Writing Up A Storm

The Embrace

This is an illustration I began about ten years ago, and by "ten years ago," I usually mean any time between 1990 and now. I've decided that my inability to put things in their proper place on a time line is not a memory problem, it's because events in my mind are not organized in sequence, instead they are disorganized in some other way. But I think my memories are still all in tact, they're just waiting to be found when I open the right drawer, peek into the right cookie jar, peer into the right wishing well, lift the right shingle, or leaf, or log.

I found this illustration thumbtacked into a very far corner of my boxroom, half-hidden by a bookcase and a curtain and a stash of cardboard. It has been gathering dust, literally, for about ten years. I blew on it, and waved it around a little, and smoothed it out, and pressed the feet back down.

And I've been thinking about it.

It might be where I want to go. I've been calling it "The Embrace," for lack of another name, and it occurred to me as I write this that there really is no other name so perfect for it.

It's embracing me a little, or perhaps trying to brace me for putting on my boots and heading out into the big wild world, perchance to have a little walk and talk with the wolves, or the owls, or the moon. 

The silhouettes are black art paper, and the dresses are calico prints. I really do love to pair paper and fabric like this, especially when I am trying to illustrate an idea that is originally in words. This one came about when trying to illustrate the greeting between an aunt and a niece who love one another. But it might be a mother and daughter, or a teacher and student.

Which reminds me why I loved teaching the little ones, for I find that educating and embracing go together in the most wonderful way.

In other news, The Great 2010 Austin Snowfall took place this past week, and I have a photo to prove it. And as this photo arrived on site here, I was so surprised to see how it matched "The Embrace" ~ the red dress and green dress and white background so perfectly match the red and green and white of "Snowflakes Among the Nandina Bushes."

Those of you from the colder climes would have laughed at our antics over this tiny little handful of snow. For three hours my husband and I were running back and forth, calling out to each other:

"Come quick! Look! Hurry!"
"Omigosh, it's snowing!"
"It's stopped!"
"It's started again!"
"It's still snowing!"
"It's really really snowing!"

We went walking in it. We went twirling in it. We held up our arms to the snow god. Sometimes the flakes were huge, and we could track them falling from the clouds. And then, by dusk, it was all over. A short and sweet embrace.

And I've been thinking about how quickly an embrace can fulfill a longing. Or erase a separation, a misunderstanding, a lonely heart. How much peace, I wonder, can one embrace leave behind? And just think what the whole world can do by embracing all who are in need . . .

So, okay, I think I'll start with "The Embrace" and see where it takes me.

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Christmas Tree Mulch

My husband brought home a pickup-bed full of Christmas tree mulch yesterday. Austin collects all the trees after Christmas, mulches them, and then announces for one and all to come and take. I didn't go yesterday, but I have been before. You drive up to literally mountains of mulch and back your truck or car as close in as you can get and start shoveling. Or forking. A fork works best.

We don't ourselves ever have a Christmas tree. Partly, our house is very small, so there is a problem of where to put a tree. We neither of us want an artificial tree, and we both don't like the idea of cutting down a living tree.

Ideally, we would like to buy a small tree in a pot, and then plant it in our side yard each year, which would result in a Christmas tree woods. Which I would like very much!

I stood at the bed of the pickup yesterday and inhaled the Christmas fragrance. The memories of childhood dreams and wishes and wonderings came flooding back. The impossibility of Santa coming down the chimney in the house without a chimney that we lived in when I was a child, and the glorious wild belief that somehow he would make his own chimney, anyway.

It was cloudy and cool yesterday, my favorite kind of day, and I stood before the wreckage of the Christmas trees, the golden, olive, sepia chips, looking just like the pile of treasure you would expect to find where the X lies on a treasure map.

But my thoughts were of Haiti. I kept seeing the wreckage in Haiti overlaid upon the wreckage of the Christmas trees. I plunged my fingers into the sharp-scented chips, and thought of how we would scatter all this splintered gold around all our trees, especially the new ones we are growing, our brand-new redbud, the spindly Barbados cherry, the slowly growing burr oak. New life will come of this wreckage.

