Free Little Art Gallery

 

It's a THING. I've been meaning to do this for a while, and opportunity presented itself in the form of a free critter aquarium listed in my Buy Nothing group yesterday. Today I polished up the box, scoped out materials for a floor, magnetic walls (for easy hanging), and measured for a piece of plexiglass that I'll hinge to the front in lieu of the screen that provided fresh air to the critter. I've already chosen a bunch of collages for the first show, and I hope other people will respond to my invitation and contribute some of their own.

I love all the little free libraries in my neighborhood, and I think an art gallery will fit right in. You might have a FLAG in your neighborhood. Check the MAP.

I haven't collaged much recently because I've been gardening.

But winter is coming.

Or so they say. It was 99 today and humid, so it felt like 209 or something like that. It's going to be almost that bad again tomorrow. I keep saucers filled with water for the birds. 

On a normal hot day, they dry up pretty quickly. Not today. I think water fell out of the air and dropped into them.

If you're under the heat dome I hope you stay cool tomorrow.

Flower Lady

Why a picture of a bird then? you ask. Because while I'm trying to become the flower lady, wounded birds show up. I'm working on my flower beds whenever I can. Working on this.

And this.

I'm interested in wildflowers, mostly. And I'm digging out a huge new bed to be filled with things like whorled milkweed, bee balm, fleabane, yarrow, and ferns. It'll be a companion to last year's bed of native wildflowers. 

But I also want the old-timey midwestern classics that my dad grew. Hollyhocks, irises, zinnias. 

And my new project is a border of big hostas--so I don't look like a all non-natives are invasive and ruining the planet fanatic. Moderation. I'm seeking balance. And butterflies like some non-native plants too. Butterflies are the goal.

I'm focused. I go out in the morning and stay out until it's too hot or I run out of energy....

Or.... a bird shows up. Last week it was this guy.

I love birds. But I suck at dealing with hurt birds. Hurt anything, actually. Honestly, I usually make things worse. 

A neighbor came over to help with the hawk seconds after I posted it on our block What's App. We called the Raptor Center, and then she went to pick up a friend who volunteers there. Meanwhile another neighbor said to throw a towel over it and put it in a box and take it there. You go right ahead, I thought.

I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing. Because flowers are more durable than birds, and I'm not afraid I'm going to hurt them. Well, I am, actually. But mostly, I'm pretty good with flowers.

Anyway, the crow. 

I posted about it on the neighborhood Buy Nothing group, asking for help. You can't buy or sell a crow on Buy Nothing, but you can ask for help. Someone called me right away. Put a laundry basket over it, she said, and I'll be right over. I don't have a laundry basket, which might seem weird, but I don't. We put our laundry in  tall waste baskets because it takes up less space in our tiny closets. So we stood guard, watching for feral cats until she pulled up a few minutes later. 

Here is how you put an injured crow in a box: You put the box over the crow, then you slip a piece of separate cardboard under the box and the crow and lift the whole business into the hatch of your SUV. We cut some air holes in it, and then off she went, this person, while I filled out the wildlife rescue pre-admit form on my phone and made a donation.

Later she called me. I was already familiar with this article. Apparently it's a real thing. If more crows come around, the vet said, give them treats. Try to get on their good side...in case they were watching while their friend got put in a box. 

So am I a good bird lady or a bad bird lady? We'll find out, I guess. Before the crow got put in a box, I offered it water. In a china sauce dish, no less. And a little ball of watermelon. Fancy, right? I hope that saves me from the wrath of crows.

Apocalypse with butterflies

Elderberry on this cloudy morning

I wrote what follows yesterday when it was hot and dry. This morning it's cloudy and cool, and there are rumors of rain. And there you have it. Apocalyptic feelings melted by the thought of a rain cloud. I knew someone once who often advised me to view my feelings of dread like weather. 

************

I’m finding it hard not to catastrophize the lack of rain here. In my lizard brain, I’m more Californian than Minnesotan since I spent more than 40 years fearing the Santa Ana winds. Seeing flames from my house during the Thomas fire and the one that came next whose name I can’t even remember was not an experience I want to have again. Masking to go outside was a thing, and this was months  before Covid was  even a mere gleam in some Chinese market creature’s eye. 

