iWonder

drizzle

a mist so fine

you don't need an umbrella

but still enough collects

to drip over the edges...

Mother's Day Flowers

For all of my 56 years, Mother's Day has been a big deal.  For some of those years, I was the center of attention, because I was the firstborn, the first grandchild, the first niece, 

and later because I was a mom.

But mostly Mother's Day was about my Moms, my Grandmothers and Mothers-in-law (yes, two moms and married more than once).

 

Mom loved flowers. Fresh cut was more her thing. She didn't have great luck growing them, but had a great appreciation for the beauty, color, fragrance and what they symbolized. She had favorites: lilacs, lily of the valley, roses. We visited a memorial garden near her home many times. It sat on several acres and took hours to wander through. Always a great day together...

Karen is my extra mom.  Married to my dad for more than 35 years now. She loves nature: the undisturbed wildflowers in an open prairie, the discreet blooms along a wooded trail. And, while it's NOT a flower, I know without a doubt when to start hunting for morel mushrooms, because it has been a long time tradition for Karen to spend Mother's Day gathering mushrooms on her family's farm land.

Grandma Inez had a beautiful backyard garden flanked by lilacs: white, lavender and dark purple. And, I still have a hoya plant started from a cutting from hers. It was always there, in their house, from my earliest memories. If I assume she had been growing that hoya for some years before I was born, the plant I have is easily more than 60 years old. That amazes me...

Grandma Anne didn't have flower gardens or indoor plants that I remember. But she always smelled like a flower. She was a strikingly beautiful, well dressed woman. She was also a talented baker, and I especially remember the rosettes she made at Christmas time that were covered with powdered sugar. Like edible flowers...

Esther, my first in-law, had outrageous flower gardens that attracted all species of birds, butterflies, bees, dragonflies... Her love for gardening rubbed off on me. I was so shy back then, filled with so many questions that I was afraid to ask. But I watched and learned...

And Kathleen, my last in-law, was like a master gardener. She grew beautiful outdoor gardens, exotic indoor plants, orchids, and african violets. We were always sharing cuttings and surprising each other with new plants. The last summer at their cabin, she and I traveled into town to buy annuals for her garden. She scooted around with her walker at the greenhouse to pick out each plant. Back at the cabin, I pulled up a lawn chair for her to sit while I planted her garden exactly the way she wanted it. She talked about that garden often at the nursing home where she landed a few weeks later after breaking her hip. Before we sold the family cabin, I moved many of her perennials to my garden.

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

So, while running errands on Saturday, I decided to pick up African Violets for Mother's Day - for me, and to honor the memory of all my Moms, most who are no longer here.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Happy Mother's Day                                                                                                                                                                            

May your day be filled with all your best mom memories...

Thursday was a Good Day

I listened to the entire Minnesota House hearing and vote on Same Sex Marriage on Thursday.                                                                                                                                                                                                                               And, I cried when the House votes were counted in favor of the Freedom to Marry. Not just because this affects my own family and friends. But also because it feels like I might be witnessing an important shift in collective thinking about how we define what's fair.  That maybe the narrow beliefs of one set of people isn't the only criteria used to decide what's fair for everyone.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Monday the Minnesota Senate will debate and vote. Predictions are that it will easily pass in the senate and that Governor Dayton might be signing the Freedom to Marry legislation into law as soon as next Tuesday.                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Monday could be another good day.                                                                                                                                                           

Tuesday could be an excellent day...

when the question becomes quality of life...

Grady, our rescue dog.  

He's almost 15. Pretty old in dog years. But we had a bichon that lived to 19, so not that old really in our family. He had a tough winter - it was just too long, too cold, too much - and now he's had an especially tough month. I know this drill. The vet and I are meeting way too often and our conversation has shifted to "quality of life" - the same conversation we had about Jake Bichon in his final months. We are taking a careful approach, one thing at a time. This week he had a lump removed from his ear and some dental work done to rule that out as a reason he isn't eating. In the past, he would have bounced back from the dental in 24 hours. But not this time. So, we're down to our last couple of tricks in the bag - to see if they might make a difference.  

 For the moment, this draws everything inward for me. I'm not wandering far from my living room, and he's making sure he can always see me.  So we'll see how it goes - today, this weekend, next week. That's all the further I can imagine right now.  

that's ok...

squares, circles and grids

circles squared. 

square circles.

square peg with a round hole.

and there's that grid formation again.

still gravitating toward orderly designs - simplicity,

which says a lot about how it is right now.

and now, so many possibilities for what might come next...

how we communicate

Tinfoil Man

I've been working on the People of the Street cloth again. In January I had made a goal to work on one block each month. Hah! Funny how that goes... But seriously, I have been working on Tinfoil Man, mainly because he sits in the center of this five foot square cloth, so he's the hardest to get to. 

