Collage of Ideas -Blog

Goodbye 2020

Goodbye 2020

October Roses

Where have I been for the last four months, you may ask. Right here at home, of course, like almost everyone I know. Actually, I was already at home most of the time since the middle of last year. I was going to a mixed-media group meeting in a friend’s home twice a month, but that was the scope of my social life until that ended in March this year.

Last winter I had a number of art projects going on which I wrote about on this blog. But as I got into summer, I was having difficulty coming up with things to write about because I was mostly working in my yard. I’d find myself thinking what can I make quickly to blog about, which is not the kind of art or writing I want to be doing, much less putting on my website. And, by that time, there was so much noise on the internet, with people reposting things they had found online, that I decided to just stop for a while.

Summer in San Joaquin County was either over 100 degrees or clogged with smoke, or both at the same time until mid-October. Then it became a challenge to get the summer work done and prep for winter. I’ve been pruning back bushes that didn’t get done in 2019. I’ve been removing some plants that I didn’t like or were in the wrong place. I’m making some changes that I think will make the maintenance easier as I get older.

Watsonia wall hanging

The watsonia “basket” I was making turned into a wall piece, and after a few months I added three natural elements and got it hung up on the wall. I made a basket using some of my weaving yarn twinned around some spokes of rope.

Twinned basket – weaving yarn, cotton rope, sisal rope

My summer activities included cleaning the garage and reorganizing my garden shed where I have basket making materials stored. I brought a few items into the house that I had forgotten I had, but I haven’t gotten to them yet.

In my storage unit I had a shoe box full of colorful circles I made some time in the “80’s. They were to be sewn together to make an afghan, looking like one of those old-fashioned paperweights. I had put the project aside when I took on a part-time job while in Grad school. I brought them into the house knowing I would not make any more pieces and decided I’d sew together what I had. Once I got into this, I discovered that I had started out with six sided circles and at some point, I was only making five sides. This proved an interesting challenge to find a way to attach them.

Crochet circles sewn together

Other than going to the grocery, my main destination is seeing my dentist about every three weeks to get my braces adjusted. I lost a tooth on the bottom right in January, and she saw an opportunity to fill in that space and straighten some teeth that were twisted. We are getting close to being done, I hope. Eating this year has been a challenge!

My friend, Robert, who lives in the apartment behind the garage, has had numerous problems with his wheelchair all this year. He is no longer able to come into the house to cook with his current loaner chair, an activity he really enjoys. We’ve mostly met on the patio, but it’s not the same as eating together and sharing the kitchen. Hopefully his new chair will be delivered soon.

It has been five years since I had a cat, and during the summer I thought about getting a cat, until I remembered how Tommy insisted on being on my work table whenever I was making art. I wanted a cat who would go in and out of the house independently, and enjoy being with me without needing to be in my face constantly. How does one find a cat like that?

Miss Lila

The Next-Door app has people giving away cats (and other things) all the time. Late one Saturday evening about two months ago, I was scanning the latest offerings of free things. There was a photo of a cat who looked exactly like the first cat we had in Virginia forty-five years ago. I read the info: female, about 4 years old, likes to hunt for mice and lizards, needs to be gone by Monday. Sunday, I looked at the picture again several times, and sent a message that I was interested. The family was leaving the state and couldn’t take her with them. By noon on Monday, I was driving back from Lodi with Lila.

Lila – a perfect fit

Miss Lila is a beautiful cat with symmetrical markings, a white tummy and four white paws. She likes about twenty minutes lap time in the evening. She is very smart, understands things, knew what the cat door was and how to use it. She’s not too sure about Robert yet – he sounds like a man, but doesn’t walk like a person. So, some of my time and energy the last two months has been about having a new friend to talk to, watch, and play with.

I have been so blessed by the Lord this year, being content to tend to my yard, learning to make better collages, gifting me with the perfect cat. Even though I am unhappy with the results of the election, I am experiencing God’s perfect peace that events will play out for the good of our nation.

Wishing you good health and a peaceful spirit in the new year.

Marilyn

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The Long Hot Summer

The Long Hot Summer

At the beginning of August, I was playing with watercolor, working my way through a book I had ordered from HamiltonBook.com with the intriguing title “Painting Your Way Out of a Corner” by Barbara Diane Barry. I’d read a section at lunch time, and then in the evening paint the exercise, such as “Start with a line and let your brush wander around the page.”

The line wandered around the page.

