Maria Wulf Full Moon Fiber Art

I took a break from gardening when our friends Kitty and Charlie came for lunch and to pick up more donkey manure (in that order).  Yesterday we sat outside visiting with our friend Jackie and today Kitty and Charlie came with a picnic lunch for themselves while Jon and I ate some of the food we got at the Farmers Market.

Somehow it didn’t even seem strange that they brought their own lunch, we were just glad to be sitting around together talking.

After they left I got to work on the back porch garden.

On June 10th the company who is installing our solar panels are coming and they’ll be digging a trench through one of my small gardens.  So I dug up the plants and moved them to my back porch garden.

Then I brought my potted fig tree up from it’s winter home in the basement.  I decided to put it in the garden this year.  And I had the perfect place for it.  Right where the cats have been peeing all spring.

I tried to fill in every empty space in the garden with plants or rocks so they wouldn’t just find another place to call their own.  I planted some zinnia and marigold seeds around the pansies and in a few places I planted seeds and laid chickenwire over them so the cats won’t dig them up.

I have my fingers crossed.

I still have to put the dahlia’s in and work on the wildflower garden.  But I feel good about the work I did today and now can’t wait to do some more.

Somehow the hens knew what was under the hay and cardboard that covered a layer of donkey manure in my garden all winter.  They could probably smell the big juicy worms.

And there were a lot of them.  In each pitchfork of rich black soil I turned, there two or three of them obviously annoyed at being disturbed. But they continued to do their good work.

And my work was so much easier than in years before.  There were just a few determined weeds popping up.

I will be putting my garden to bed in the same way next fall.

I always wait until the end of May to plant my garden but I actually didn’t realize it was Memorial Day weekend till Friday.  I was having a hard time getting excited about planting my garden this year.   I’m not sure why, I just wasn’t’ feeling it.

Jon suggested I just plant wildflowers. And I liked that idea, but then I looked at some of the seeds I had.

Marsha sent me some of her favorite beans.  I also had some pumpkin and sweetpea seeds besides some flower seeds that I bought.

When I read the note from Marsha saying that the beans liked to climb, I immediately imagined the trellis in my garden.  In my mind I scanned the barn trying to come up with something I could use.  That’s when I remembered the rebar grid I saved from one of the old barn gates that Ed Gully refashioned for us.

The rest of the gate was long gone, but the rebar grid was still in the barn.

After putting it up using two metal posts, I thought of the leftover fencing wire from when we had the new barn gates made.  So I used that to make two more trellises’ for the beans and peas to climb up.

That and the gorgeous soil was all it took for me to get excited about my garden.

At the farmers market (which I’m happy to say is open)  I got a couple of cherry tomato plants, one zucchini plant, one yellow squash plant,  a six pack of kale, one morning glory and one nasturtium.

I lined the back of the fence with Marsha’s Hollyhock seeds and the morning glory plant.  Then I put in some sunflowers and marigold seeds, and the pumpkin seeds.

In my mind the garden is as much a sculpture as it is a garden. I’m looking forward to watching it grow and change.

“You’ve got to make that into a magnet,” Jon said when I showed him the picture of my latest thread drawing on my Corona Kimono.

We were sitting on the back porch eating lunch, and I didn’t even think twice, I just got on my computer and ordered 100 five-inch magnets from Sticker Mule (they make it much too easy).

Because they’re bigger and cost more to make, they’ll be $7 each.  I should have them by next week and when I do I’ll put them up for sale in my Etsy Shop with all my other magnets.

(If you don’t like to shop online, you can always email me if you see something you like in my Etsy Shop or on my blog. )

We seem to slip so easily into the traditional gender roles of breadwinner and housekeeper.  So many men still earn more than women.  And even if they don’t so often the woman in a relationship still takes on the brunt of the housework and childcare.

There are articles about it, but I’m seeing it in the people around me. “I’m doing the cooking, cleaning and shopping” several women friends have told me.  Some are also homeschooling and working during the coronavirus lockdown too.  Others have lost their work.

I don’t know which is worse. To have to work on top of it all or to lose that work that for some many women I know is an important part of their identity.

When something like the coronavirus invades our lives, we do what we have to and are grateful that we and the people we love are healthy.  But it’s as if so many women I know have taken a step back in time falling away from themselves and the things that fulfill them into a time when women were dependent on men for certain kinds of security.

We’ve experienced this before.  Throughout history women have rocked back and forth between dependence and independence to greater or lesser degrees.

From what I can see, each time we come back stronger.  Evolution is a slow process that I trust.  But it’s not so easy when you’re one the other side of it.

I walked into the office/guestroom to get my colored pencils when I saw the shadow of the curtain blowing in the wind on the floor.

I ran back to my studio to get my iPhone.  Shadows are constantly changing and never last long.

This is one Thirty Second Meditation that I wish lasted longer(as long as I actually watched the shadow at least).  I love the way the shadow moves and its fuzzy outline so much I could just keep looking at it.