I moved here to Minnesota after those big fires and before Covid. 

I love the Midwest. I love that it rains here. I love rain and a book and something hot to drink. I love rain and the way growing things look afterwards. I love the clouds and the washing of everything, and how birds sing when it’s over. 

Red Admiral butterlfy.
So far this year, I've seen these and blue swallowtails and monarchs. Also some yellow ones I don't know the name of.

So right now, I’m sitting in my hot and  dry back yard, telepathically telling my new little transplanted peony that I will give it a good soak tomorrow. I’m envisioning where I will plant more plants that butterflies love, and how I will shrink my front lawn with a path for the mailman and his yard to yard shortcut, and how there will be plants for the butterflies there too, encircling him. In the end there will be very little grass. Mo’ grass mo’ problems, a neighbor says. 

I don’t want an apocalypse with butterflies. I just want the butterflies. I want world peace, a cure for cancer, and a regularly employed methodology to make it rain. 

The garden of everything

I toured a friend's garden today. It's always a wonderland. We talked plants and then she made me a salad with greens and nasturtiums. That she grew in her garden, of course. 

She's a painter too. On her living room wall was a large painting she'd worked on for months. She's busy. So busy. A complicated life. Here's my yoga space she said, gesturing to a space between her couch and her bay window full of orchids. I haven't been doing much yoga, I said. Me either, she said. But I have a yoga space.

Hollyhock buds. I'm waiting.

My yoga space is in my bedroom. Or used to be. Now it's  my garden. Not that I'm doing yoga out there when I step out the door, still my in pajamas and blowing on my coffee. What I'm doing is breathing. What I'm doing is looking and listening. 

That crow is there on top of the blue spruce every day.

Was that what my dad was doing? 

My father has been dead a very long time. He died suddenly of a heart attack when I was 19. Nineteen years is not long enough to get to know a parent. Our relationship was just beginning to shift, and then he was gone.

Cuke.

Maybe he gardened not just to garden. Maybe he really loved being out there, looking and listening. Maybe he wasn't just putting food on the table. Maybe he was doing yoga.

Shiny! Are all banana peppers shiny?

It never occurred to me to ask him if he loved those plants. If he loved hearing the birds or the wind or the feel of that black Iowa dirt.

I miss blogging

Back in the day when this blog was titled "His Big Fat Indian Wedding," it brought me a lot of relief. It was a place to vent and to keep a real- time diary of of the carnage that ensued at the end of my marriage, a place to document the facts, and to think out loud. There was community and a certain artistry. Everyone's blog was a bit different in appearance. I liked that creativity. And the widgets. Remember widgets? I find Substack less interesting in its presentation. So I'm just gonna stay here. I want to start reading the blogs I followed then--if they exist. I hope to blog regularly again too. I need to see my thoughts in black and white. Shine some light on/through them. Which is literally what happens to words on a screen. My life is a wreck in a few different ways right now. I'm also very happy. I do a lot of things to scrub off the crud so I can see the happiness. It's fairly easy to do that in Minnesota in the spring. Super easy if you like to garden. I'm crazy about flowers. And vegetables. Trees too. Last spring my partner and I planted a native wildflower garden in our parkway. Thirty-some two-inch plants. Don't expect blooms the first year, I told him. It's all about putting down roots.

This year there will be flowers. In fact, some have already completed their first bloom cycle. Here is what is in the wildflower garden: Hairy beard tongue. How did it get its name? I don't know. The stems are hairy. No beard and tongue though. Thank god. There's probably a story there somewere. Orange butteryfly weed. Whorled milk weed--which is quite bossy and spreading all over. That's fine for now. Next year I might be out there with a weed whacker. Blue sage. The wild rabbits stole one these immediately after planting. There were then three left. Two were regulary dined on as soon as they poked their stems out of the cold dirt this spring. We covered them with cages. Yep. Here the bunnies roam free, and the plants are put in cages. Anisse hyssop. Prairie smoke. Wild petunia. Golden Alexander. Jacob's ladder. Stiff goldenrod. Wild blue asters. I chose these plants because they are attractive to birds and butterflies--and good for the whole business of pollinating. I love the idea of having native plants in my yard. Many of the plants that were here when I moved in are native too. And I'm trying to grow the things that my dad grew when I was a kid. Hollyhocks, irises, zinnias. I was always super proud of those flowers when I took a bouquet to school for the May altar which was devoted to the Virgin Mary. I have absolutely nothing to do with a church of any kind nowadays--and haven't for a very long time. My yard is my church. I feel serene there. I feel worthwhile. That my efforts will yield something good and beautiful. Here's an ecoprint from the wildflower garden. The ecoprinting was my first attempt. I plan to do more of it.