Always before, I would start with a careful pencil drawing, so this was new territory for me.

Start with an oval to make a face.

The days were too warm to be out in the yard during the day time, so about August 7th I began cleaning out file drawers. This is an item that has been on my To Do List since sometime last year. I was a full-time student from 1984 to 1991. I still had papers written during my time at San Jose State earning my BA, and from J. F. Kennedy University working on my master’s degree. In those days, I used a computer as a word processor to write my papers, thankfully, because I was a horrible typist.

I also cut out magazine articles of interest and filed them. By now they are all out of date.

I also went through a drawer of recipes from magazines and newspapers. I haven’t looked in there for years because I’m cooking very little, make my favorites again and again, and it is faster to find recipes online.

It has been a very warm summer, with 2 – 3 days of triple digit heat every other week.  In my house built in 1947 with no central air conditioning, by the third day the heat builds up and it is very difficult to cool it down at night. We had 10 or more days of 100+ starting about August 12. On Monday the 17th, I was hearing about numerous lightening sparked fires around the Bay Area and along the coast. Tuesday evening, I noticed that I could not see Jupiter and Saturn which I have been seeing most nights in the southern sky.

Ash on grill on the patio.

The next morning, my yard man told me he was not using the blower because of the ash. By afternoon, everything was covered in black particles, and white, and grey dust from the fires. We are not near any of the fires, thank the Lord, but Stockton is sort of in a basin that catches smoke and ash from all directions. With that much smoke in the air, using my attic fan to cool off the house at night is not an option.

Ash on old table in back of the yard.

Cleaning out the files has been my main activity all month. Once I finished with the watercolor book, I didn’t start any new art because the file cabinets are in the studio and I was sorting through them on my work table. It was an interesting journey to read those papers I wrote. To think about what I had done and why.

I found a note I had written with a quote from Madeleine L’Engle in her book, “A Circle of Quiet”, published in 1972, where she uses the example of our bones as our structure that gives us freedom to move, to dance. . . She said,

“We are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death.”

She wrote that 48 years ago.

To quote my exasperated dad, “When are you gonna learn?”

My last painting from the book.
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Distractions

Distractions

Spring plants needing clean up

As much as I love my garden and want to work in it every day, July is always the month it looks it’s worst, and I don’t want to go out there. Anything that bloomed in late spring or early summer has finished it’s run and dried up. The sycamore tree is shedding bark, and this year is the worse than any I can remember. I have bushes to be cut back, roses to deadhead, and berry bushes to tie up to supports, but I’m not doing any of it. I have found that I can’t work in the heat like I used to, and since I’m a night person, I don’t get up early enough to go out in the mornings. That leaves me digging weeds between seven and eight in the evening, and puts dinner after that.

Watsonia plant and onions

After doing two online collage workshops in the spring, I have one of my work tables set up for collage and usually do several small ones each week. I’m also playing with watercolor paint.

To add some new interest to being at home all the time I spent about a week considering getting a cat. It was kitten season and the neighborhood email feed had lots of kittens looking for a home. I couldn’t decide, almost went to see one, but then in a moment of sanity, I remembered how annoying it is to have a cat who insists on being in the center of my work table whenever I’m working on art.

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At the beginning of July, when the newsletter from the local astronomy club appeared in my email late one evening it contained an offer to borrow a telescope from the club. Impulsively, I replied I might be interested, and the next week one of the members backed his truck into my driveway and unloaded a large, heavy scope that he said would use the built-in computer to find the planets and stars I wanted to see. It was much bigger than I expected from the photo in the newsletter.

The second telescope

When I got around to moving it to the center of the patio a week later and tried it out, it couldn’t find anything. I could see Jupiter with my own eyes, but couldn’t find it in the scope. When the fella came to get it, he brought another scope that would not be quite as heavy, and not motorized so it should be easier for me. Unfortunately, the previous borrower had not returned the eyepieces that went with it, so I could find Jupiter in the finder scope, but nothing in the main scope. During the day I practiced using it by focusing on the dead tree in the yard behind me. The wires across the backyard access line are in excellent condition, but again, at night all I saw was dull brown no matter how I turned the focus knob.

At that point, I noticed that my neck and back were complaining about how I was standing at this thing and trying to move it around with knobs that I could barely reach. The man came back and retrieved the scope, suggesting something smaller. I said no, I had learned what I needed to learn: this activity was going to require me to study star charts and measurements, and be way more work than I wanted to put in to it.