Something I've learned from this cloth is that I work better focusing on one character at a time. Each story is so distinct, I find myself in an immersion thinking about their story and looking for symbolism that complements that story. With Tinfoil Man, his story is really about how we communicate - with ourselves, with each other, with our surroundings and with our higher power. And, that communication can involve all of our known senses, but also might involve paths we don't yet understand. I like thinking about the possibility that we earthbound humans really don't have the answers to everything, and that the questions we haven't yet asked might be pondered in the most unlikely places.

 

There's more yet to do with Tinfoil Man, but I'll let that block rest and move on to another. Four done (sort of) and five to go.

More about the People of the Street cloth and Tinfoil Man's story can be found here...

 

A Day in March

We drive 3 hours nearly every weekend - leave the city where we rent, to be at the lake. We call it "the cabin", but really it's our home. It's a compact house with lots of space outside. We each have a shed. Mine used to be a fish cleaning house and holds my garden stuff, the rock tumbler and saw, messy stuff. His shed is fancier. He keeps big stuff in there. He also has a giant attached garage. I've claimed the basement for my cloth and art stuff.  Kind of a silent negotiation of space, understood and respected.

When we stay in the city for the weekend, we can have a hard time coming up with things to do, which is weird because who couldn't find things to do in Minneapolis? But here, our days flow. There's an abundance of things to do, and our days are really effortless.  We each have our space and our "stuff" and throughout the day we pass through common space without really ever being together. But we ARE together.

And so, what happens in a day up here?

We drink tea while the day decides how it will be. Saturday decided to start out foggy and still.

We drove into town for breakfast at the Shoreliner. A special treat when we don't have a stocked fridge. 

The sun finally poked through in the early afternoon and burned off the fog.

The dogs both got baths in the deep laundry tub. It makes them feel sassy. 

 He made a trip to Fleet Farm in Fergus Falls to get some stuff.

Louie did some snow mountain climbing. Grady mostly stayed in one place. His almost 15 years have really shown up this winter. We used to keep a shock collar on him so he wouldn't wander off the property. It's easy to keep track of him now. 
The  "People of the Street" cloth continued. Tinfoil Man (in the center) has come a long way... And he was busy designing, measuring, cutting, soldering the stuff he bought at Fleet Farm...making a place keeper, a holder, a house hanger for Purple Martins.  It will go by the garden. I guess they like open spaces and people.

And the day ended with a quiet dinner, at the table in the front porch, overlooking the lake that is still frozen, with a sunset that is predictably stunning.

a typically good day...

renewal...

This will be a quiet weekend for us. Up north at the lake, where last year the ice went out early, and this year -  today -  you can still drive on it if you dare. We haven't been here for a few weeks.  Being here is always good -  

for resetting and renewing ourselves...

I brought these eggs out, just for the weekend - in keeping with the intention of renewal at Easter. Eggs can symbolize renewal - of life, of family, of new traditions, of new ways...

I painted these twenty or so years ago when I had broken my foot, then got a blood clot in my calf, and was pretty much immobile for several weeks. It was a rare opportunity to do something by myself, wrapped up in my own thoughts, excused from parenting and wife-ing and working. I did a lot of long overdue thinking and reflection. A few months later, I filed for divorce.

Personal renewal...

This egg is also part of my collection. Fifteen or so years ago, Mom made this from her mom's old broken jewelry. There were a few of us that got together for a day of making things - bead things. She decided she wanted to make a "faberge egg".  I remember watching her use pliers to break apart bracelets, earrings and necklaces, then gluing the pieces on a wooden egg she had painted. I remember thinking it was such a bold thing to do, breaking up "heirloom keepsakes".  

But, re-purposing can be a kind of renewal -

renewal of purpose...

And, in that same general time, I remember hosting Easter dinner in my new home - a home I bought myself. I was single, and happy and in charge of myself.  Like my Mom.  And coincidently, Mom had finally sold her home in a tiny farm town in Minnesota. She had moved to the city a year earlier, so it was quite the time for celebrating good things. She brought each of us a ceramic egg that day. And inside each egg was a gift of money, from the sale of her home. So unexpected and so heartfelt. Her celebration was our celebration.

A celebration of change, new beginnings, new ways -

renewal of family...

And now, today, remembering all of this, and wondering how renewal will present itself next...

Nice ice

Last evening this was just pooled water at the curb.

And this morning, amazing ice art.  

It will be water again by noon...

what is white?

Thinking about the color white,

and wondering what white is:

Is it the absence of all colors or the presence of all colors?

I poked around the web to see what the experts had to say on the subject, and the answer seems to be

"it depends"...

It depends on whether you are speaking about the color white in the context of light, pigment or optics. For my purposes, I just like that there are no wrong answers...