, WA and I found that I did very little reading (or working on jewelry) in the car. I found that I MUCH more enjoyed seeing the misty, grey world whizz by. We spend our life savings and ache for foreign lands and just LOOK at the beauty out our own back doors!!

I've been through the Columbia Gorge a few times and all in the dead of night. Not a tree could be seen, let alone the breathtaking series of waterfalls along the old highway route.  I was excited to see the gorge 1) in the daytime and 2) with my manlyman who is a kid at heart when his feet hit a trail and when on a road trip. It was more beautiful than I imagined! How DID I live here this long and NOT see the gorge?!!?  The labradorite waters flashed in the light. We hiked up Multnomah Falls trail and got soaked from the rain and the sideways mist. Delicious. (I regret to say that I haven't found those pictures yet - or the ones of my full booth - but will share them when I do. This is what happens when you get two new computers in a month's time and have to readjust you're whole system of storing photos.)

The dark, wet skies lifted just past The Dalles and so did the lusciousness. The land from there on out was rolling desert/agricultural land and I could see the wide, wide sky form shoulder to shoulder. The wild lupines and scotch broom in full glory. It was so beautiful in a different way than the gorge...and how odd it was to feel like we were in a different state all together in a matter of minutes! This spring, in spite of it's odd and indecisive weather, has made for some spectacular skies (yes, I've mentioned it before and will likely again...I just can't help it. I'm enamored!!) I noticed every puffy cloud, felt them tickle the top of the truck, I swear! We drove past these silos and I found myself walking under vine-covered arbors and rearranging furniture in my mind. I could live in one just like this and happily ever after at that. You see that tippy top peak to the left? That would be my studio...or reading room. Somewhere I would hang out a LOT! :)

The Farm Chicks show was one intense, full day of set up and two long days of selling. I had a fantastic time and SO enjoyed getting to celebrate Liz's birthday with her (and dear Anne who helped Liz the whole weekend). I will say i've never seen so many aprons or cowgirl froo-froo in one place in my entire life! What a hoot! I took ten door paintings and brought quite a few less home with me. :) One of my favorites went home with Liz (you see that twirling girl in the corner?) (and I was lucky enough to become the proud owner of one of her darling pilows!) Another painting (not pictured yet) went home with a lovely girl who came back the next day to tell me how much she loves it...and how she'd stayed up late into the night to rearrange her whole house to give it a place of honor. THAT was a highlight, for sure.

I also took quite a bit of jewelry with me and will be taking what's left (along with some new pieces I'm conjuring up) with me to The Art Nest in just a couple of weeks. I will share a few pieces with you on my etsy site in the coming days.

Back to the road....  on a long trip home where we'd looped from here through Boise, down through Utah to see family, back through Las Vegas (which I would be fine if I never saw again - I spent a lot of time there as a teen and don't miss it one speck) up and over Lake Tahoe and through Mt. Shasta to home again....we listened to an audio book accounting of the first transcontinental automobile trip from San Fransisco to New York. No auto-makers as sponsers, no promises of prize money - just a man, his mechanic and a dog - venturing out and planting a seed in many of us from which fruits the hunger for the open road. No airplane trip can compare and I've fallen in love, more and more, with that point where the rubber meets the road. I have songs associated with certain trips. Whenever I listen to Tori Amos's "The Beekeeper" album, I will always remember that hot day across Death Valley and then cooling off that night to the rain at the top of Lake Tahoe. The trip this time to Spokane with my man (and the rainbows that traveled with us from Portland to Eugene) will always be associate with Jason Mraz's new album ("We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things"). Watching him sing this song makes me smile. This song in particular shook my bones - like it was what I needed to hear.

Again, thank you all for your support and encouragement. I treasure it. Good night for now.....  

If you could only see

If you were a fly on the wall here, here's what you'd see:

a living room (and, gasp, a deck) overrun with goods and wares for the Farm Chicks Show this weekend.

clouds putting on a daily springtime show and blustery grey-blue skies arm wrestling the sun for first violin.

a most amazing and supportive man holding the line for me at this crazy time.....and polishing jewelry, sanding doors, hanging picture wires, doing the dishes, feeding the kids...the list goes on. My heart might explode.

a freshly cleaned dog with a spanking new summer hair cut. (The girls love it....I think it looks dorky.)

the glistening eyes of a proud mama watching her youngest graduate from High School last night. (I, as the step-mom, have had it easy. Sheri - the mama - has done all the hard work of parenting....for which I am grateful.)

me talking on the phone with a dear friend who I feel is the only person in the whole world who knows EXACTLY how I feel these days....calling to see if I'm still breathing. Thank you thank you thank you.

new friendships letting themselves in. I'm open!

me full-as-a-tick grateful that I feel like smiling. I'm more capable than I thought. :)

I and my knight will be leaving at the buttcrack of dawn in the morning for Spokane where we will spend a few days selling my goods and casting understanding and sympathetic glances to Liz through the sides of our neighboring booths. If you find yourself our way, you MUST check out her awesome pillows!! They ain't your grandmother's patchwork, that's for sure. LOVE 'EM!! I'm sure I will have pictures and story aplenty when I return (if I can stand to post with this icky new format. The pictures and text get all jumbled up!!). Until then, enjoy this and this and this and this (for you Tonia...though I may have the countries mixed up) :).......

