The ironing board in my studio with the fabric and tools I’m using to work on my Bird and Tree fabric painting.
Maria Wulf Full Moon Fiber Art
Fanny and Lulu, Back To The Barn
Time For Friends
“Like you, I HAVE good friends, and they help me BE a good friend. Funny how that works!” Jill left this message on my blog after buying “Happy” magnets for her friends.
There have been times in my life where I was actively looking for friends. When I was younger, but also as an adult. When Jon and I moved to Cambridge from Hebron, which is only 15 minutes away but a whole different reality, one of the things I was looking for was community.
I used to think that there was only one kind of friend. The friend who knew me so well we were like sisters. And that they would be there forever.
In community I found that there are all kinds of friends.
I have a friend who I see whenever I go to our Co-op and she is working which is several times a week. I have friends who I never see and only text or email. I have friends who I dance with, friends I Zoom with, friends I have tea or dinner with. Friends I walk with and one friend who I have been having lunch with regularly for almost 15 years.
She is my oldest friend.
Not as long a friendship as many people have. But I feel like our friendship has the depth of a childhood friend even if it doesn’t have the years.
I have had good friends over the years, they just didn’t last a lifetime. I changed so much when I got divorced I gave up all the friends I had, or they gave me up.
I have grown my friendships over the past 15 years.
I work at keeping in touch and making time for my friends. I am constantly learning to accept them for who they are. I also understand that friendships, like most things in life, ebb and flow. There are times when I connect more easily to one friend than another. I understand now that this is just the way of friendship.
Yesterday I had lunch with my oldest friend, Mandy. We met at her house as we do every other Monday. I’ll heat up my soup on her stove and bring something sweet for us to share. Mandy makes me tea and we sit at her dining room table and talk for two hours.
Today I went to visit my friend Emily.
Emily and I have been dancing together every Wednesday night for over six years, but we really became friends during Covid when we would have a Zoom Studio Visit with each other every week.
We don’t do studio visits anymore, but the bond between us is real and strong. We still talk art and Emily was as eager to show me the collages she is making in preparation for a show at the Pownal Library in July, as I was to see them.
Today we sat under an umbrella on Emily deck and ate her homemade sourdough bread with cheese and olives, then lemon pound cake with fruit for dessert.
I told her about my Bird and Tree fabric painting and in conversation realized that I needed to bring more life, more color to the piece. It was just this morning, when I woke up, that I understood that the piece is really about all the life there is in a dying tree.
As Emily and talked, I could see the leaves stitched at the bottom of the piece, and the purples and blues in my black bird.
When we finished eating we walked through Emily yard which is filled with gardens, some flowering and other getting ready to bloom. I dug up a few sprigs of sedum to bring home.
In my mind I imagined getting up early and doing some work in my studio before going to Emily’s house. Or that I’d have time to work when I got home. But I think even I knew, somewhere inside of me, how unrealistic that is.
What I’m saying is that it’s important to me to make time for my friends.
It’s too easy to be too busy all the time. I feel like after more than ten years of being self-employed, I’m finally learning how to take a day off. Not just for the emergencies that happen in life, but for the good things too. The nourishing things like time with friends.
That’s what I did today. And even though I have some ghost pangs of guilt and a twinge of fear, I wouldn’t change one thing about the day.
The North Pasture
Fate is joyfully running around the sheep on this cool spring morning. The sheep are grazing in the north pasture with the farmhouse, my studio and the barn behind them.
The maple on the right, with lots of dead branches yet still sprouting leaves is the one that inspired my new fabric painting.
It’s one of the trees I see out my studio window as I sit here writing this.
Still Life From My Studio
I don’t know what inspired me. Maybe it was the change in the light. But suddenly everything in my studio looked like some worthy of taking a picture of.
I’ll post all the photo’s I took in the next few days and keep posting them if I decide to take more.
Above is one of my first practice “Flying Vulvas“, a stack of pink and white doilies, and yarn from one of my first sheep, Tess, that Suzy hand spun.
It all hangs next to the window and above the table in my studio where I put my laptop.
Interestingly, I feel like all the still life’s from my studio will create a Portrait of my Studio.
Sending Out My “I Have the Right to be Happy” Magnets
“I’m looking forward to giving these to college students I mentor.” Joanne wrote me. She bought ten of my “I Have the Right to be Happy” magnets.
I spent the morning sending out lots of magnets and the Potholders I made last week. I was surprised at how many people bought more than one magnet. They got them as gifts to give to people who they thought could use the message.
Jill wrote, “I counted up all the folks (meaning women) who need to be reminded of this every day and … there you go!”
And I got chills when Chantel told me… “An old friend of mine would say this to me when he knew I needed to hear it. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the magnet on your site.”
I truly believe that ideas are out there “in the air” and we pick them up when we need them most.
It was Jon who came up with the words I Have the Right to be Happy” that inspired my wallhanging then magnet. He wrote about his new mantra back in December….
“…I will always have fear inside me; it was built into my soul. But it gets smaller and less powerful all the time and no longer keeps me from living the life I want…My choices are to accept fear as a part of our lives or to be devoured and crippled by it. I am preparing for fear this year, as I have in the past. And I have a wonderful new mantra and motto: I Have A Right To Be Happy.”
For Jon the words came as an antidote to fear. And I know they ring true to each of us for our own reasons.
The idea of that I have the right to be happy came late in life for me as well. It was a matter of self-worth. Did I really deserve to be happy? Was I a good enough person, especially when so many people are suffering.
