Playing Around in Nature: Container Gardening!

I know that many people think of things they want to do, but then don't do them.

I, on the other hand, have a tendency to want to want to do things, but just don't really want to.

Weird, right?

For example, I would always see people jogging on the sidewalk while I was driving down the road, and I wanted to want to jog, but I just really didn't actually want to.

And I would see people's beautiful yards, and I would want to want to garden, but I just never had much interest in it.

One by one, my wanting to want is turning into "want", and then "do."

(You're following this, right?)

Not only did I take up jogging about five years ago, but this spring I'm actually pretty excited about getting a container garden started in my back yard, tucked up next to my garage.

My container garden, one day old

I chose the spot because I can see it from the kitchen window, the family room window, the patio, and every time I head to the car.  I get absolutely the maximum pleasure from my herbs, plants, and flowers in this location.

Wandering Jew and LAVENDER!

In all of these photos, my little garden is just one day old.  Many of the plants I chose will grow, mound, trail, and vine, so I'm expecting a little more full and wild look in a couple of months.

Thyme, rosemary, basil and parsley

Calibrachoa on the right next to the lavender, with ivy in the planter behind

I don't really know what to expect, because it's all new to me, but I have some healthy herbs growing out there, and some happy looking flowers; now I just need to keep them that way!

A little Creeping Jenny tucked under the table, with a Calibrachoa hybrid on top of the table, at right

Et voila!  My container garden attempt has begun....

Sketches from Paradise

I haven't quite developed the "sketchbook habit" that I am hoping for, but I have completed a couple more pages since I last posted with the leaves from my walk by the creek.  This time, I worked from photographs from my summer vacation in Hawaii. 

My inspiration photo

First, I sketched a bird-of-paradise plant from our hike up to Manoa Falls.  Following a pencil sketch, I outlined it with a thin black marker, painted it with watercolors, and strengthened the ink lines once the paint dried.

Following Alisa Burke's lead, I added a black-marker border and some journaling to capture a few notes about the subject matter. 

I get the most amazing feedback on my sketchbook pages from my budding-artist daughter, Katy.  When she saw my finished page, she threw her arms around my waist, sputtered a moment over what to say, and declared, "I love you, Mommy!"  If that isn't incentive to keep up my sketchbook efforts, I don't know what is!

Once I finished the bird-of-paradise page, my daughters wanted to watch me do a second page, and "voted" on the lizard we saw at the Nuuanu Pali Lookout on our trip. 

My second inspiration photo

Animals are clearly not my strong suit, and the girls clearly saw that, but enjoyed watching me work on the page and were gracious about my results!

 I always think I should point out, "in my defense," that most of my work is completed on the sofa with a five-year-old on my right side and a six-year-old on my left.  Not a whole lot of freedom of movement for this artist's elbows, and certainly no fear of drawing with an audience allowed!

I think I better stick to leaves and flowers for awhile!

Finding My Muse with Alisa Burke

I am a great admirer of Alisa Burke's drawing and painting style; I always look forward to the peeks into her sketchbook that she offers on her web site.  Awhile back, she offered a free video class entitled Finding Your Muse (I can't seem to find a link to it anymore to share with you, but you can check out another free video series called The Art of Chasing a Dream right now) which is also part of her online class called Sketchbook Delight.

In Finding Your Muse, Alisa encourages us to look up, look down, and find out what is in our world to recreate in our sketchbooks.  To me, this is important advice.  Whenever I try to re-start a drawing practice, I burn out on traditional drawing exercises (spheres and coffee cups and flower vases), or focus on re-creating other's drawings.  Instead, Alisa advises us to find our muse--often an object that captures our attention, draws our interest, and entices us to open up our sketchbooks.

Alisa seems especially drawn to shells, though her subject matter is widely varied from shells to rocks to feathers to birds to flowers to .... well, pretty much anything that draws her attention.  I seem drawn to leaves.  Inspired by re-watching Alisa's video Finding Your Muse from the Sketchbook Delight class, my attention was drawn to some leaves I saw by a creek near my house on a walk with my husband and daughters over the weekend.

 Here is what ended up in my sketchbook, using first pencil, then black pen, then watercolors:

Alisa advises writing notes alongside your reference drawings to recall where and when you saw the object you are capturing in your sketchbook:

The sketchbook drawings become references for other work, or simply the capturing of a wonderful memory or bit of nature.

Here is another leaf from my walk by the creek:

 And the resulting page in my sketchbook:

I used the same kind of note-taking, background painting and ink framing that Alisa likes to do in her sketchbook work.

I also found myself trying to incorporate Jane LaFazio's advice from her workshop at the CREATE workshop in New Jersey last summer to leave white space in my watercoloring.  Oh, that's hard for me to do, but it looks better to me that way!

I am re-committing myself (for the umpteenth time) to my sketchbook practice, and will continue to share my results to give myself some motivation to continue.  Be sure to check out Alisa's blog full of artful and creative ideas, and click here to see inside her amazing sketchbooks.

Around Here: Springtime Edition

What possibly could have kept me away from the blog for almost a month?

I promise I've kept busy, stayed creative, and had fun! 

For the first time ever, and with my mom's help, I've planted a little garden just outside our family room sliding doors.  It's hard to get a sense of it from the photo, but when I sit out under the patio table umbrella with my coffee in the morning, it feels a bit like a resort.  (I'm easily pleased!)

As for so many of you, the school year is drawing to a close for us.  My younger daughter "graduated" from preschool (complete with paper graduation cap!), and my older daughter has just one more week of kindergarten.  They are excited by all the possibilities of being in the same school together next year!