I bowed my head, knowing that somehow, someday, new life will come to Haiti, too. And then I thought about all the one dollar bills, the ten dollar checks, that are flying through the air right now, with "Haiti" written upon them, and of how the whole world really can make a difference. I thought of how much good we can do, especially when we do it together.

I brought one little sprig inside with me and let its tantalizing ping! of needles and snow and rooftop hooves patter inside my heart. Its promise of goodwill to all.

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Fabric Snow Ladies

During winter in Austin we hardly ever have snowmen, but we do have snow ladies ~ in abundance. They are made out of fabric, usually sheets and quilts. You can see them everywhere along the avenues where I live. The snow ladies shown here today are in my yard. The one above is sheltering a Norfolk pine. As you can see, this snow lady is very much a flowered babushka ~ she only needs an apron and a kerchief to complete her costume.

Behind her is our side yard, a small extra lot which has been my husband's balloon port these past 20 years. He is a hot-air balloon pilot (among other things), and he likes to lay his six-story-tall balloon envelope on this strip of grass and walk around inside it, repairing little rips and tears.

We are slowly planting more and more trees and bushes, encroaching upon his port. I may get my wish to have a little woods growing here someday!

This tall stately lady-in-plaid is hiding our Barbados cherry, which is a very spindly little thing at this point in its young life. It is new to our yard, and we are hoping for the bright red fruit it is said to produce. I especially hope the birds will like its bright red fruit.

On the far left on the ground near the side fence you can see the top of a Martin house. It is on the ground for housecleaning and relocation. We have been trying to lure Purple Martins to our backyard for 20 years. They will come and check out the little house, but they will not set up housekeeping. We are going to try a new location this year.

Maybe this will be the year for Martins. Maybe they will come when they see we have Barbados cherries.

Beneath this lovely striped lady, who appears to be in a kind of Ruben-esque repose, are great clumps of aloe vera. We are strong believers in the healing properties of aloe, and have always had these succulents sprouting everywhere in our yard.

This part of the backyard is our inner sanctum. It lies beneath the shade of an enormous pecan tree, and is hidden on all four sides, by the back of our house, our garage, the neighbor's garage, and an old peach tree at the back fence. Two compost heaps, two brush piles, and stands of fig trees, oleander, forsythia, and boxwood fill in all the gaps. A very secret place.

And a little bit of a museum is developing here, as you can see. But this is not my province, I only come here to admire and to see what new acquisitions have been added to the on-going diorama.

This fantastical silver majesty is the queen of the snow ladies. She is also the keeper of the largest philodendron in Texas, which is nestled against the trunk of the pecan tree I mentioned above. My husband has kept this philodendron alive for 20+ years, and she keeps growing and growing.

I love how this majestic snow lady's striped petticoat flounce is peeking out so daringly. Her silver cape is an old tarp which has become too porous to use as a protective covering for the hot-air balloon. She does seem on her way to the ball, just about to "trip the light fantastic," doesn't she?

Well, I love these intriguing hillocks of fabric that stand guard over our plants in the freezing-cold days of a Central Texas winter. I took these photos on Monday, and yesterday the sun came out, and all the sheets and quilts and tarps came off. They are piled up in stacks now, waiting for the next freeze.

And speaking of hillocks of fabric, here is my cut-paper Tatiana, surrounded by similar fabric hills, and standing with out-stretched arms as I try to decide which patterns to use to make a torn-fabric frame to put her in. All blacks and whites with a touch of red, I am thinking.

I have set Tatiana against some books I've been delving back into recently, books I have read before, some many times. From top to bottom:

Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore
Bloomsbury at Home by Pamela Todd
The Dangerous Book for Boys by Hal Iggulden
The Daring Book for Girls by Miriam Peskowitz
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee
Favorite Poems: Selected for Boys and Girls by Helen Ferris

I love keeping stacks of books around me, to inspire me, to keep me company. And I love the company of little spirits, or sprites, like this tiny paper doll, to carry on a conversation with.

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Bricks

We not only have piles of leaves and piles of kindling in our backyard, we also have piles of bricks. They are waiting to become a part of a path that is being set down in an S-shaped curve from our back door to our back gate. No doubt the path will divide at the woodpile, and then we will have Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" in our own backyard.

