My Picture Of The Day
Maria Wulf Full Moon Fiber Art
Rainbows and Apples
I was cutting up apples when the kitchen window glowed eerie with yellow light. The rain had stopped so I knew there was a good chance there would be a rainbow.
It stretched over the farm, one end fading into the tree line of the back pasture, the other somewhere over our neighbors property.
I let the sheep and donkeys out to graze and took some pictures while watching the colors soften and brighten, a double rainbow appearing and disappearing more than once.
On the way back to the house, I heard another apple fall from the big old Macintosh tree. The tree may have lost one of her limbs this spring, and the apples are much smaller than last year, but there are still plenty falling.
Most are heavily bruised, pecked by the chickens, eaten by the donkeys, sheep, dogs bees, ants and slugs, or just rotting in the ground.
But I salvaged a small bowl full to make into apple sauce. Just enough to use in two batches of muffins. Which I still haven’t made, so I’ll probably freeze the apple sauce until next weekend.
Looking For Mushroom and Finding A Nest
I’ve been taking pictures of mushrooms in the woods for three or four years, but it’s only this year that I realized how plentiful they are in the last summer, especially after a good rain.
I saw so many mushrooms when I took a walking meditation on Friday. Today I went back, with my camera, thought the woods behind the farm to the Old Ice Road to take their pictures.
Many of the mushrooms I saw two days ago had been eaten. ( I wonder what the mushroom above will look like after the slug has moved on.)
Others had been toppled, maybe by animals knocking them down as they walked by. (I’ve seen Zinnia do that more than once). I took a picture of the mushroom above on Friday….
…this is what it looked like today. Still beautiful with that lovely curl and feathery texture.
Maybe it was the bear who left this print in the mud (next to the tire marks of an ATV), who knocked over the mushroom. The bear print was as big as my hand.
There were many mushroom that looked as if they had popped up overnight, pushing the leaves and twigs above them out of the way as they grew.
I wasn’t surprised to see the mushrooms, but I could hardly believe seeing the nest in the ground right next to the deer tail off the Old Ice Road.
I must have passed it so many times this summer without seeing it. The nest looked as if it was growing right out of the ground. The sides built of chunks of rotting wood and leaves (that I could see) and the center, a swirl of pine needles about the size of a tennis ball.
I don’t know whose nest it is. I’ve never seen one like it.
If anyone reading this has any ideas, I’d love to know what you think.
My Picture Of The Day
Home From A Walk In The Woods
Scrap Box Potholders….
I reminded myself of the dragonfly when I went into my studio this morning. The one that I saw, sleeping on the Shagbark Hickory. How the path I took in the woods this morning led me right to it.
A symbol of transformation and adaptability.
It’s a good explanation of how for the second day, I walked around my studio not knowing what to do.
Well, I thought, I can walk around my studio all day trying this and trying that, or I can just start sewing some fabric together.
I’d rather be doing than thinking about doing, so I emptied my box of fabric scraps onto my studio floor and began moving them around.
When I got tried of not getting anything done, I picked two pieces of fabric and sewed them together.
Then I just kept at it.
At the end of the day I had the beginnings of ten Scrap Box Potholders and less of a mess on my floor.
These are my Scrap Box Potholders in the order that I made them. An eclectic bunch of individuals. I’ll finished them up next week and the put them up for sale in my Etsy Shop.
Myself In The WolfPine
It’s memories that plague me as I walk in the woods. My brain regurgitating past hurts and harms done to and by me.
I remind myself that reality is what is in front of me at the moment.
That I am as much a part of the earth as the trees, ferns and mushrooms surrounding me,
as much as the rotting leaves and soil under my feet.
The Wolfpine towers over me
I think…
“that’s me”
Split in half,
damaged yet thriving.
The dead side,
home to squirrels, owls and spiders
shelter and a place to roost for the passing bird
food for the ants and beetles.
The living side,
tumbling upwards,
toward the possibility of open sky
and the nourishing sun.
My Picture Of The Day
KittyAnne and the Swan
Dogs In My Studio
Bud is usually busy working, chasing squirrels and chipmunks when I’m working in my studio. But every once in a while he comes inside, where both Fate and Zinnia often are. Mostly he sits in the doorway to make sure he doesn’t miss anything while Fate and Zinnia are sleeping.
Today he and Zinnia sat together. When a firetruck went by all three dogs ran outside. Fate and Bud howling like wild things with the siren.
Bud was too far away for me to see, but I watched as Fate stood, ears flat out listening. It was as if she was waiting for something she heard in the siren to touch something deep inside, an invitation to join in.
Like when jumping rope, when two other people are turning the rope. Waiting for just the right moment to jump in.
The Coneflower Girl
I saw the girl in the cornflower stalks, from this summers flowers, while I was meditating on the back porch. There she was made of long dried flower stems and curling leaves.
Her hair was pulled back in a braid, she had a flower on her dress, stilts for legs and twigs for arms.The coneflower girl moved, shifting in and out of herself, when the wind blew, but always swayed back again, like a tree, on her long legs.
That’s what I wrote on my blog on December 31st of last year. On the same day I started creating my Coneflower Girl.
Since then she’s been hanging on my studio wall, waiting.
The images of the Coneflower Girl as herself and as a child in the birdcage under the stoop, one of my imaginary friends when I was a kid, were already done. So was the first sentence of the story, stitched in blue and red. The only other thing there, was the painted petals of the coneflowers.
Today I walked around my studio wondering what I would do next. I fussed with some fabric, thinking of potholders, emptied bags of scarps wondering why they didn’t inspire me.
Nothing was working.
At noon, I looked at the Coneflower girl and decided it was the day to figure out the rest of the story and stitch it on the old quilt backing.
It was obviously what I was supposed to be doing, I know because it came so easy.
The words flowed as I wrote them down and when I stitched them. Stitching the coneflowers was a joy.
I stitched my Coneflower Girl to look like the girl I saw in the stalks of the coneflowers that December morning. I braided wool from my sheep Lori to make her arms and those legs that will carry her where ever she wants to go.
This is such a personal story I’m not sure if it speaks to anyone other than myself. I’m not sure what happens with it next.
