moss, olive, khaki, etc.

I'm working on changing my online habits--thinking about how I use the internet, and how it uses me. What I dislike the most about the world wide web, and what scares me, is how rapidly it has consumed so many aspects of my life. Rebecca Solnit articulates my feelings in  this wonderful essay. 

"That bygone time had rhythm, and it had room for you to do one thing at a time; it had different parts; mornings included this, and evenings that, and a great many of us had these schedules in common." 

But I've missed this place, this web log--and it feels like an actual place, and not just words and pictures on a screen. I picture a spiderweb with tiny dots on it--I'm one of the dots, and you are one too.                        

And Seamus Heaney died. I felt such a connection to him, through his poetry, his love of language and nature, of mournful beauty. Last spring  I wrote about the frog pond and how it brought to mind his great poem Death of a Naturalist. 

Recently, when I realized the raspberries were blackberries I thought of Blackberry Picking. 

"...red ones inked up and that hunger
sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots
where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots."

The last time I posted paintings, Steve commented, "I'm really motived artistically by seeing these. I suddenly want to see how much red I can add to the greens before they're no longer green. Moss, olive, khaki, etc." 

Despite my passion for the color green, I didn't see that I'd been painting mostly brighter tones, that I'd missed an entire family of shades. I thought about that the next time I painted. (Thanks, Steve.)

I keep looking, and there's always something more to see.

a spring country weekend

The sun shone through the trees and it was just warm enough that I didn't need a sweater in the afternoon. Wading in shallow water, ferns unfurling, wildflowers popping up...

All the greens:
spring green, apple green, moss green, forest green...

Checking the frog pond for tadpoles or frogspawn. Frogspawn reminding me of a favorite poem, Death of a Naturalist, by the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney. (Read the entire poem here.) Remembering as a child in Virginia collecting frogspawn in jars and tadpoles in buckets...

...There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampots full of the jellied
Specks to range on the window-sills at home,..

-Seamus Heaney from Death of  a Naturalist

buon giorno

Hello Friends--I am still in Italy, and have had limited computer access since leaving Yuri and Vera's, but have been taking lots of pictures and notes, and when I return will weave some of them into posts relevent to this blog which I try to keep (at least loosely) connected to the store.

Everywhere I turn I am inspired.

Castelvetro di Modena

I love the rustic simplicity of the medieval towns, and the importance of good food.

I want a Carpathian Wolf Dog. Meet Akeela, Yuri and Vera's dog. Half German Shepherd and half Carpathian timber wolf, and the sweetest, most soulful dog I've ever met. Sorry I didn't get a picture of her outside of the fence. (She has her own lovely, hilly acre where, when unattended, she can see everything that's going on and the neighbor's chickens, which are truly free-range, are safe.) Is it shallow of me to want to use the word Carpathian when referring to my dog? Such images the word conjures up.

I have been taking a lot of picture of walls

and missing the store. Here's a random list I made the other night when thinking of how to improve it:
Seamus Heaney/Robert Frost
the old barn
Americana
old-fashioned newsletter
Dylan Thomas
everything has a story
themes: botanicals, the road not taken,
meander
country childhood
Slow Food

I am in Tuscany now--going to Florence this afternoon and so excited. I was there many years ago, and am hungry to see the Botticellis and Santo Spirito and to wander the small streets. I return home Tuesday and look forward to catching up with you.

Jen