I will stand at the point where the bricks diverge and wonder: Shall I take the path to the gate and out to the alley and down the alley into the world? Or shall I take the path past the compost pile and beneath the fig trees to the brush pile where the wild creatures live?

But I won't have to choose, I can do both.

For some reason this makes me remember the part in Lolly Willowes where Lolly finds herself at a crossroads, too. She has missed the train back home. She can walk back and arrive late, or she can sleep out all night.

"Lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night! She had quite decided, now, to do so. It was an adventure, she had never done such a thing before, and yet it seemed most natural. She would not sleep here . . . But presently, later on, when she felt inclined to, she would wander off in search of a suitable dry ditch or an accommodatingly loosened haystack; or wading thrown last year's leaves and this year's fern she would penetrate into a wood and burrow herself a bed."

I have never slept out all night in my own backyard, and I really, really feel I should ~ at least once. Children often camp out in their backyards, but adults almost always go to a woods to camp. We hardly ever drag a sleeping bag out our back door and sleep under our very own fig trees.

Here is a peek at a little portion of the brick path, almost hidden beneath the pecan tree leaves. There is something about a path that stirs the imagination. A path makes you want to set your feet upon it and see where it goes. And there's a sense of danger, because, of course, you might get lost. I will have to do a whole post someday on these words of Dante, but for now I'll just set them down here:

"Midway upon the journey of my life I found myself in a dark wood, where the right way was lost."

I am so often myself in this dark wood, trying to find my way back to the right path, or trying to find the path, period. Any kind of path reminds me of how fragile my sense of direction really is. How lovely it is going to be to put my feet upon my own brick path and follow it to wherever it takes me ~ in my own backyard!

And here is a photo of the path that I took at the end of summer, or, rather, a photo of a pair of old gardening gloves that I found on the path. I love the silver duct-tape bandage on one of the fingers.

Goodness! This post started out with a stack of bricks for a brick path, paused to consider Robert Frost, detoured into Lolly Willowes, got lost in the woods with Dante, and ended up with a pair of gloves. This is what happens, I guess, when you start making a path.

You never know exactly where it will take you.

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Kindling

We have a little red wagon. We use it to gather kindling, among other things. I haven't been that much of a kindling-gatherer of late, but I do love pulling this little wagon behind me, picking up sticks in our yard and carrying them to our two brush piles by the back fence. 

If you want your backyard to be a wildscape, a brush pile makes a good home for wild creatures. Our brush piles are fed by our two gigantic pecan trees, as pecan trees have a way of dropping their limbs ~ often. Too often for our liking, for we hate to lose a single branch. The larger limbs are cut up for firewood for neighbors who have fireplaces, and the smaller branches are cut into very small logs and kindling for our chiminea.

(Oleta, is this your red wagon or is it ours? I can't remember now, we have had it for so long.)

Here is one of our woodpiles beneath a boxwood bush. The logs on the bottom are very small, small enough to fit inside our chiminea. There is a piece of tin across the top to protect them from rain, with a couple of larger logs to keep the tin in place. The large metal bucket tilted on the very top is full of kindling.

I love to pass by this little woodpile on my way to the compost bin. It gives me the tiniest hint of what it would be like to be a pioneer living on my own land.

When I wrote my first children's picture book story, A Far-Fetched Story, I loved putting in the opening lines:

"Early one autumn, long ago and far away, the woodpile was higher than the windowsills. But even so, there was not enough firewood to suit Grandmother."

Woodpile! Firewood! I felt that putting these two words in the first two sentences of my story was the same as infusing the story with a magic potion from the very start. For, honestly, if I open any book and see those two words on the first page, I will instantly be enticed into reading more.

Here is Tasha Tudor with an armful of kindling. This is a newspaper clipping I have saved for years. You can see the creases where it was folded inside a box of papers. Later I smoothed it out and put it inside a plastic sheet cover inside a loose-leaf notebook with other clippings that have caught my eye for one reason or another. I have often thought I have lost this clipping, but I keep finding it again and again.

