“Who needs a telephone? This (he took a pinch of tobacco from a pouch) is my communication. Better than any telephone. Telephone carries your voice around the earth, not up to the Creator. You don’t need a telephone to talk to the Creator. When we want to talk to the Creator we burn tobacco and it takes our prayers all the way up to the Sky World. What telephone can do that?” ~ Louis Farmer, Onondaga Nation
C.P. McDill and I made a rare visit to the city for gallery hopping and window shopping. We strolled from the Commons through the Public Garden and down the full length of Newbury Street, stopping to admire the hand carved cabinets of Jenna Goldberg and the incomparable paintings of Goxwa at Axelle. We wandered through the exhaustive maze of allotments at Fenway Victory Gardens working up an appetite for the amazing Thai cuisine we had for dinner. We ended the evening by winding up the main street, returning to the Commons in time for sunset on the pond and a carousel ride. It was a perfectly lovely day capped off by reading many generous blessings and good wishes for which I am thankful.
Photographs, of course, do not do Goxwa’s work justice. There is so much light in these paintings. I recommend that anyone near Boston visit her solo show at Axelle Gallery on Newbury Street. These are just details taken with a digital. The full compositions have more impact.
Lost in the limbo land between buying and selling a home. It seems as if all we’ve done this spring and summer is work on one or the other house or garden and move objects between them. Cats are confused. I am exhausted. The blog has been neglected. I’ve been painting walls and longing to paint again from a palette rather than a can. I am excited to move into my new home though and I love it madly even though it’s stolen all of my time. The most challenging and emotional part of all this has been moving the gardens, deciding which plants to keep and which to leave and where they go and all that jazz. These photos were taken last week at the beach house garden. Everything has changed dramatically again. Faded irises have given way to an explosion of daisies, coreopsis, and foxglove. So much inspiration. So little time.
A near perfect day this All Souls. Morning in the garden, afternoon in the cave, and evening by the firelight in the night around a lovingly prepared feast in honor of the ancestors and all loved ones who have passed over. The weather was perfect, cool crisp dry air and not too windy, with a bright almost full moon shining in a clear sky. C.P. McDill worked on the timber wall along our property’s edge. I gathered leaves and spent plants for the compost, planted more garlic and lettuces, took apart the outside plant nursery and moved all the potted thingies within to the sun shed for over wintering. For All Hallow’s Eve, we did a little beneficent mischief and settled by the fire to watch a spooky movie. Alas, no little tricksters made their way to the cottage so C.P. had to eat all the treats.
Gnome and nastursiums…
…and bees
Potted thingies inside the sun shed.
Lovingly bundled sage waiting to be hung up.
The spiral path is overgrown and bursting with color.