Mostly, when it comes to art, I make collages.

The dining room table where I shared meals with my mother and listened to her many stories moved with me from California to Minnesota in 2019. My mom was three years gone by then, and the table did not fit in my little living room/ dining room after I made my second Minneapolis move.One afternoon we borrowed a hole saw from our neighbor, and the once stately dining room table became a patio table.

It was a classy addition to the backyard. Then this happened.

My mom had a lot of skills/pastimes/hobbies. She could knit, crochet, sew, macramé, fix things. And she was an expert trash-picker. A gold pocket watch, a wooden baby cradle, a big box of very nice baby and toddler clothes, a gold ring with a giant genuine amethyst. Books, paintings, antique dishes. What she didn't keep, she gave away or sold at garage sales.I've inherited the trash-picker gene, but now with the existence of my local Buy Nothing group, I get to browse through other people's cast-offs without lifting the lids of their trash cans or stalking the alleys. We got a little Buy Nothing patio table after the tree fell, but I've been watching Buy Nothing for the past couple months for a bigger one. Here it is.

Getting it into my hatchback was a bit dicey. Good thing that bag of clothes for Goodwill was still in the back seat, so we could tie the hatch shut.

The past couple of days the table has been undergoing a transformation.

My mom would be so thrilled.

And soon I'll be giving away the little table on Buy Nothing. I love how that works.

A glass of red wine in memory of Dan Paik

Dan left this world 8 years ago.

Eight years is a very long time.

Let's say you have a baby. This helpless creature eight years hence can tie their shoes, understand the rules to a sport or a game, ride a bike, make toast, do math problems with fractions, maybe they will even have mastered the multiplication tables. Eight years feels like a miracle when you watch a person becoming more and more of themselves.

Eight years, I guess, is just eight years when someone disappears from your life. It's a blink of an eye or an eternity, depending on how you're feeling at any given moment. But no matter how you feel they're still gone. It's mysterious, this absence that's also a presence.

Unless I'm so tired that I sleepwalk into bed, I have a word or two with the dead. My parents, Dan, a certain friend or two on one night, some others on another night. Then I tell myself that I'm okay. That I mostly did good during the day. And I specifically tell my mom that I won't be coming to see her. Not yet. I remind her that she got to live to be 91, and I'm not ready to leave here yet. I tell her this because in the weeks after she died I had two very vivid nightmares where she came back to get me. I want her to know that I miss her, but that I'm staying in the world of the living for now.

It's been more than a year since I dreamed of Dan. I'm pretty sure I'll dream of him again. I just don't know when. Meanwhile, here's a memory with a dream in it.

Planet Earth and Her Shadow

Our planet has a rather insubstantial shadow, don't you think? A mere veil. Not at all like our own shadow on the sidewalk, say. I love lunar eclipses. You can look right at them without going blind. The next full moon lunar eclipse here where I live won't be until November--and it will be at an inconvenient hour--which is to say when I hope to be asleep. There won't be another until 2025. Who the heck knows where I'll be in 2025. Still on the planet Earth, with a little luck. Speaking of luck--

If a tree falls on your house, will you hear it? Maybe. Maybe not if the tornado sirens are wailing and the wind is roaring and you're in the basement with the weather channel turned up loud. Yes. There were some big noises, but I have to say I didn't really yell, OMG a tree just fell on my house!!! But it didn't sever our power line (not even our party lights!) Didn't take out the air conditioning or any of the ductwork. Didn't break the window or put an actual hole in the roof for rain to come pouring in. That said, I'm super frustrated with the insurance company. But mostly grateful that I'm not looking for temporary lodgings.