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I would guess we are all reading more than we did a year ago. I have been reading about the early 1940’s during WWII. In my blog of December 31, 2019, I wrote about a fictional work about Varian Fry, an American who went to France during this time to help artists get out of Europe to safer countries.

I read a review of “A Woman of No Importance” by Sonia Purnell and ordered it from Amazon. This is the story of Virginia Hall, an American woman who had studied in Europe, fell in love with France, and became a diplomat to try to help the French people. She worked for Britain, and later for United States when we entered the war, to coordinate activities to support the resistance movement. It is a fascinating story.

Some years ago, I had acquired a book called “The Shameful Peace, How French Artists and Intellectuals survived the Nazi Occupation” by Frederic Spotts. A short while after I started reading the book about Virginia Hall, I decided I’d read this one at the same time. This book was in the dining room to read at lunch and dinner, the other was in my bedroom.

And as I’m reading these two books this last month, I noticed some similarities between that time and now. Germany had invaded France after taking over Belgium and Luxembourg. They occupied the northern part of France, which included Paris where many of the cultural activities were located. Germany was trying to take over Poland and Russia, so they set up a sort of provisional government in Vichy with Marshall Petain as president, who did what he was told, but tried to protect the cultural life of the French people.

Theaters, concerts, opera, and some galleries were allowed to continue but were required to include some German music and plays. The German military often filled so many seats at events that ordinary French people couldn’t get a ticket. Some publishing was allowed but censored. The idea was to get the people used to German music, values, and ideas through the cultural venues so they would experience how superior Germans were.

There were French people who collaborated with the Germans, some were fascists, some were just afraid. There were people who kept quiet and tried to live so they wouldn’t be noticed, because the Gestapo were arresting men and deporting them to Germany as workers to produce arms and whatever the German military needed to keep going.

And there were the resisters who were working secretly to sabotage German operations in France, squirreling away equipment, guns, and ammo to be used once the Allies invaded and came to their aide.

Where do I see similarities to today? Our culture has been hi-jacked with all the glorification of violence, our music is loaded with filth’ or not even understandable, and I certainly can’t sing along with it.

My local newspaper has been bought out several times and now there is virtually nothing in it but COVID articles, speculation on what our president might do, and maybe one local photo item. Very little about what is going on in the rest of the world.

Personally, since when is it Google’s business to send my emails to spam instead of the in-box, and label them with bright red warnings not to open them because they are dangerous?

My favorite sentence in “The Shameful Peace” is on page 68: “People who think for themselves are a nuisance to any government.” If ever there was a time for us to be a nuisance to government, national and state wide, it is now.

Don’t believe everything you hear and read.

Think for yourself.

 

 

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Ready to Celebrate the 4th

Ready to Celebrate the 4th

The Red, While, and Blue

I have had an American Flag flying on the front of my house since I moved in, in May of 1997.

About three years ago, I saw a class offered that looked like fun, at one of those week-long art workshops that has many classes. I wanted to take that class, but it was at the opposite end of the week from the class I was mainly going for. Too expensive to stay away from home for a whole week. I did print out the photo from the online brochure of the finished product – a flag decorated with ribbons.

That photo joined my long list of “some-day-maybe” projects.

With the sewing machine open and ready last week, I decided it was time to do this project. I had a faded flag in the garage waiting for a second life. It was one of those projects that feels like “where to begin?” The obvious place was to go through my sewing and craft stash, gathering red and white ribbons and lace.

Once I got started it came together quickly. I pinned the ends of ribbons to a wide stiff floral ribbon with the flag underneath to get the spacing correct. Stitching across the ribbon ends was surprisingly easy.

I stitched the whole band onto the flag, and covered it with a gold ribbon across the ends for a finished look.

Ribbon Flag

While sewing, I thought about where I would hang this flag. I considered the front of the garage, but decided that might be a mistake if I wanted to open the garage door.

Sitting on the patio the evening I had finished sewing, I noticed a large section of wall with no window. I can see this wall from inside my studio. Perfect.

I’m ready to Celebrate the Fourth with my best friend, Robert, eating on the patio and watching the neighbors all around us shooting fireworks.

Flag with fountain on patio

Have fun, but be safe and careful. And remember we are celebrating that we the people have a nation – all of it.  And together, we can make it better.

