Messengers

I feel I have always had what I call a soft spot for animals whether they are two, four, six or even eight or million legged. They capture my attention and fascinate me....beautiful beings. I have started to learn they are bearers of messages. Reminders for us to be aware. Reminders and guides. Their intelligence is not one from books it's inherent, intuitive and wise. I don't feel yet I can share with you their magic maybe soon. For now I will share my encounters.

Butterflies

I met this beautiful Monarch at a butterfly house at Beaver Creek Reserve. It wasn't the best day for butterflies I was told. Of course I decided to venture out anyway. I locked right onto this one struggling on a plastic sign cover. I stretched my hand out and it crawled right on. We spent quite some time together before it decided to fly over to a nearby milkweed plant. I remember the great sense of power I felt as it crawled on my hand. For such a weightless creature it had an incredible grasp!

Red Spotted Purple

This is another friend from the butterfly house. I collected another of its kind in my garage. My mom had pulled out her car to give it a scrub, and in its place were two treasures. One perfect little Pink Edged Sulfur and a Red Spotted Purple, who was a little worse for the wear. They unfortunately had met their end, though I touched the Purple and it began to flap its wing, slowly open and closed. I stayed and watched quietly as my parents shuffled about, my dad peering over obviously wondering what I was doing. I showed him the flapping butterfly. He commented something about a butterfly healer haha. I would be so honored! After I was sure the Purple had passed I picked them up and inspected. I couldn't believe the Purple had been able to flap...only had one good pair of wings on one side the other side was crumpled as well as I believe it was missing many organs....a special moment.

Aphrodite Fritillary

 I was out for a bike ride with my Auntie the other day, and of course as always had my animal spotting eyes on. After about 10 miles I hadn't noticed much. Then on my way down the hill I saw what I thought may be a Swallowtail traipsing in its bouncing flight pattern across the road. I sailed closer just to  have a friendly collision on my shirt. It really didn't seem to noticed and continued on his way. We should all be so calm and accepting of surprise situations!

Cope's Gray Treefrog

This little friend my mom found hanging out on our house. Just a little bigger than a quarter.

This is my parents resident Gray Fox. It lives in the back yard, we've seen it often leaving the den and returning about two hours later near dusk sometimes with prey. So beautiful. My dad also had a Fox and pups living under a shed at his auto shop! Maybe he has a fox totem animal? They sure seem to like him. I let my dog Jack outside one morning about 4:30 am and heard the strangest "Arf" noise...it was the fox with its territorial call!

Jack also woke me up early to see the mist burning off the lake. He's a great friend :)

Have you experienced any animal magic lately or do you have a totem animal? I would love to hear about it!

xoxo

L

Transitioning and Painting

It seems life is almost always transitioning, at least in my experience. Well, yet another transition is happening. I am moving to Virginia for a spell to help a wonderful woman whom I met at my Vipassana Meditation course named Neville. She and her husband Michael own  Wood's Hole Hostel which is located 1/2 mile off the Appalachian Trail. So they host lots of those thru hikers! For those of you who don't know, a thru hiker hikes from Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail (AT) which usually takes around 6 months! Pretty amazing! One friend I met while working at Emandal, Dave, completed a thru hike a few years ago doing it entirely (as far as I know) in Chacos (hiking SANDALS!?). Also very relevant Dave may be nearly done with his first Vipassana Meditation course! I hope he is learning much and working very diligently. Not only do Neville and Michael host hikers but they also feed them, grow a garden, keep bees, teach yoga, and perform massage! I know right!! I am excited to help them with whatever they need and hopefully I get to play in the garden a bit. I hope they are prepared for me! I come bearing plants and an arsenal of seeds! This looks to be a wonderful next step.

With this transition my path leads away from Dorian's. It has been a bit tearful but very important for both of us. I can't speak for him but for me it equates to an excellent opportunity to practice presence and non attachment. Within relationships I tend to become dependent, which suppresses my intuition. I just end up wanting to please the other person and lose track of my path. With that said I can feel the excitement of opportunity and the thrill of not knowing what the universe holds for me in its hands. Taking each step as it comes. Just like flowers, as one fades another rises and blooms, but not after dropping a few seeds ;)

Shifting gears a little, you haven't seen much of my work lately huh!? Well, my favorite neighborhood family was over working out the other day and we decided to see if 5 year old Gage wanted to do some painting. (Dorian and I ended up taking about a million canvasses from his parents over the holidays, and it was a good time to put them to use...so we didn't have to pack them in our cars!)  While Gage was experimenting with color mixing on his canvas (his paintings were awesome by the way...) I was thinking about two furry roommates....one fat and white and the other thin and orange.  I entitled this diptych "Fat White and The Orange One" The cats real names are Sugar and Ginger but ever since Dorian and I moved in Sugar has been Fat White Cat.  And for a while I couldn't remember Ginger's name so I called her The Orange One, currently she is walking across some bare shelves then onto the bed and crashing her head into my arm, licking and biting me. I'm not sure what it is but cats tend to bite me...usually not in a mean way...except for one.... Though she bites me I can't help but feel very relaxed and calm when she walks past and grazes me with her tail and kneads me with her paws though the drooling and sandpaper tongue is less effective at this....

"The Orange One"

"Fat White"

You can see an orangish splotch on "Fat White" I decided not to paint over it because we were all joking that it was a scale representation of the two cats! haha! These masterpieces are going to stay up in the cat's room :) cats should have art too I guess!

