Spring Block

After a miserable winter here in the Northeast U.S., we've been grasping at every possible sign that spring is here - the crocuses, the tiny sprig of green that appears when snow melts, a greenish blush of grass on the lawn, a warm sun, bugs, abandoned hat and gloves. Today, the first real day of spring, was a cruel disappointment.

Waiting

Snow again. All day. A wet, cold, sticky, clean-off-your-car and get-your-hair-soaked snow.

Yes, it was pretty, but pretty is as pretty does.

Bleak view

This was a grim beginning to spring, especially with thoughts of the misery in Japan and now a new war begun that's not really a war, so we are told.

In the studio, I'm stuck remaking my work again. It feels like I'm going around in a hamster wheel. Oh, I'm glad to have a commission to make a larger version of a piece I have already made, but on the heels of my repainting of a painting, it's not really any fun - especially since I can't seem to recapture the mood of the original. I spent all day prying up elements and replacing them with different ones that were more like those in the original piece. I'm still not there and now I have to hustle to get to the photographer's.

As I look again at the pictures in this post, I see that I have a central foreground block in each of them. They epitomize the way I am feeling. I am concentrating so much on what's right in front of me that I'm not seeing what lies beyond. It's seeing the tree instead of the forest. Oh, look - I've just made a post that teaches me a lesson even as I write it.

Spring in the Air

As I stepped out into the yard Monday morning with the Boyz, I stuck my nose in the air just like them to get a whiff of something quite exotic - that indefinable smell that presages spring! Could it really come? It's been hard to imagine with the heavy-duty winter we've had.

Front of our house, picture taken Feb 3rd

It's been pretty demoralizing. We've had storm after storm all winter. When it wasn't snowing, sleeting, or "wintry-mixing", it was so freezing cold that nothing was melting. The coldest temperature we saw one morning on our kitchen thermometer was 18 degrees below. Last weekend, I think it was, we had one morning of 12 below.

Looking toward the garage. The handle protruding at the left is the roof rake.

Then this morning, it was 40 degrees. The temp rose up to 52, I saw on the news. That was bikini weather. By this afternoon, we had lakes appearing in the yard from melting snow. Of course tonight the temp went down and the winds picked up (to 45 mph), so everything refroze. Nevermind, I had that whiff and it stirred my imagination.

The Boyz walking through the "avenues" in the yard that Bonnie has snow-blown for them.

Approximately the same view, taken last May

When it's been like this for so long, it's really hard to imagine that it will ever change and all that green will return. The old farmers (from the almanac) call snow "poor man's fertilizer," and if that's so, we're gonna have a helluva growing season.

A big THANK YOU to my valentine, Bonnie, for dealing with all the snow this winter! She did it ALL with her trusty snow blower plus lots of shoveling, roof raking, icicle breaking, scraping, salting, and whatever else needed to be done. The "Man of the House" proved she was up to the task of dealing with it all--and doing it cheerfully. A true Wonder Woman!

In the Studio
While Bonnie was working on the snow, I've been spending a lot of time in the studio. Much of the time I was working, but I've also been doing a lot of cleaning up and moving things around to host visitors  This weekend it was a pleasure to go in there to work and drag things out that I didn't have to put back. I had to get back to normal after rearranging for the Smith class. The trouble with moving things and stogging them somewhere is that they often don't reappear until years later - the curse of neatness!

I made these two little pieces for the sculpture show at Castle Hill this summer, but they seem less than exciting. I wasn't really happy working at this scale. (They are just 8"x10".) Sometimes the ideas you have don't pan out in the flesh. So I'm starting over and making something different.

Domino-trix, 6"x 14", mixed media with encaustic and dominoes

Here's another small piece that I just had photographed and will use as the inspiration for larger works for Greg Wright's show in the fall on the theme of pollination. The new pieces will include many more dominoes as related to my definition of pollination. There will be 12 artists who work in encaustic in this show at the Brush Gallery in Lowell, Mass. and a lot of related programming.

Of course there are also several shows connected with the encaustic conference that require work on a theme. I'm not so sure that I'm up to it. Sometimes you just have to continue on your path and not get sidetracked. By the way, a big thank you to Joanne M. for prominently posting one of my works on the conference home page!