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Focusing on What Delights Us

Focusing on What Delights Us

I just noticed another month has evaporated since I last wrote a blog. Where have I been? inside, outside, and eating fruit. My strawberries are still producing nice, good size berries, my refrigerator has a tray of plums from my tree, and the white nectarines are just about ready to come off their tree.

Strawberries ready to be picked

Outside I’m still cleaning up debris from my huge sycamore tree, which is now in the stage of shedding bark, huge pieces of it. The ivy beds around the house have gone into their normal overdrive to cover every inch of ground, and I’m cutting them back as quickly as I can. But this week will do little of that due to near 100 degree heat each day.

Leader of our mixed-media group

Last week, the mixed media group that normally meets twice a month in a member’s home, but has not met since March 5th, had our meeting in my yard. There were six of us and we spent the time catching up with each other, and having show and tell with the art we have been making. It was so wonderful to see my friends. Perhaps at our next meeting we will find time to make a little art together.

Mixed-media group meeting in my yard

After participating in two online collage workshops in April and May, I decided to take a break and attend to some household activities that had been waiting for my attention.

I had a lightweight summer jacket that I like to wear in the morning when the house is cool which was shredding apart. I drew a pattern from that jacket and made a replacement. Since the sewing machine was open, I noticed some other items that could use some attention.

I’ve discovered that as I get older my clothes don’t always fit the same way they did before, or maybe I’m just not willing to put up with things that aren’t comfortable. I have two other lightweight jackets that I used to wear to work, but now the sleeves were constantly sliding down my arms and getting in my way. They must have come from that fashion statement where women had their jacket sleeves pushed up and bunched up by their elbows. I never did understand that.

So, I shortened the sleeves to suit me now. And so it went, altering those clothes I had put on in the morning and by the time breakfast was over I was changing into other garments for one reason or another.

The sewing project I’m most delighted with is a bit of an archeological rescue. Years ago when I was moving my mother, she mentioned that in her cedar chest were some things my paternal grandmother had made. When I had to sort out her belongings, I looked at them briefly and saw they looked like quilts. A year ago, when I was donating clothing I never wore, I looked at them more closely, but didn’t know what to do with them. They were quilt tops, with unfinished undersides. I put one of them at that top of the cedar chest, in case I got an idea of how to use it.

One section of my grandmother’s quilt top

In the hot summer months, I like to use a bed cover that is light weight, rather than the comforter I use all winter. I took a queen size flat sheet that I had not used much, which was a few inches larger that the quilt top, and sewed them together on the edges to protect the unfinished edges on the backside of the quilt.

Grandmother’s quilt with sheet backing on my bed

One of my fond childhood memories was studying a heavy quilt this grandmother had made, seeing all the different fabrics she used and repeated randomly in different blocks. Now I’m doing that again, searching for matching fabrics in different circles. Such simple things that engage and delight us.

I do hope that in the midst of the craziness around us, you are finding things that engage and delight you. Be careful and stay well.

 

 

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Keeping Busy

Keeping Busy

Bougainvillea along my driveway

This is always my busiest time of the year in the garden. While I’m cleaning up weeds and tall grasses that came up in February, and then dried out in our first hot week, I’m also harvesting spring and early summer fruit.

Strawberries ready to be picked

I’ve been picking luscious strawberries all month. The plants are doing much better this year than last year, possibly because we have been alternating a warm week, then a cool week in March and April. They are doing so well that on the Holiday Monday, I spent a chunk of time freezing berries to enjoy next winter.

Harvested last week from my yard

I’ve been doing this for many years. I rinse the berries, cut them into bite size pieces and place them on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. This goes into the freezer in the kitchen for an hour or two, after which I scoop the frozen pieces into freezer containers and place them in my larger freezer. With this method, they don’t stick together. I can take out just enough for my breakfast granola each morning.

Strawberries cut and ready to freeze

I also have what I call black berries, but are probably black raspberries, which started ripening last week. We are scheduled to have three days of 100+ heat starting Tuesday, so they will ripen quickly.

Black raspberries starting to ripen

The apricot tree in the very back of my yard was loaded with fruit which began ripening two weeks ago. Fortunately, they are not all ripening at once. There were so many apricots on the tree, I invited my neighbors across the street to come and pick some about a week ago.

Apricots on low branches of tree

I usually have to fight the squirrels for the cots, but this year I’m not seeing as many of those rascals. They must have relocated across the street because my neighbor said he has a lot of them in his yard.

