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This is the full moon the other morning when I was feeding the deer and birds.  I love watching this dogwood right outside the window. It was a lovely morning and now it has turned a bit cold with the wind. Lee is outside with his watcher sorting out the wood he is determined to burn. He needs a sense of order and I need him to stay busy in the fresh air so that he sleeps through the nights.

We order meals out when we can and this chowder from Epic Catering hit the spot the other night. And yes, that is crushed ice in my Yellow Tail chardonnay….it makes it last longer.

I don’t mind this social distancing so much. Perhaps because I might have not been that social in the first place. At least not any more. We had great dinner parties on the porch but they are so much work for us now and Lee would be very confused. Good memories though and every so often I can hear them chattering away with the sound of clinking glasses when I am sitting alone on the porch with the birds and my own wine glass.

I repainted all the furniture this week and bought some plants to freshen it all up. No one is coming. It is just Lee, me, Sadie and Patches. Which is enough. Even though lately Lee is asking where “the other people” have gone.

A friend from Australia asked if that was “The Spirits Bar”. The place where we came up with the story of those who have passed and where we have them come back for another drink. The ones we miss the most are in the book with their favorite drinks. Sadly the book could be longer now.  Some day we could just be drinking with old friends that left too soon and not bother coming back to here. Just a thought, not serious. But probably a good idea of heaven.

Lee and his watcher just came in. She will keep him upstairs watching TV or going over his memory book. Funny how that is what we have now, memories of how things used to be. This isolation due to the corona virus has all of us reliving the past.

I threaded a needle this morning and am adding more stitch lines to a shirt that started out months ago with patches over spill marks. Holding the cloth in my hands and trying to find the rhythm of even stitches is so soothing. It is like drawing –  comforting, necessary.

And here are the last four days of Drawings a Day.

Wine glasses made from

the top half of wine bottles

and exotic woods.

 

My single malt glass –

a frosted sauvignon blanc

wine bottle – well used.

 

Here is where those glasses are made….so many more waiting to be finished.

 

 

It is now Springtime

brought to you by the dogwood

blooms amid birdsong.

 

A hydrangea shrub

has lovely bursts of flowers

amid bright green leaves.

 

I will go outside to pick fresh subject matter for a while to put into the drawing book.

And the challenge of making a couple of different bindings a month still goes on. I just don’t make a book without trying to shape it around an idea. I am thinking something that moves….something more than a flip book…..something more like a moving narrative across a screen. I will need to do some more thinking about that.

In the meantime my Bush Books are still waiting for me to concentrate and get all the pages cut exactly and then glued exactly and then folded exactly and then covered. I keep putting that off and am greatly relieved that I did not order twenty books of pages to do and stayed with just ten.

I try to watch television with Lee while we are stuck at home and have noticed that there are more preachers praying for us on paid for commercial time, more self help therapists, more exercise program commercials, no Viking tour or travel ads, fewer pharmaceutical ads. And absolutely no fast food restaurant ads. We are going to be in a whole new place when this ends.

We are doing conference calls with our kids and a friend, all stuck in Michigan and working from home. Sunday morning we all have coffee together. Wednesday nights we have a drink of choice together. It is sort of fun to meet up that way. Certainly would love to see them in person but not possible.

Not much else new. I am trying to get back to writing. The pads and pens wait over at the apartment, but it is not easy right now.

I can avoid going to the grocery store til the end of the month. I have a mask all ready. Lee stays in the car, I run in and put the things I have touched into the cart, bag my own groceries, load the car and wipe them down when I get home…that last part I forget to do sometimes, but need to remember to do it.

That’s it. Enough for now. Til later.

 

 

This artwork was accepted into the Waterhouse Exhibit at the South Australian Museum this past year. My goal with the work was to press home how very vulnerable Australia is to climate warming. Using the book, Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes, I cut several Eucalyptus leaves from the pages. Then colored them with the watercolors made from the soils of Australia and finally burned all the edges. I made a dust pan for them to be swept into.

When I left this beloved country last April I gave several of these leaves to friends there and then placed the rest in and among Eucalyptus leaves in some of my favorite places.

I weep for the country and all the suffering to be endured by some of the most resilient people I have ever known. If you can make a donation of any kind to those working so hard to help, please do. I chose the Country Women’s Association of New South Wales and intend to give more to other charities covering the losses of their people and wildlife.

Here at home it has been a good several days. I was thinking that Lee might become too confused with having a student here for a day of white line printmaking. I was afraid that I would have to end our sessions but instead Lee was looking forward to Kent being here and greeted him in the driveway with an offer to help him bring in supplies. I even did some of my own work while working with Kent. A good day indeed!

Also I am keeping up with the drawing a day and haiku.

I had to have this

African incised gourd from

the Smithsonian.

 

Baskets by Lee Cole

can trigger a return to

beloved Australia.

I knotted in all

my African beads and bronze

while dressing this gourd.

 

This gourd end has been

turned into a percussion

rattling instrument.

 

And the Bush Book now has two more double pages.

A bluebird, copperhead snake, box turtle and katydid.

One very big bumble bee.

More later.

Tonight I will make Lee and me some tomato-bacon soup to go with leftover quiche.

I will have some Australian wine and think of the friends there who still may not know if their homes survived.

Til later.