Illusion of Control

This time of year in the garden marks the season when I think I am in control. The plants haven't filled out, some early blooming perennials like iris and peonies are starting to come in and everything is just very green. It's so restful without all those nasty weeds and the urgent struggle of one plant trying to overcome another. Ahh spring!

This is the time when I imagine that I'll be able to undertake all those garden projects on the ever-growing list. I'll fit in garden time and studio time because, really, there's not all that much to do.

The birds are singing, courting and nesting, hummingbirds have returned, skies are blue, etc., etc.

And everything is so neat and well behaved. (Here you see in the background the Weber grill that serves as garden sculpture.)

The one exception is these lousy peonies (in pink) that demand support and then go to mush in rain. (Note the poor planning of the yellow and orange pansies - but they were there first.) Let's see how long it takes me to cut off these mushy, dead or dying blooms.

The moss and ferns are great at this time of year when it's still so dampish and cool. (Note the found - unearthed - Easter Island figure.)

Perfect little hostas emerge so sweetly.

Or some have enormous leaves, bigger than dinner plates, with not a trace of insect hole, wind damage, sun burn, etc., etc.

This is some European ginger I rescued that was growing wild in the front lawn. I'm rooting it here.

This is what it looks like when it's established. It's a lovely shade groundcover.

The yard looks a lot like a park with the shade trees and chairs. No annuals yet to water and deadhead.

And the boys are always in attendance. 


If only the illusion would last.

From the Mundane to the Ridiculous

Global Warming at Your Service
This year the weather in western Massachusetts has been pretty incredible. Today the thermometer outside our kitchen window recorded 89 degrees. Brandon Butcher, our favorite local weatherman, said that the temperatures have not been so high since last August. In fact it felt like August weather except it wasn't as humid.

So the garden is coming back to life. This week two of our flowering trees started blooming. I tried to figure out when this usually happens and think it's at least two weeks earlier than usual.

Of course we can't really plant anything yet because until some time late in May, there is still the possibility of frost occurring.

We are in zone 5 which has temps down to -20 F in winter. It really doesn't get that cold (usually), so probably we would be 5a (or 5b, I can never remember) which gets down only to -10 F or so.

Anyway, it's pretty unusual to have it be so warm so early. And it makes it challenging to decide whether to work in the garden or the studio.

I figure that whichever one I pick, I'll probably be wishing to be in the other. But, hey, that's me all over.

Contender for World's Largest Brush Pile - home of birds, chipmunks, insects, snakes and God knows what-all.

The ravine and river down behind our yard, just starting to blush pink and green.

Global GaGa
So let me tell you what else I've been doing, I read a profile in New York magazine about Lady GaGa, and since I had never seen any of her videos, I looked her up on You Tube. Well, now I'm hooked and I have those songs running through my head.

She is the love child of Madonna and Elton John and remarkable for the speed of her fame and her daring attack on the pop music world at a mere age 24. The telephone video with Beyonce (9 1/2 minutes long) is pretty mind boggling in its intricacy as well as its themes. It's very entertaining. I find it interesting that she portrays herself as gay (or at least bi) when she is apparently straight. I guess that makes for more titillation.

She is certainly ready to try anything. She has a great team of stylists and a wonderful video director in Jonas Akerlund, who directed 12 videos for Madonna and has now done two for GaGa. The videos are full of product placement and brands - the route to today's success. Here's a link to the New York magazine GaGa Look Book. 

Still from the Telephone video. (Note the sunglasses made from lit cigarettes.)

Although some say her music is boring and not a match for the uniqueness of her appearance (or should I say styling), her songs are catchy. (Why else would they be rattling around in my brain interminably?) She has been playing piano since she was a young girl and has a much better voice than Madonna.

And just in case you wondered about her popularity:

"In a poll on Time's website, the public can vote on who they think the most influential people of 2010 are. Lady Gaga has skyrocketed from No. 54 to No.1. She is followed by Michelle Obama at 14, Snooki at 16, and Beyoncé, who is woefully underranked, at 19. Also underranked by these standards are Marc Jacobs at No. 99 and Anna Wintour at No. 122. [Time]"

A Perfumed Spring - Our Last?