This is a shot of one of my fabric cuffs that has a happy new home with one of my favorite farmer's market friend Katy, she also owns the wonderful bag I made for her which I decided to entitle "The Katy bag"

Be Happy & Much Love :)

xo

New surprise friends!

Dorian and I were out perusing the garden the other morning as we tend to do. And we made some exciting discoveries. Dorian had spotted a tiny mantis in our broccoli on day, but on this day we found TWO baby Mantis...mantisess, manti...I'm unsure of the plural...Mantids? This one is so little the silver circle is a nail head.

This is my version of where's Waldo.... Mira Mantis? I think I've been watching too much Dora the Explorer with the tots I get to babysit haha.

 I'm not sure who found who!?

Beautiful.

 Of course we love the Ladybug, because they love munching aphids! This one is hanging out on my bolting cilantro, I didn't mind at all that the cilantro decided to go to seed. Bees love the flowers, and flowers make me giddy! I have buds on my stained glass flowers and a couple zinnia...talk about bugs in my britches, I don't want to pressure my flowers but I sometimes feel like camping out for a few hours to watch them.

 Damselfly hanging out on some lettuce. While I was working at Emandal I had a Damselfly land on my hat and stay there for almost a whole day! I took it into my room with me that night, and upon further inspection I found its wing to be crinkled :( The next morning it was gone. I'm certainly glad it came to stay with me a while. 

Yeah, I know. Super badass....right!? This plant makes me so happy! It's my Darlintonia Pitcher plant. Also known as the Cobra Plant and is native to Califorina whom also has 'cool root' requirements. Its a carnivore, yea it eats bugs! Hopefully not our friends mentioned above! This plant is so well adapted! Check out the windows on the bulbous head, once the ...lets say fly crawls in by that cool looking forked tongue and realizes it wants out, it flies up into those windows and can't find the hole it crawled in! Pretty narly... I am especially pleased because 2 of my other carnivores perished after some hard freezes and cat perils this winter, my beautiful white trumpet pitchers and my california sundew...

 the brassica homies, under their awesome shade structure.

 there she is looking nice and green!

Recently I have noticed my consumerist tendencies. I have also felt a bit of disconnect with my intuition and a general lack of focus. A bit hum drum if you will. Dorian and I made a trip to a local farm today, Raft Swamp Farm. Where Louie the proprietor lead us on a jacked up golf cart tour. It was so inspiring, he was truly a survivalist, using awesome cover cropping techniques, drip irrigation, and running things almost totally off grid! Who wouldn't want grapes, peaches, persimmons, blueberries, strawberries and mulberries! YUM! We also got to taste some purple passion asparagus! YUM, uh the mulberries were so delicious! What a wonderful place. Oh and the birds, he built tons of birdhouses for the birds and says they take care of all his flying insects, especially the purple martins they eat 3,000 bugs a day! Plus he has one of the only 3 registered natural apiaries in North Carolina! Yay for bees! and not using chemicals on them :) He also has I think eight 3.5 acre plots that farmers can come and use! He's a farmer incubator! He is full of wonderful ideas!

Louie was full of wonderful stories and even picked us some sassafras so we could make some tea...which reminds me its ready! Y'all remember what sassafras makes right?? I thought it smelled like licorice, and it does a bit but its root beer! 

Thanks Louie for a wonderful day! And for all you do!!

Much love xoxo

-L

the soft light emanating from my window

We hung a sheet up in our window.  It lets such a lovely light into the room, I find myself staring at it. The soft glow puts everything in a beautiful dream like light. I've found myself staring quite a bit lately, at lights, out the window at my painting, my mind usually a buzz with thoughts. I just can't let the thoughts be, they've been a little overwhelming lately I've watched them flipping around like a T.V. racing thru channels, click click click click. I don't like how that makes me feel. It seems a familiar feeling though too, ripping at my projected sense of self. My mind is very self destructive. Everything outwardly is just as it should be, but the mind, takes and judges every little thing. Judges things I did (or didn't) things Dorian did (or didn't), things anything or anyone did or didn't do and tells me I don't measure up. I should go, I'm just in the way. I reacted in the wrong way. Not good enough.

But all of those things in my head are just that: in my head, situations invented by my mind to prevent me from living in the now, seeing the beauty in each moment, enjoying each button I press on the keyboard. They distract my attention or intention away from what is currently happening. My intuition has been clouded and masked by these streaming thoughts, but I can feel it in my heart just below the surface. Ready to re-emerge softly and kindly parting the thoughts, acknowledging them as what they are...imaginary. As my intuition grows in light an intensity, I am ready to break that conceptual sense of self and just live. I want to strengthen my intuition I want to be life.

Meet 'Bulby'. He's from my Senior show in College.
I love knobs :) This one's a two-hander!

Have you ever noticed the 'life' objects have? The way they command space, almost as if they are living. I find this easier to see in art but I can see it in most objects. They have a sense of life, not that they are living though if we get real technical for a moment, they are all made of atoms which are moving molecules! I remember during a critique in a ceramics class I took, having a hard time trying to explain why the object I was looking at was so beautiful. I could just feel it in my chest that it was beautiful. It had a commanding presence, a life to it. It seemed to be breathing in life and holding it in its belly. Full of breath! Breathing in all that life has to offer.

I'm making an agreement right now for every person who appears in my thoughts or I physically see, I want to make a conscious effort to send them peaceful loving thoughts. Everyone deserves love, everyone IS love. (maybe that's why it's so hard to describe, we ARE love)


Well, this one go a touch crazy some may think but thats just the crazy life is :)...

Sending joyful loving thoughts, and bidding peace of mind ;)
xo


"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."
-Buddha