feelin' it

Spring is finally happening. Thank drag queens! (I can't walk around saying "thank god" anymore. Occasionally "thank the goddesses" works, but an unbeliever really needs to expand their repertoire.)

When I went outside this morning, it was foggy and rainy and warm. All sorts of springy things are finally starting to happen, and that was the exact recipe for an insanely happy me. My morning coffee wander included expanses of sprouts, vibrant green moss, a pileated red headed woodpecker, elderberry buds that look like animal paws, the first forsythia blossoms, a groundhog just emerging from her hole, and the discovery that the radishes I planted-too-early-but just-couldn't-stop-myself had sprouted under their protective victorian bells.

Tonight, thunder and heavy rain and crrraaazzzy lightning. Welcome to delicious, dramatic weather and amazing plants and animals. Welcome spring!

sky. light.

My new car is just over a decade old, and it's the newest car I've ever had. I'm still adjusting to strange phenomena like levers for moving side mirrors. I'm used to shouting instructions to passengers with their arms out the (crank) window: in just a bit, up a touch, down half that.

The very best thing about this new-fangled vehicle is the sunroof. I get to feel like I'm outside when I'm having to drive.
I've always driven with windows open, ridden a bike without a helmet (gasp!), left the doors and windows of my house hanging open. The more light and air the better. For some reason, it improves things exponentially to have that light and air above you.

This, I realized belatedly, is what I like about Dia:Beacon. I can do without the bulk of the artwork. It comes as no surprise that I believe the best parts of the museum are the gardens and the bookstore. AND the skylights. It is a lovely building. But any spacious industrial building would look lovely bathed in tons of natural light. It feels good.

The entire main floor is lit by daylight. The artwork is lit by daylight. When the skylights are buried in snow, Dia:Beacon is dark, and closed. This bit of information makes me appreciate the museum much more.
Then, the artwork. I can be really grouchy about modern art, especially massive, macho, public sculptures. There is a lovely response to that kind of work in the museum, and that is the holes, or negative space sculptures of Michael Heizer. They're still lined with steel, lest he be too femme about it. Let's re-line those suckers with some nice cotton canvas for a good lesbo aesthetic, shall we? Or just go upstairs and visit all those artists' removed testicles in the Louise Bourgeois room.

*Cloud fabric from Repro Depot Fabrics

love the one you're with

I'm from the southwest. I like road trips in the car with the windows down listening to conjunto music, bakingly hot weather, sandals, javelinas and jackrabbits and roadrunners, cacti, swamp coolers, big skies filled with insane lightening, and walking really slow. That said, I've lived away from "home" longer than I lived there, making it so that I can't use where I'm from as an excuse for everything anymore.

It's warm enough to be rainy here in the Hudson Valley, but not really warm at all, and me and my stack of seed catalogs can't stop fantasizing about planting season. I've been following chatter about growing various fruit in southern California, and it's driving me a little crazy. As if I don't miss fresh pomegranates, kumquats, tangelos, and prickly pear tunas enough. Should I really be listening to people talk about their avocado, jujube, and meyer lemon trees? It hurts.

I have to focus here, what grows here. Past years have seen the beginning of my perennial fruit excitement: I've planted raspberries, elderberries, cranberries, wolfberries, ligonberries, hawthorne berries, black turkey figs, cherries, apples, a plum. Some of them have done swimmingly, some didn't make it through a season. Some aren't really meant to be perennials in this climate, and are angry with me for dragging them indoors for the winter. (Hang in there little goji!) I think it's spectacular that wild fruits and nuts were here in the yard before I came. Woohoo for mulberries, black walnuts, wild strawberries, and quince! And there's that one fruiting tree that I still haven't been able to identify after five full years.
I can't help searching for additional food perennials for this climate. I've found siberian kiwis which I'd love to give a go, and pawpaws, which seemingly would require hand pollination (alternatively fascinating and frightening, since I'm not that skilled a gardener). Maybe seaberries and honeyberries, too. Or an asian pear for the mini orchard.

Many of these plants won't produce anytime soon, but it is amazing to be learning about them, and turning this yard into a truly edible landscape. When considering planting a fruit tree in her yard but knowing she wouldn't be there anymore when the fruit came, my friend realized someone would live there, somebody would benefit. If I do someday run back to Arizona and go to work for Iskash*taa, may this yard feed whoever lives here well.

*The berries pictured aren't edible. They are cotoneasters, and just look dramatic in the snow. Especially with a cardinal sitting on the branch. The other picture is of black walnuts from my yard. No longer green, but with the fruit still "on."

nesting

Speaking of plane crashes, after the whole Hudson River ordeal, I'm worried about the geese. Everybody blames the birds, as if the sky doesn't belong to them! I worry about mass killings of my sweet voiced flyover friends.

For the moment though, I'm focusing on the incredible architecture of bird nests, as photographed by Sharon Beals.

crashing planes and sweating feet

It's confusing. Planes are crashing all over the place, people in LA are just pulling carrots of the ground, and I'm seeing the ground here for the first time in months. Yes, the few days of weather above freezing have melted all the snow here and all of a sudden it feels like there's so much SPACE and I can't stop looking at the exposed ground, the wet smashed leaves and dirt and the slick branches except to look away to look at pictures taken in May. May last year, May the year before, and Mays years back, and I don't even believe that this place can turn into that place in a mere three months. At the same time, there's no way I can wait three whole months. The sun has felt amazing and the days, though they've been getting longer for a while, finally FEEL like they're getting longer. You can actually feel the sun hitting your skin because the moisture in your skin isn't so busy freezing. And my feet are actually hot in my shoes and I can't wait to expose my pale feet. And other people in the 'hood are complaining about flip flops, as if the opportunity to wear flip flops isn't one of the most delicious things. Especially right now, when we can see the ground for the first time in what feels like a frozen lifetime of news of crashing planes.

These pictures are my compost path, which I shovel religiously but finally gave up on this year and just slip slid my way. I did not give up on the little path I shovel for my mail carrier, since he's older and a bit fragile, and I'd hate my laziness to be the cause of a slip and fall. The other picture is the side yard in May, when all the colors are clashing and ridiculous and you can't help but feel happy at the over-the-top fluffiness of it all.

we all need a little sunshine

Visit Yee Haw Industries (here and here) for nice hillbilly letterpress work, and useful info like: "American Goddess Miss Tammy kept her cosmetologist license just in case the music biz didn't work out. Fact."

Yeah, but did she really have a tattoo that said "possum"? That would put some sunshine into the grey day of this office worker, tightly holding onto her unused printmaker past. (After just admitting how terrified I'd be to let go of a steady paycheck and do something that feels important, and like mine, I admire craftspeople like these...)

more snow today

by Gunther Uecker

moongazing

Go outside and look up!

Tonight, the biggest, brightest moon of the year, a perigee full moon will be lighting up the night. They say that if there's snow on the ground to bounce the moonlight, it will create enough light to read a newspaper. Here in the Hudson Valley we're mid snowstorm, and I suspect it won't clear up quickly enough to give us a look. So please howl at this huge moon for me. Perigee is the point where the moon gets closest to the Earth in orbit, and this is the one and only chance to look so closely this year.