Sadly, my old table did not survive. In what seems like another lifetime when this table lived in my dining room, there were many fine meals there with many fine people. Two of the finest of those people are no longer on the the planet. They seem as far away as the moon. And yet very, very close.

A Sheep in Wolf''s Clothing

Not like this. This is a wolf in sheep's clothing. And believe it or not, it's from a front yard Christmas display in my neighborhood. It could well be some pop culture commentary that I am unaware of, but I think it's more likely political commentary. Some sheep are marked red. Others are blue. I mean, it's weird and kinda scary, right? Maybe also a little funny? Here's the whole thing.

The driver of the team of sheep is Planet of the Apes meets the Grinch. And the baby. I don't know what to say about the baby.

Anyhow, here's a happy thought. What if Omicron is a sheep in wolf's clothing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/health/covid-omicron-antibodies-delta.html

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/dec/18/is-there-any-good-news-at-all-on-omicron-yes-there-are-small-signs-of-hope

Comfort and joy to you

And how about some joy to the world while we're at it? Oh, wait. Yeah. Supply chain. Well, I have a Christmas tree inside and another one outside. I look at those lights a lot.

I settled on my New Year's resolutions today. 1) Be excedingly polite to everyone I encounter. 2) Walk every single day in January, no matter the temperature.

I will not follow this trail out onto Lake Harriet, but I am lucky to live in such a beautiful place with a lovely creek that leads to the lake, and I will walk, even if it's so cold I can only go a little ways. I actually love winter if I don't have to drive in it. And I've made up with my Yak Traks, which last year I thought didn't provide quite enough traction. Somehow I feel very secure in them now.

Hope you're feeling secure in some way, dear reader. I hope there's joy in your world and comfort too. Let your light shine.

Here's a poem I heard yesterday. https://onbeing.org/programs/danez-smith-im-going-back-to-minnesota-where-sadness-makes-sense/

Breaking up with Mr. Zio

Mr. Zio is my heart monitor. We've been close these past two weeks, investigating all of the pings and rattles. Anxiety? Not anxiety? Who knows these days, right? But tomorrow, I peel him off my chest and send him packing in a box. Such wonders modern medicine provides! I'm a little fuzzy about what happens after that, but I'm sure there'll be some sort of report. How are you, dear reader? What's pinging and rattling in your life? I'm obsessed with making collages. No art background. Just pandemic online heart-saving classes. I'm mystified by the glues and finishes. I like my finished work to be smooth. I don't want wrinkles. I don't want shine. But I put together these masterpieces with all kinds of snippets, and some papers like one type of glue with other papers like another.

These two collages seem to me to be about luck. Luck feels like such a mover and a shaker to me these days. I'm planning a party--a missed major milestones party. I've ordered food and cakes (one cake for each of the four big occassions we've missed.) My son and his family are traveling from Phoenix. Hey, Southwest Airlines, I'm imploring you NOT to cancel that flight. Because 38 tacos. Because four cakes. Because I have not seen them for more than two years. I'm just so shocked every time I think or say that. More than two years. For god sake, dear pilots, I've already put the extra boards in the table.

Dear everyone, wishing you luck with your endeavors.

Thanks for the memories--and your martini recipe

It was my mom's birthday a few days ago. I had a martini and bought a lottery ticket--which is the way I celebrate now that she no longer enjoys these earthly delights.

It's an odd feeling to have both parents gone. Sometimes I feel like a pale balloon, disconnected from the people who landed me here.

A dear friend sent me this book,"Heartwood" by Barbara Becker. It arrived on my mom's birthday. I've just begun to read it. Here's what the author says about the title which comes from the name for the central core of a tree. "...this supporting pillar no longer participates in the life process of a tree--transporting and storing water and nutrients. Although dead, heartwood will not decay or lose its sturdiness while the outer, living rings of newer growth sustain it. In the perfect ecology of a tree, the dead become the heart of the living, and the living nourish the enduring essence of the dead."

So that's what I was doing with that martini--nourishing the enduring essence of the dead.

Every night as I settle into bed in my freshly painted room, I think of my dead loved ones. And how it is to love the dead. It's so different from how we love the living. To be able to touch. To be able to talk. These are the profound joys of the living.