July Bliss

I'm a freak at coctail parties

Recently I have found it so lovely to have friends who can talk about politics, and the state of the universe. For so long I have been relegated to trying to look good and speak of little importance. Keeping everything light and being decorative is how you throw a good party. I think I like bad parties. I don't want to talk (or listen) about the Kardashians, or Bieber's police record. I don't want to blame one political party or the president. I want to discuss the things we need to know about the food supply, and healthy practices, and our rights as human beings on the same planet as each other.
I'd rather talk about God, death, and poetry, than sex scandals, car chases, and serial killers in the making.
This art is playing with Mylar Dad picked up from the dump, and with the truth about what we should know and what we are being given as news...

On Stillness and Nests

Cleaning up the gutters and the driveway with my son, we stumbled across this nest. It was actually pitched between the outdoor light fixture and the back door, so, in my zealous cleaning frame of mind, I made a decision and removed it...before noticing a small egg still inside it. I'm sorry.
No birds were harassing me. I waited in shame for a chirping reprimand and none came. I don't know if it was abandoned a while ago or recently. Perhaps I should have listened first.

I have had this feeling a bit now... I have come up north from Miami and have a limited amount of time to get a lot done... whether cleaning up the horse barn and installing a show or repairing and maintaining my rental house, I rush headlong into it and disturb the cobwebs, the nests, the charm! And then I miss a lot of my friends and want to schedule dates with everybody. But the cell phone doesn't have service, and I can't figure out the care sharing, so I do less. Make peace with being invisible.
I think it comes down to Harmony...
This evening, I sit still and muse on whether anything I am doing really needs to be done, and whether its better to use this vacation to get to know myself or to stimulate my social instincts and to wrestle my house back from the wilderness or to get to know the wilderness inside me. Listening to a building thunderhead, watching a butterfly flit nervously from leaf to leaf outside the door, smelling dinner on the stove top, I pray for another day to arrive so I can try to do it better.

My Cup Runneth Over

Can't begin to paint such beauty. But it does inspire me, and fill me with joy.

Good Morning July in Connecticut/ New York (Dutchess and Litchfield county line)!

the grandsons fill their grandparent's woodshed

In a synchronized move, the boys converged on the holiday weekend and brought in a couple chords. The wood shed had been completely empty since the harsh winter just past. Family has to watch out for each other. It warms my heart to think of how these sweet young men are helping warm the hearth next winter. I am so grateful as a daughter and proud as a mother and aunt!

I've got to thank neighbor Dennis as well... he prepped the job in innumerable ways, and seems to always have my dad's back, especially when most needed.

fourth of july at Home farm

West Cornwall bridge

Had my breakfast with the song birds, and below the bridge found the perfect vista to capture it on paper. It is an icon of New England countryside. The river running under it is the great Housatonic.

We went rafting on the river just yesterday and it was very dramatic, and a lot of fun... we got stuck on a rock and took the opportunity to draw our situation. Though at least one of us was drawing signs for HELP! Lots of rapids, so the churning brown waters did not reveal fish but we did feast our eyes on herons, egrets, ducks, (the not so common mergancer family), geese, and even a writhing snake on a rock, etc...