Dinner with the Lees

We said goodbye to an old friend this week. He has served us well for many years now (even after his cousin, who was even older, served us for years before him) and his time with us will always be in our hearts. If you are like me, you attach a bit of emotion to inanimate objects - especially appliances in their many forms. I actually imagine the worn out and old machines learning of their replacements coming in...imagine them feeling a little sad, washed up, unloved. I make sure I thank them. Out loud. The girls think I'm weird....that is, if they aren't right along with me saying goodbye to "the cute little guy". Vince brought home the new Miele and I actually told him to keep it out of sight until I could put this little guy back in the closet (only half-kidding). He (the vacuum, not Vince) has been the best vacuum ever going in places no regular upright could go. But the little turquoise and scratched-up chrome guy could just hold on no longer. His wheel was broken, the cord wouldn't retract, he'd been built and rebuilt a number of times, he was loud. Honestly, he sucked.......get it?

The sun came out a bit today for the first time in a while. It's been so rainy and early-spring like weather here lately (thunderstorms are blowing at the present moment). I'm grateful for it. It gives me a little more time before it's too late to put the garden in. It keeps me in the house workingworkingworking when I'm ACHING to go out and dig in the dirt. I was able to get a proposal off to Artfest. I only submitted one this time but it is a workshop I'm so passionate about that I just couldn't NOT give it a try. If it's accepted, it's time for it. If not.....well, it's not. I wasn't accepted last year (snif snif) and I was certainly disappointed. It's one of my all time favorite venues. All time!

Vince and I went to a neighboring town yesterday to run some errands (he drove our little metal sunshine while I, dare I admit, wrapped wire on necklaces in the car!! I love love love hanging out with him - he makes me laugh trying to steal kisses in stores while glancing around for cameras. I swear, one of these days we'll get picked up just for looking suspicious! Bring it on!!!). On the way home the sky reached down my throat and yanked the breath right out of me. So much sky! Filled with flamboyantly puffy beauty! I stared and stared....and then remembered that I had the camera. I felt so small. So small in the best way ever. That kind of way that says, "There you are. I see you. You are just the right size to be warmed by a sunbeam. Just the right size to be able to stand under all this grandeur and take it in. Just the right size to feel the hugeness of this massive and compassionate universe. Just the right size to hold all the blessings I can hand over to you and then some. See how much you hold in your smallness? It's the biggest smallness ever." Mmmm....I'll take that thankyouverymuch.

After such an afternoon, preparing dinner was a pleasure. Dinner at the Lee home looks like this. Darn near every danged night:

Pleasantries and "please pass..." for the first little while. Then I, in my forgetfulness, ask someone how their day was. (I forget about what can this opens...)  Melissa starts to tell a story from the day. She, in her pre-teen-dom says "Um" and "like" more than any other words. We struggle to listen as it takes EONS for the whole story to emerge (IF it will ever come out). Inevitably, either Vince or I will rib her a little mid-sentence about her vocabulary. She laughs at herself well, which only makes "Um" and "like" more prevalent. Then Vince, eating salad and steamed chard will say something to me with MOST of the bite chewed and down leaving only a few bits on his teeth which totally distract me from Melis's story and make me laugh. Then he realizes what I'm laughing at and smiles a big, toothy grin...which, yes, makes me laugh more. Melissa sees what I see and laughs too and then maybe snorts a little which gets me laughing harder. Then Vince goes on making faces, which, you guessed it, makes it worse. Then Annabelle sees tears rolling down my face and me gasping for air and laughs. She then can't breath which makes Vince laugh which shows his food more which makes Melis laugh. I'm to the point of no breathing. Tears are running down my face. Not a sound is coming from my body - just the violent, heaving shakes of my laughter (both my girls have inherited this trait and the three of us are in a pickle by this time.) Ages later, I finally gasp for air in a shrieking, guinea pig like way which humors the rest of them at the table. A vicious cycle that is only stopped by closing the eyes, covering the ears and riding my own laughter to the edge of forever. Then, as quickly as it came, like a thunderstorm, it all blows over. "Melis, what were you saying?" Yup. Dinner with the Lees.

What makes you laugh out loud? What makes you laugh so hard you have to cross your legs and dance just to make it out the other side with some dignity? Here...try this on. This ALWAYS gets me laughing. Outloud, teary-eyed, gut busting laughing.

Practice is perfect

I find myself up in the late of the night here in the Portland area. I'm in love with the weather - especially after that heat wave we had last week. Ugh!

Class today went great (day one of three days of classes)! The women were all very open, willing and enthusiastic. I love it when that happens! :) In the early afternoon, the windows were opened. This studio with skylights and windows all around is sheltered by deliciously juicy maples and evergreens - a greenish glow is cast in the room. Between sprinkles outside, there were birds singing their most happy and cheerful loud whistling songs. It's was distracting to me in the most pleasant way. :) I think I stayed on task just fine, but one ear was always tuned into the song. It couldn't NOT be.