The article that accompanied the photo told about Tasha Tudor's old-fashioned life. This was the first time I knew about her life at all. I had seen her sweet artwork, but I didn't know about the 1800s life that she insisted upon living in the 20th century.

She probably has bare feet, we can't see for sure here. But this photo captures her essence. I love her layered clothing, her aerial kerchief, the soft wools and washed cottons, the cloudy colors. She is like a wild creature in camouflage in an autumnal field with her great armful of kindling.

When I feel that I have lost my footing in the world, I can put my finger on a photo like this one of Tasha Tudor, and feel grounded again. It puts me in touch with something stronger, wilder, more fearless, and, suddenly, I feel a little stronger, wilder, more fearless, too.

Gathering kindling in my own yard has the very same effect!

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Let the Winter Storms Begin

There is an old quote I have often seen used to usher in the inclement season of the year:

"When all is safely gathered in, let the winter storms begin."

As soon as the cloudier, rainier, colder weather begins, I think of these old words. I even searched for the author. It might be Henry Alford, 1810-1871:

Come, ye thankful people, come;
Raise the song of harvest home.
All is safely gathered in 

Ere the winter storms begin.

On second thought, however, this is perhaps too universal an experience for anyone to lay claim to these words. Although I have never spent my summers "putting up" fruit and vegetables for the coming winter, I do gather my own harvest every autumn: leaves, leaves, and more leaves.

We no longer rake our own yard. We have opted to let our leaves stay where they fall, but we have neighbors who rake theirs, and, in particular, a very nice neighbor who lives across the alley from us.

He puts all of his leaves in large brown leaf sacks and sets them out in the alley beside his back gate. We drag his leaf sacks across the alley and through our back gate into our backyard and use them all year long in our compost bins.

This year, so far, we have acquired nearly a dozen sacks of leaves, and there is definitely the sense of a harvest that has been safely gathered in. I'm afraid I start coveting his leaves in September, hoping no one else will get them before we do.

Here is our largest compost pile at the back fence line. It is kept in place by a roll of chicken wire. I love coming here during the day or the early evening to bury vegetable and fruit scraps beneath these leaves, or just to stand in silence in this sacred place.

It lies between the alley and an old brick barbecue pit, just behind a little shed, with an ancient peach tree on one side and a stand of fig trees on the other. You get to it by way of a little path, and if you keep following the path, ducking under the fig trees, you come out into our side yard.

It is a very secret place. "The Secret Compost." Not quite as alluring as "The Secret Garden," but perhaps I should put it into a story anyway.

 

Sunflowers in Hallowed Ground

We have had our first sunflowers this year. They sprang up unexpectedly out of hallowed ground. This piece of ground is an oval of brown grass that lies between our garage and our would-be kitchen garden.

Just behind this barren oval, to the west, are the wild roses that grow, wildly, all along our back fence.

First there was this bare brown spot, an oval just the size of the shadow of a VW beetle. And then, out of bare earth, we got a this "Jack and the Beanstalk" plant with one great green flower head.

The green flower turned into this gigantic lovely, standing so straight and tall, looking right into the sun with its flamboyant bonnet of yellow petals.

By the time the one giant sunflower departed, a whole stand of middle-sized sunflowers had grown up out of this sacred place. How did they know to flower in this particular spot? A spot so large with the absence of something that is no longer there . . .

Here is what is no longer there: my little black VW beetle (1974-2008). My faithful friend. Here is where she sat, so patiently and trustingly, for the last year of her life with me, casting her shadow. And then I let her go. If you have ever lost a car that you loved, you will understand my heartbreak.

This spot where my little car last sat was a barren place all last summer and all last winter and into the spring.

Then, suddenly, sunflowers! Out of nowhere!

Or maybe not out of nowhere after all. Maybe these sunflowers are one last gift of love from this wonderful little car to me. In remembrance of our life together.

Sunflowers large enough and wild enough to fill up such a huge black hole.

Here is Van Gogh's iconic painting, and I wonder if his sunflowers filled up some dark place in his own heart and soul, if only for one brief bright flash of time. He made many versions of these sunflowers, but this is the one I love the best because it is the painting I grew up with. It was in a gigantic and very heavy book titled World Famous Paintings, edited by Rockwell Kent.