Now I am happy whenever I can be. There have been and will be plenty of times in my life when happiness will elude me. So I will grab it when I can, and am grateful for any opportunity of happiness that life offers me.
I sold more than half my “I Have the Right to be Happy” magnets this weekend. And I still have more for sale.
If you’d like one, they are 2″x3″ and are $7 each. You can buy them in my Etsy Shop, just click here. Or you can email me at [email protected]. I take PayPal, Venmo and checks.
Notes From The Barnyard, Spreading Manure While The Animals Graze
I let the sheep out to graze and fifteen minutes later they come back in the barn. The sun is hot and they’re not used to it yet.
They stand in the shade of the barn, heads hanging down, or sit breathing heavily. I can see their stomachs moving with their breath.
I’m spreading manure from the winters pile around the barnyard. I scrape the top of the pile, underneath it’s heavy and wet from all the rain. But the top layer has already dried in the sun. It’s light enough so that when I throw a shovelful on to the grass, it flies in an arch, like one of those grass seed spreaders people use on their lawns. It scatters the same way when it lands.
Now Robin gets up and slowly leaves the barn. Constance follows him, and lets out a baa which he answers. Merricat is next, then in a rush the rest of the sheep get up and they all run out to the pasture together.
The grazing donkeys flick their tails and ears. The sheep twitch their ears and shake their heads. The bugs are out with the sun.
Fate sits in the shade hopeful that I’ll tell her to “get the sheep” and Zinnia pokes around the manure, wet from a swim in the pond.
The three hens peck around the barnyard, keeping a short distance between them in an invisible triangle. Heads down, tail up. Their movements jerky and constant.
They start paying attention to where I throw the manure. It’s filled with thick reddish brown earth worms. I watch as Kitty Anne pulls a worm up from a clump of manure in a single smooth movement. She waists no time swallowing it then plucks another and moves on.
I think how good those worms are for the soil and know they are good for the chickens too.
I spread more manure and notice the arrival of butterflies. A yellow and black Swallowtail, one small white butterfly that could easily be a couple of petals from the apple tree, a pale green butterfly the same size as the white one.
I stop when the sheep come back.
I grab a couple of alfalfa treats from the barn and call to Fanny and Lulu. They come in from the pasture too, slowly chew their treats, then head for the barn.
Good Monday Morning From Bedlam Farm 5/6/24 Bud and the Donkeys
Zip In The Garden
I’m seeing that whenever I’m working in the gardens, as long as Jon isn’t around, Zip shows up. He loves the stone walls where the mice, chipmunks and snakes live.
I wish I could tell Zip which animals he’s allowed to hunt and which ones I’d rather he didn’t. But it doesn’t work that way.
Anyway, it seems to me that whenever humans try to “fix” the natural world, they usually end up making things worse.
Relaxing and The List
Pink blossoms on the highest branches and small pale leaves above our heads. Jon and I sat under the apple tree, with Fate and Zinnia lying next to us, the hens pecking at the ground nearby, and a warm breeze and bright sun.
I had a list of things to do, put flat rocks under the gate so Bud won’t be able to dig out, empty the bags of leaves around the foundation of my studio and move what’s left of the firewood into the woodshed.
But instead I sat with Jon watching Fanny and Lulu nibble at the grass.
“Lulu’s going to roll,” I said to Jon and we watched as she gingerly laid down on the circle of dusty earth and rolled on her back from one side to the other then hoisted herself up. Then it was Fanny’s turn, the dusty dirt flew up from the ground around her. When she got up, she shook her whole body in one long quiver, her dirt falling back to the ground, her dust bath complete.
We watched the Robins and Starlings scour the ground for insects. Listened to two Killdeers circle the barnyard with their distinctive cry. On landed and scurried on the ground with the quick movements of a sandpiper.
It made me think they have a nest close by.
Zip appeared in the pasture, sauntering towards us like a panther. He walked past Fanny who was too busy to pay him any attention, under the fence and into Jon’s lap. He stayed for a while dozing then woke suddenly and crept toward the stone wall where the chipmunks live.
I can’t remember being so relaxed in our own home. I wasn’t even thinking of the list of things to do. Instead I picked some of the dandelions growing around us. Jon and plucked out the petals, our fingers stained yellow, and filled a cup for dandelion tea.
That was yesterday, and this morning my list was just as long.
I don’t know if the cool temperatures and rain made it easier or harder to tackle my list. It’s not fun moving rocks in the rain, but at least I wasn’t tempted to sit under the apple tree.
I only had to move rocks for half the gate. The other half I’d done a few weeks ago. So I got out the hand truck and got to work.
The rocks seem to work (I’m knocking on wood as I write this). Bud made a few attempts to dig under the the one I put down earlier but gave up. I think it’s too long a distance to dig.
When I was done, I moved on to the bags of leaves. They did a great job insulating the foundation of my studio all winter. They kept the wind and cold air from blowing through the spaces between the rocks.
I was able to save five of the plastic bags for next year. The rest had holes in them.
I dumped the leaves around the big maple behind my studio. We don’t mow there and it’s overgrown mostly with wild mustard plants. But some nettles are beginning to grow there too.
They already grow in the barnyard, but the donkeys often eat them before I get a chance to harvest them for tea. Now there will be enough nettles for all of us.
I didn’t get to moving the firewood yet. But there’s still time for that. I don’t expect to get it all done today. I’ll work on it slowly during the week after dinner. I’ll get it done just in time to have more firewood delivered for the coming winter.