Those tomato plants I wrote about last time need to be planted in the ground, but I’m having a sprinkler problem, which hopefully will be resolved by the time you read this, and I didn’t want to transplant them right before the hot weather this week.

Tomato plants ready to plant in ground after hot spell

With all this going on outdoors, I’ve spent very little time making art. Crystal Neubauer had a second online collage workshop which included journaling. It ran from the end of April to the middle of May. We had assignments between the classes and we were also given “Prompts” to generate ideas for collages.

“Fifty Shades of White”

The prompt that I think came out the best was “Fifty Shades of White.” I have a lot of old paper: a few sheets from various reams of old typing and computer paper, old stationary, receipts, doilies, wallpaper samples, and old books. I glued them to a black substrate.

After the workshop, I cleaned up the work tables in my studio and set up one area so I could do a quick 5” x 5” collage each day. Ha! Haven’t gotten to it yet. The yard work and fruit processing are taking all my time and energy.

Milkweed for the butterflies

On Memorial Day, I made apricot cobbler and ate dinner outside on the patio with Robert, who was grilling burgers, just like normal. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying creative activities.

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A Series of Nine x 2

A Series of Nine x 2

Close up Dried Flax Leaf

One of the mottoes I chose for this year, long before any of us knew what this year would be like, was “use what you have.” Months ago, when things were “normal” I was working through a Jeanne Oliver online class called Wild Awakening which got me using supplies I had but didn’t know what to do with. Last week I was trying to finish up a series of nine mixed media pieces from that class, before I started another online workshop.

3 of 9

The nine items were pretty much done, but the watercolor paper had rippled and they needed to be mounted on something. I considered using stretched canvas but I would have to order them and my pages were 11in. x 14.5 in. not the standard 11 x 14. So, I went through my house and the backyard storage building, and found a half box of those storage boxes you get at office supply for file folders. The lids were the right weight of cardboard and there were nine of them.

3 more of 9

After trimming them to size, I still had the problem of how to hang them. I had come across some old wooden blind slats while searching for the cardboard. The slats had holes in them for the cords. I trimmed them so the hole would be in the center and they would be an inch wider than the 11 in. paper.

Close up of hanging bar

I used waxed linen on either side of the slat, tied an overhand knot, and left the cords three inches long which was inserted between the paper and the cardboard when I glued them together.

The rest of the 9

I put weight on each piece for two days, hoping to keep them flat, but the gluing wasn’t perfect. I inserted glue into the blips along the edges and clipped them with clothes pins to dry overnight.

Closeup of dried flax leaf

Once these nine pages were mounted, I added a dried-up flax leaf to each one. I had trimmed the New Zealand Flax plant two weeks ago and I’m fascinated how some of these leaves bunch up in the center, each one slightly different.

Series of 9 in living room

I lined up all nine on the living room floor so I could see what they looked like.

 

Meanwhile, I had cleaned out my drawer where I keep seed packets and found some heirloom tomato seeds, I had saved on paper towels, probably about six years ago. On a whim, I planted a few from each towel in small cups. To my delight, some of them sprouted.

Tomato seeds sprout

By last Friday, the tomato plants needed to be put into larger pots. I searched in the garage and tool shed for some bigger pots, but I haven’t saved any pots when I buy plants the last few years because I haven’t been starting seeds. It didn’t seem worth the effort for the return I was getting.

Then, I remembered I had seen the neighbor across the street planting something from small pots earlier in the week. I called them and asked if they had nine pots I could use. His wife brought them over to me and we had a short visit at the curb.

Tomato plants in bigger pots yesterday

I know it is late to be starting tomato plants, but it stays warm until October or later where I live.

Now, if I can devise a way to keep the squirrels from stealing my almost ripe strawberries . . .

This is a really good time to creatively use what you already have – we are all inventors.

 

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Using Mini-Collage to Get Inside Your Mind

Using Mini-Collage to Get Inside Your Mind

Collage made in January 2020

In January, I set up a drawing board with supplies to make a series of small 5.5 in x 5.5 in. collages, with the hope I would make one a day if I wasn’t working on a larger piece of art. The first one is the photo above. I had done some of these several years ago and enjoyed the activity.

I started cleaning up the yard and working on organizing my shell collection, so I managed to make the great sum of two mini-collages by mid-March.

When the collage artist, Crystal Neubauer, offered a free online workshop beginning the last day in March, I decided to participate, hoping to get myself making some kind of art, as I began to switch from winter cleanup to spot weeding and enjoying the first flowers in my yard.

