Right now it is raining, a light drizzle, enough for the water to pour off the roof and for me to hear the *ting* of drops on our metal roof. The sky brightened for a minute, perhaps a thinning of clouds for the late evening sun to glow through just a bit, but now the sky is darkening once again. The light there for a moment was a yellow-green, the colors of the newly opened leaves of the trees and overgrown grass reflecting back up into the atmosphere. Last night it rained heavily after dark, lightning dancing across the sky and the cymbals of thunder booming after. The forecasters had…

+I bleached our luffa sponges a few weeks ago. They turned out really lovely and I’m going to have to get Chris to cut them for me. Maybe one day when we have beeswax I’ll make soap and the luffa will pair nicely with the soap as gifts! +I’ve been listening to a lot of food/sustainability podcasts lately and one of them discussed organic bananas and the banana industry. It was a bit of a revelation because I don’t usually pay that much attention to buying organic bananas. Bananas are generally very cheap to begin with and the podcast was discussing that even organic bananas are relatively cheap in comparison…

I know, I know, I just did a post about cats but here are some more cat photos I took this weekend! Ruby and Isis chilling after eating their afternoon meal. Apparently Isis thinks the baobab pot is a fine place to slumber and Ruby can sleep standing up!

Fred is the resident cat who does not wander very far from the house. Every now and then I find him far down the driveway but usually he’s cuddled up in a spot on the south side of the man cave. Or on my truck. Isis has been enjoying some freedom by jumping fences lately. Ruby inches above Mr. Stripey in the competition for noisiest cat. She’s easy to figure out when you can’t see her but only hear her. The sunshine is a great place to take a bath. Or scratch your head. Momma comes and joins the party. And parties a little more hearty by hanging out on…

These days I’m… Reading: Flower Confidential. I’ve known about this book for several years but finally picked it up at a used book store several weeks ago. I’m really loving it so far and it has me rethinking buying cut flowers, but not only that it delves into this crazy world of hybridization and growing plants. I’m about halfway through and will likely do a full review at Sprout Dispatch when I am done. Barnheart: The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One’s Own. This I picked up on a whim one day when I went to the library to pay a fine. At first glance I thought I would…

A couple of months ago the mailbox that our house came with was halfway knocked off its post. One of our neighbor’s was knocked off as well. At first I thought a: Drunk Driver or b: Teenagers With Too Much Time On Their Hands. But then Chris saw the deep scrape marks in the asphalt and decided it might have been the city lawnmower guy when he was mowing the ROW area. No matter, we wanted a new mailbox anyway and it took us forever to decide on one. I don’t like generic mailboxes. I don’t mind the ones bricked in but our house isn’t brick so it would look…

Now that we have been in our house for six months I feel like I can have a clear head again. The unpacking, updating, painting, this-and-that of moving into a house is time consuming and we’ll be doing it for awhile. However, my studio is basically complete. All I need to paint is a baseboard on the wall that I did not paint white and the painting is complete. The general organization is done and I just need to buy some frames to hang some art. Hopefully I’ll be acquiring more art and creating more art to hang on the walls in the future. Since that is done, I have…

My word for 2012 was Prolific. I’d say the first half of the year was pretty good word wise but the last half went downhill, unless you count endless work on the house and yard as being prolific! I definitely find that the first half of any year is better word-wise but some years are better than others. The year I turned 28 I had a list of 28 things I wanted to do. I made my way through the list pretty well but didn’t manage to get them all done. Oh well, but the point was having something tangible, writing actual goals down instead of something general. Picking a…

The habit of writing here definitely begets more writing. My head was cluttered and the urge to just be away from writing in this space overtook me. Spending time working on photos, writing, thinking of something to say, to share—all of it went away. It still isn’t back, but I will force myself to spend a little time writing here again and maybe I will be creative again. There are times that I just miss walking in the woods. The only thing I had to do was to walk and in the evenings I could read books. Sometimes it is just nice to live life and now worry about documenting…