Yes, I am painting.
Most of the hours of most of the days.
But the apprentice has lately been insisting on beauty breaks…
And, after the winter of discontent that we all shivered through, I am taking deep breaths of every single blooming flower in my garden..
My beloved Beach Rose and irises and even the daisy that always reminds me of J O’H
and, with a cart full of color, and a pair of sturdy gloves
I am taking full advantage of every single space between the brushes
to get outside and work in the dirt.
Herself chuckles and grins as she reminds me of the day,
sometime in mid-January,
when I hung my winter weary head
and swore I was not going to do ANY gardening this year.
Certainly no new plants, and definitely not the heavy lifting of the vegetable beds.
No, I was going to keep that head down low and focus focus focus on the paintings.
And right up until about March I was right on track with that dark pledge and doing fine.
Then some plague germs bullied their way into the studio and I spent the next few months crawling out of a very deep hole of un-health. (Spell check didn’t like that last hyphen and neither did I.) Which has thrown some curve balls of perspective at me.
BUT… the veil has lifted.
(Insert a choir of angels here please)
and all verdant bets are off…
Life is so damned short and…
you simply can’t keep a gardener’s soul from a wheelbarrow filled with marigolds…
And then there are those newly revised beds that I dreamed of through the wintery gauze of tissues…
and the annex to the asparagus bed that wants to try growing some beans this year…
Everywhere I look there are things growing…
And chairs that call to sit a spell…
or swing…
And so yes, I am painting, but I am also living large in the tiny corner of the planet that we are taming. And, when the brushes begin to whine, I settle back into my chair at the easel with a tiny token of the garden wonders to temp the muses…
May your paths be filled with clover
and strewn with beach rose petals…
now go out there and grab a trowel.