I know all the paintings in this book by heart. As a child, I often dragged this book out onto the floor and turned every page, looking and looking.

The middle-sized sunflowers came inside to brighten up our house. Here is one bedazzling bunch in a clear glass vase, looking very Van Gogh-ish, indeed.

Soon all of the middle-sized sunflowers were gone, and these smaller ones in a little jelly jar had taken their place.

From small, we went to tiny sunflowers, like these.

This was the very tiniest of all the sunflowers,
no bigger than the tip of a crayon.

And then from petals to pods.

Just before there was really nothing left but the pods, I used the very last of the tiny sunflowers and seed pods to create a diorama. If you look closely, you can see a miniature of my little VW hidden in this garden of what appear to be giant sunflowers. Little clumps of green clay are holding the flower stalks in place.

Thank you to the maker of these miniature cars!

I do feel as if this toy car is my real car, shrunk by magic into this sweet little talisman. During the lifetime of my car, I often dreamed that I had run out of gas or the battery had died. In my dreams I would simply pick my little car up, tuck her under an arm, and continue on foot, for she seemed that small to me, a treasure I could put in my pocket. And now she has left flowers in her wake.

Thank you, sunflowers, for coming to me!

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Wild Baby Again

Here is our wild baby opossum again. Oh, how tiny he looks! I love that pointy little face with its suspicious little expression, those incredible little fingers, that long pencil of a tail. He is crouched on a makeshift ledge between a shovel and a very fat Buddha-like stone cat.

The stone cat is a memorial for Missy. Missy (short for Mystery) was Boo's sister, and Boo is our very fluffy, very black stealth cat who lives a top secret and undercover life all of his own and is impossible to photograph. I am quite sure, however, that Boo and wild baby opossum have a sneaking-around-the-edges acquaintance with one another.

There are any number of owls, raccoons, opossums, frogs, snakes, geckos, and mice who visit our back yard. And we are hoping to make it a good home for all such wild creatures.

As I speak, we are filling out the paperwork to see if we might qualify for a Texas Wildscape Backyard Wildlife Habitat sign. These two signs are posted in a neighbor's yard just a few blocks away, and you can see the wild habitat behind this post.

I must say I do believe our backyard can rival this one for wildness!

To certify as a Texas Wildscape, your yard must be composed of 50% native plants and have a year-round supply of food, water, and shelter for wildlife. We have two huge pecan trees, several fig trees, a peach tree, a very secret garden, a flock of birdhouse/birdfeeders, a Rube Goldberg water fountain, a birdbath, a kitty watering bowl, a Sleeping Beauty hedge of wild roses, two compost piles, a brush pile, a wood pile, a junk pile . . . Really, I think we might qualify.

Hmmmmmm. Another ongoing work-in-progress?

Yes, yes, along with The Kissing Fence and A Hundred Guardians, now this venture into wildscapes. Plus I really really need to clean my house ~ it is of major priority, in fact, for my house is verging on some kind of tipping point. But how does one get around to housecleaning when things like saving the wilderness, saving the planet, saving the universe, all seem so much more important? There is simply too much to do for one lifetime, isn't there?

Onward, then, through the fog!!

And I could not resist adding a photo of "Peaceable Kingdom" by Edward Hicks, 1834. For I do long for the peaceable kingdom!

A Wild Baby

Do not fear! This wild baby is in no danger, I promise you! The prongs of the kid's garden rake are securely at rest over the hole in the cinder block. The little baby opossum is hiding underneath.

My husband was sitting in his camping chair in our backyard where he likes to sit in the evening when ~ all of a sudden! ~ he saw this little one and somehow managed to get a photo. The baby opossum must have been dining on the banana peel in our compost pile, for someone has dragged it out from under the compost leaves.

Oh, I do hope we will get to watch him grow up! I will post more photos, if we are lucky enough to get any more. I wonder if opossums become more daring or less daring as they get older?

And isn't he pretty? Such lovely markings. Those beautiful dark ears trimmed with a smoky-white edge, like piping.