This spring has been so beautiful, so fragrant, so slow to unfold that it makes the pessimist in me start looking for the summer to be a nightmare of blazing heat, thunderstorms, tornadoes or whatever that new thing is called that's like a tornado only not a funnel. But I fear that there is worse than bad weather in store for us

This is our third spring in this house and for the first time, we are just surrounded with the most incredible fragrance from flowering trees. Two big crabapple trees in particular have been astounding in the bounty of their blossoms and the perfumed air they have provided.

We have never treated them very well because the branches hung down very low and were in the way. We've been chopping them off since we got here, but now we'll treat them with more respect, I think, after seeing what they can produce.

The perfume from those trees surrounds us as soon as we step outdoors into the yard.

If the wind blows from another direction, we get the scent of lilacs - blooming way more prolifically than we have ever seen them.

When the overload of blossoms on one lilac branch got weighed down by rain, the branch touched the ground. I stuck a rake under it until I could prune it back by cutting off a huge armload of flowers for the studio.

So here's the but...there is one big problem: NO BEES. I haven't seen a single honeybee all spring. There have been some big bumblebees and smaller waspy-type bees, but NO honeybees. This is not good. Already it is very obvious that our regular apple trees produced fewer blossoms than last year. We didn't see any bees around those blossoms this year either.

Yes, we've been reading about the diminished number of bees for a couple of years, but I really can't get over the absolute absence of honeybees when the weather has been so encouraging for maximum blossom production. No bees equals no fruit and vegetables unless farmers can hand pollinate all the blossoms. I think my pessimism is warranted and not just a symptom of my addled brain. And to live without this perfume in spring would mean bereavement on top of calamity.

Spring in New England

It's spring all over today - the sun's over the equator and all's right with the world. In New England, especially out here in western Massachusetts almost in the Berkshires and not all that far from Albany, NY, spring comes in with temps in the 20s. It's not balmy enough to go out without a hat and gloves unless you want cold ears and fingers.

Despite the lawn chairs looking hopeful over there, patches of snow are still hanging on in the shady spots, and ice covers the birdbath.

The appropriate footwear is not sandals but muck boots. The only reason that this boot is not mucky is that the ground is still frozen this morning.

But spring has a way of slowly creeping up before it bursts out.

Iris are greening up in the fishpond.

Although ice covers the surface of the water, it will thaw once the sun has been on it for a while.

Snowdrop bulbs have broken through the leaf cover around Bobby Buddha.

Bobby survives although he had a tough winter and suffered damage to his head where a couple of chunks of concrete broke off.

There is still snow amid the raised beds.

But the garden area is pretty clear overall.

The compost bins stand ready although mostly still frozen. (From the left: collected leaves, current compost, compost made last summer/fall to be spread this spring.)

From the back of the yard, things look pretty good...

especially with a couple of doggy boys added in.

And the pansies we bought the other day survived a frosty night outside and will be perked up again by noontime - the most hopeful sign of spring.

Night and Day

Taking photos to exchange with my Swedish partners for the weather blog has driven me to experiment with my camera as never before. I even went outside last night IN THE ACTUAL DARK and shot some photos. That was fun and I experimented with flash/no flash/slow flash, etc. with surprising results (at least surprising to me). I was unprepared for the drama that night photography gave to mundane scenes.

Night Shadows (taken last night, March 6th, in the backyard)

Day shadows - taken today - same view

Night Reflections

Day Reflections - same shot

Last night - trees with pinprick moon

Today - same trees but with celestial blue sky

Today was a beautiful day - the first really warm day that promised not to be a singular aberation. The ground is soggy with snowmelt and tonight it's started raining with three more days of rain to come. But green things are happening. This long, miserable winter is finally starting to lift. Relief is in sight accompanied by The First crocus.





Buds are swelling, birds are making spring calls and activity is beginning all around. But before it all that breaks into full-bloom spring, we have to get through Mud Season:

and worse is yet to come