My mind is fading after this long day, but I wondered...as I sat here putting the finishing touches on earrings for the Farm Chicks show hunched over under the weight of the fear of over-commitment...I wonder if that "me" that used to have enough time on her hands to be bored is waiting in the wing for my return to myself? I wonder if she's still puttering in the garden for hours on end like she used to - digging holes and preparing soil and creating and eden from a barren plot? I wonder if she's thumbing through old sheet music and sitting at the piano just for fun - playing a tune from way back when? I wonder if she's baking loaves of bread by the dozen just because it feels good to - because she loves the look on her husband's face when he comes home to the smell of the baking bread and the anticipation of a hot bite?  I wonder if she's writing letters....on paper....with a pen....longhand....to her mama and making notes on magazine clippings she's saved to send her for one reason or another? I wonder a lot of things. Like will I ever be grateful enough? Enough to not feel the weight of the fear of over-commitment?

I don't decide just yet. I'm just practicing this thing called life. I practice facing each day with a vision of enthusiasm. I blow it by lunch time and the next morning I practice again. I practice loving what Im' doing and then I blow it when I resent my own "self-inflicted" schedule. But I wake up the next morning and practice again. I practice listening to the stories that are SO important for 7 year olds to tell. I blow it by the third sentence when I realize I'm only half listening and then I practice again.....asking her to please start over because I missed something and I really want to hear every detail (you know...about how some boy in class does "this" with his hands all the time and it drives her crazy and she tells him to stop and he says no and she doesn't know if he's just a "spaz" or if he's just really goofy because he pretends to fall and "does this"....imitating..."See mom? He does this...isn't he a goofball?")

Practice. It ain't so bad not being perfect when I think of this all as just recurring practice. Each time I'm a little better at it - except when I'm not...and then I know and try again next time. It doesn't all have to be perfect right NOW. Wait...maybe it is. Maybe it's not "practice makes perfect" but rather "practice IS perfect".

See you on the flip side.

Off to Portland

I'm whizzing away this morning in my chariot of fuel to the city of Roses. I will be teaching three full days at Diane's in Clackamas.  A wonderful hostess, studio and respite. Teaching there is a joy!

I'm sitting here firmly with my rump planted in the weight of regret - wishing I were connecting with you all here more...shaking my head that I'm even regretting. I know better, but here I am and I don't have time to sort it all out. The road is calling. The long, city-specked, rain-washed road. I have music a-plenty and a little Rosenburg ready for the cd player. Just me, the road, the rumble of the rig and a few cookies I'll pick up at the natural food store about an hour north of here...a must stop when heading north. I imagine I'll have lots to say to myself. Lots of time to ponder on things - to wonder what i can make when I get back home, what I will plant and where when the season of busy-ness I'm fully buried in lets up, if the girls will need therapy because of me. How is it that in the rush to make the bus, I didn't kiss and hug Annabelle? How could I have done such a thing? I will be stopping at the school, pulling her from class and righting this on my way out of town. I can't not.

I thumbed to this page this morning in "The Sound of Paper" by Julia Cameron:

"It is easy to focus on what we haven't got and on what we still need. It is more difficult, a learned skill, to focus on what has come into place, how far we have already traveled on the road we are siiing to follow. FOr many of us, the words "I hope" have a certain desperation about the, as if we are saying, "I hope against hope," but our prayers are answered. Our dreams are fulfilled. Our needs are met. There is a benevolent Something that leans toward us, mentoring and sheltering our dreams, but we must be willing to see this help, willing to acknowlege it, willing to count our blessings and not discount them as they come to us."

Yes. I'm breathing that in - wanting to hold that thought while I'm with myself for the next few hours - undistracted by phone, computer, my to-do list(s).

I've been quieting my mind at bedtime with "Travels with Charley", a journey accounting by John Steinbeck. I'm loving it. Every. word. His road trip across America takes place in the early sixties and in one chapter he recounts the diners along the way - in the high of plastic and sterilization and sanitation and food being prepared with safety over flavor in mind. He's not impressed with this obsession of sanitization and says:

"I remember and old Arab in North Africa, a man whose hands had never felt water. He gave me mint tea in a glass so coated with use that it was opaque, but he handed me companionship, and the tea was wonderful because of it. And without any protection, my teeth didn't fall out, nor did running sores develop. I began to formulate a new law descrbing the relationship of protection to despondency. A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ."

So, while I'm away, I'll breath in the smell of dirt, let the rain fall on my hair-do and laugh with good friends until my stomach hurts. In the meantime, I'd love to show you what I've been working on and what spring looks like around here. I could die happy in a mint patch or a dogwood grove....but not yet. I have a lot to do. As mama says, "Mortality is NOT for sissies!"



















a bird we rescued from the cat. He hung out on the porch railing for a bit to say thank you.