Crystal had us working on 4 x 4-inch watercolor paper, and assembling one from a pile of scrap papers in, Gasp! five minutes. My first one did not get done in five minutes, but I think it does reflect our national state of mind on April first.

4 x 4-inch collage April 1, 2020

Her videos are archived, so I was viewing them the next day. In the second session, we were to use only neutral colors.

4×4-inch neutrals collage
Neutral collage lesson 2

On the third lesson, we were to paste up two during the five minutes. The idea is to quickly select the scrap we are most drawn to and glue it somewhere in the square, then add other scraps that catch our attention to fill the space. These 4 x 4’s I used had some splotches of paint on them from some old work, and I glued the scraps so that some of the paint color was seen.

4×4 inch collage with under lying paint

I still wasn’t able to do them in the five-minute time because I was using very small pieces. I noticed that I started by gluing a scrap I liked at an angle to the edges which left me with small white spaces that needed to be filled. But Crystal usually used only three or four pieces and filled up the corners first.

Lesson 3 second collage

The next lesson she talked about using some mark making on the pieces to add interest. We did a 4 x 4 as a warm up.

Warm-up 4×4-inch collage lesson 4.

Then we were to make a collage on 8 x 8-inches, using only three large pieces, again in five minutes. Mine turned out so awful I won’t even take a photo of it. Again, I had put things at angles to the edges and they didn’t connect in the center.

During all these sessions, Crystal was telling us to pay attention to the voices in our head that were saying things like “don’t use THAT piece, it’s too special, save it for later.”

The last video is where we slowed things down. Before the lesson we planned out what we wanted to use in an 8 x 8-inch, but didn’t glue. We looked at it in the next lesson before we glued it down, to see if we still liked it or wanted to change something.

8×8-inch collage glued in lesson 5.

I’m still thinking about what I’ve learned about my usual approach to art making. One idea this workshop generated is that I don’t have a ready selection of neutral papers to use for collage so that the accent or “special” material can really stand out. Gathering a box of neutral papers is a good place for me to start, because my collage box is loaded with the accent pieces.

I have also become more aware that I have a huge variety of materials to use all over my house. Estate sale finds, fabric scraps, shell fragments, rusty yard finds, lace, paper, old books, and basket making materials to name a few, but I have trouble focusing on what is inside my consciousness that wants to be given expression.

Crystal’s free online workshop is still available for another week or so if you want to check it out at Crystal Marie: Canary Rising here.

 

 

 

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Hush

Hush

Tulips along a path

Where have I been?  At home, of course.

I have just spent the first three months of this year / decade getting my yard cleaned up from last fall. While my energy is much better this year than it was last year, I find that everything takes more time than it used to. Some of this is because I’m moving slower, being careful how I move about, so I stay upright.

Lavender and freeway daisy

I’m so thankful for my lovely flowers all blooming now – a perfect place to be when I can’t be anywhere else. Having been here for 23 years, I’m watching each tree and plant put on its spring finery, one after the other, in perfect order, just as they have in previous years.

Lithora

It occurred to me last week that perhaps our Father in heaven has grown tired of our noise and nonsense, and lowered the volume. I’m not suggesting that God is responsible for the virus, but like many of His creatures, He never lets an opportunity go to waste.

This idea came to me as I noticed last week that my house phone was silent after years of constant daily robo calls. The junk mail has mostly stopped. I don’t watch TV, so perhaps your home is not as quiet as mine.

And it’s not just in the U.S. that life had become frantic. Although we barely hear anything about the rest of the world, Israel can’t get a government together, Venezuela is a disaster, Great Britain is tied up in knots, and everywhere there is unrest and uncertainty.

Tritonia

After I got home from Florida last summer at the end of June, I’ve been mostly at home, so my days now are not much different than they have been the last nine months. When I considered travel for this year, none of the gatherings I might attend were in places I wanted to go. I registered for a weekend with the basket makers in Visalia, but we’ll do it next year instead of this month.

I spent August and September cutting back a wall of ivy that I had neglected for too many years. I reorganized closets and drawers, donating clothes and household linens I no longer used.

Felicia

I have a whole set of new routines that take up my time. Near the end of 2019, my dentist told me I had a gum infection. I have had crummy teeth since I was six years old. Seventy years later, I only have front teeth left and the uppers and lowers don’t come together in a useful way, which limits what I’m able to eat.