Feeling ambivalent about the end of the school year

Sunday school has drawn to a close, as well.  In addition to planning my final lesson, which has the fourth graders making flowing windsocks to remind them on Pentecost of the power of the Holy Spirit, I prepared sweet little gifties for my girls' teachers.  I used a Pinterest inspiration to create the packaging for some sweet springtime Skittles.

In an exciting development, I've created two series of Summer Craft Camp workshops, one for 1 to 3 year olds, and one for 4 to 7 year olds.  I advertised to my local MOMS group, as well as my women's circle at church, and have a little group coming together for each of the workshops.  All of our activities are being kid-tested and approved by my own two in-house crafting experts, and they are really helping me work out the kinks before we "go live."  I will share news of the workshops as they happen; the first two are at the end of this week!

A serious artist at work

Squoosh Art?  Rorschach Test Art?  Symmetrical Prints?  Call it whatever you like; it's fun!

I wrote my first guest blog post for a local "mommy blog" called Delaware County Moms.  I had the opportunity to attend the grand opening of a re-sale shop called Clothes Mentor, and write a review of our local store.  Now I'm pretty devoted to the idea of checking there first before I shop full-price at the mall!  Discovering that store came at a great time for me, as I'm really working on adopting a frugal lifestyle this year. 

Would you like a pair of shoes with that??

I am going to be working in the Vacation Bible School craft room at my church again this year, so our Craft Room Team held our first planning meeting.  We have some exciting ideas for the kids as they learn about Moses and the Israelites coming out of Egypt into the Promised Land.  Remember those matchbox mezuzahs from last year, and the foam sandal necklaces? To rival those, we'll be using cereal boxes and duct tape to make their own sandals; how cool is that?!

My first cereal box and duct tape prototype for VBS!

And finally, I've been positively delighted to watch the developments in a little birds' nest just beside my front door.  I saw the nest empty, then filled with four perfect blue robin's eggs, and then positively overcrowded with all the brothers and sisters vying for the worms their mommy has been faithfully bringing home for them. 

First came the beautiful blue eggs...



Then the silently squalling baby birds came on the scene!

Sadly, the nest sits about six inches from my mailbox, so the mommy robin has been quite disturbed by postal workers, as well as door and window openings throughout the day.  I almost think the babies have gotten used to my face peering down into their nest, and the flash of my camera catching their daily growth and development.  Very, very soon they will be flying away on their own, and I have to admit that I hope at least one of them will hang around and make their home in our yard for the long term!

We are doing some traveling in a couple of weeks, so my blogging consistency probably will not return until mid-July, but I promise I am not deserting the blogging world for good!

Enjoy these final weeks of springtime!

Nature Girl

Thank you so much to those of you who left sweet "blogoversary" comments on yesterday's post!

I know that bloggers are not *supposed* to care about how many comments they get or how many followers they have, but I'm sure I am not alone in feeling energized and uplifted by positive visitors and their willingness to share their thoughts with me!

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Today I enjoyed the unprecedented pleasure of a day alone, in peace and quiet.

My husband took the girls to his aunt and uncle's house, to visit with his brother and sister who are in from out of town.  He graciously agreed to give me some "alone time," which added up to almost five hours!  I was almost giddy.

I made a quick stop at the craft store (because, of course, that's always the first thing I do with some free time), and managed to get out of there spending less than $9 (again, unprecedented!). 

Then I headed to the library to pursue my latest project...nature!

In reading Last Child in the Woods (mentioned in my last blog post), I was feeling terribly uninformed about natural science, so I hit the shelves and got several books from the children's section.  I find that when I want to start reading about a topic that feels unfamiliar, it is helpful to start at kid-level, and then work my way up to the more complicated texts aimed at adults.  There is a lot less pretension and complexity in the kid texts; I can tackle that in the grown-up books once I'm sure I'm really ready to pursue the topic!

I spent a long time in the afternoon reading through the books, happily discovering that I am not nearly as ignorant of the major facts of natural science as I had feared!  It helps to see all the information presented in one place, though, so I can think about fun and interesting things to share with my girls when we are out in nature together.  And, don't get me wrong, there is still plenty of new information for me to soak up, too!

Wanting to "put my money where my mouth is," as they say, before I hunkered down on the sofa to check out my new library books, I pulled on my snow boots and headed down the street on a little nature walk.

There is a little park with a playground down the road that I have taken the girls to only a couple of times.  In the summer, I make all kinds of excuses because of mosquitoes and mud and safety issues related to poor visibility from the road.  In the middle of winter, none of these things is an issue, so I headed down to the park to see if it might be a fun place for the girls to do some nature exploring outside of their own backyard.

Look at this place!  Can you believe that I've been missing out for six years!

Look at the enormous trees dwarfing the playground equipment.  Complete with a babbling brook, this little park is truly an oasis in the middle of suburbia.

I absolutely love the sound of running water, so when I heard the sound of the creek rushing past the rocks, I took a little video so I could share the sounds with you.  Sadly, I can't get it to upload to my blog, so I guess a little more research is in order!  You may be lucky, though:  You might have gotten dizzy!  I panned around a lot, so I could get the full effect of how this place sits right in the middle of a suburban residential area.  I now know to move the camera around a bit slower!  Maybe I will be able to figure out how to share videos in the future.

I will be making a return visit to this park soon, you can be sure!

I saw this little guy in a neighbor's yard during my walk:

Craft store, nature walk, reading, nap....and then two girls and a husband, happy to see me when they returned home...a very happy winter day!

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If you haven't seen me around in the Comments section of your blog lately, and I usually show up there once in a while, it is because I am getting frozen out of a LOT of comment pages recently. 

Either the page freezes, and I have to restart my computer,

or I am taken off to a white page, and nothing ever appears. 

I am not ignoring you! 

I am continuing to read and enjoy all of my usual blogs,

but there are several that I haven't been allowed to comment on. 

I hope this will clear up SOON!