high hopes

When our Nanking cherry burst into blossom, I thought it wouldn't be too much longer now. And when the noisy cauldron of crows (I like cauldron as their collective noun better than murder) stopped coming for morning peanuts and in their place came a most well-behaved pair of chatty lovers, I thought hmmmm, we're getting closer. And most recently and not so happily, when wasps resumed their efforts to break and enter the beehive, I knew for sure that spring is over there just beyond that cloud of cherry blossoms.

It's time to finish up some projects to make room for spring -- two knitted ballband cotton dish cloths, another round on the January moon so I can move on to February and March -- and a few art journal pages. The moon page started out with a crescent moon but it seemed to me there needed to be a woman in the moon -- my first face and a wonky shape on top of it all. The other page has a head gessoed, sanded and ready to become a face -- intimidating for sure, but I'm learning from Taking Flight just how it is a winged creature comes to life.

The cover of my collage booklet -- I like that a beginning can be anything I want. I'm still working on the rest of this early spring booklet, it just doesn't feel completely personal yet, sort of hard to do with collage, I think. The pages need paint or something that comes from me and not just from a magazine but I don't know exactly what.

See that darling girl in the cherry blossoms? Her pollen baskets are filling up, there were dozens and dozens of honeybees in this bush today. No wasps that I could see probably because they were over at the beehive trying to get in. 

Of course, it can and will still snow anytime between now and May, but my hopes are building for the coming growing season. I want to give this little piece of Earth we live on my full attention and best care. To create a harmonious space for all creatures including the humans. And I want to listen and learn from the plant spirits, I always want that. Always, always.

xx