My dentist, bless her, is trying to make things better. She removed the tooth which was the source of the infection, and has installed braces on my lower teeth. Braces are different now than they were when I was fifteen. I’m spending a huge amount of time putting on wax to minimize pain on my lip, removing wax, cleaning up residue from the wax, and threading floss between the wires.

I’ve been using gummy vitamins for several years now. After the arch wire slipped out of the bracket on the end tooth, I decided I shouldn’t eat them, at least not whole, so now I’m cutting them up in teeny, tiny pieces every day with the kitchen scissors.

Don’t know this bulb’s name

When I’m not in the yard or dealing with my teeth, I’ve been reorganizing the sea shells that I have collected for over fifty years. I’ve started reading those books that I keep saying, “I’ll get to someday”.

I had planned to work in my studio this winter when it rained, but it didn’t rain. So, I’m still trying to balance the yard time with the art making time, and so far, the yard is winning. The one thing I’m missing is meeting with my mixed media friends twice a month.

More daises

Individually and collectively we have been given an opportunity to reflect on what our lives have become, what we truly value now, and how we might want to make some adjustments. Let’s not waste it.

Tulips my grandson helped me plant years ago
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Giving an Interview, Gaining an Insight

Giving an Interview, Gaining an Insight

Last week I had the opportunity to be a participant in a research study being done by a graduate art therapy student at Notre Dame in Belmont. She is asking people who now have, or have had, a parent who developed dementia to explore how their identity may have changed during the time they were caring for them.

She sent me a package of supplies to make a collage, (not that I needed any supplies), but to have some consistency in size for the participants. As she interviewed me, I worked on the collage. We did this interview on FaceTime, so neither of us had to travel. I had about a week to prepare; to copy some photos, and find some words.

I thought about how my emotions and sense of self changed as my mother and I went through stages of change in her cognitive function from my not realizing what was going on with her, to seeing her not caring about how she looked, to bossing her peers about their behavior, to being called “you old bag” one morning before breakfast.

Calls me an “old bag” before breakfast.

I found it odd that I was struggling to remember dates when certain things happened, when they had been crystal clear while I was writing my book a little over two years ago. I made some notes with dates so I could answer questions I might be asked.

I didn’t quite know what to expect. I found that I couldn’t talk about my experiences and focus on the collage at the same time. I would stop arranging and gluing if I was talking, or I would stop talking if I was placing images in the collage.

I started in the upper left corner with photos of my parents and me as a baby, and as a three-year-old. I added a woman’s hands knitting and handicraft images because my mother enjoyed those activities all her life.

Marilyn with her parents as a baby and at 3 years

I noted that at the time my mother started not paying her bills and not remembering to go to lunch, I was becoming ill as well and didn’t realize it.

There is a photo of her with her young great-granddaughters, me and my son. A photo of her holding my cat during the ten weeks I had her living with me before she fell and broke her hip.

Mother with Tommy

The stages sort of move in a clock-wise manner until the last image is of her 95th birthday, her last, at the nursing home where she lived because she was no longer able to get in and out of bed or use the bathroom without assistance.

The collage is not as well done as I had intended, but the overall feel of it is how that time felt to me. Chaotic, thrown together as best as I could. The red background represents the underlying emotion in my life as a child, and as an adult.

The bright pink pointed area is about the time she was living at my home when I couldn’t allow my anger to be expressed even as I observed her, through a window from the garden, going through my clothing and jewelry, and found the lipstick from my purse smeared all over its case.

Full collage from interview

After my mother died at the very end of 2010, I began to read about Adult Attachment from some books I happened to see at the UOP Library where I was working. In 2012, I worked with a book by Ruth King titled “Healing Rage”. Sometime after that I started writing my memoir, Looking for Connection.

In the process of reviewing the relationship I had with my mother and dealing with her as she could no longer take care of her affairs, and eventually herself, and explaining all this to another person I had never met, I became aware that I haven’t been ruminating about all those past events anymore. The underlying well of anger is gone. Does this mean that I never get angry now? No, I sometimes feel irritated and angry about things that happen, but it’s not a constant thing, waiting to erupt.

It is an amazing sensation to be standing in my kitchen making breakfast and notice that I am smiling and feeling happy.

Thank you, Lord, for your healing grace.

In my garden this week.

Meanwhile, my garden is waking up and things are blooming even though I’m still cleaning up piles of leaves from last fall.

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