new acquisition, new growth, same ole pettiness

As a working artist all of my working life; well, I did have a series of jobs before I started my etched glass studio and you can read about those here if you are so inclined; I like to support artists and so I have a small art collection that I have been in the habit of adding to once a year more or less. Generally I buy a piece of art for my birthday or holiday gift but it’s been a couple of years I think since I bought the last piece which is a print of a drawing of a bumble bee. But this year I bought a new small sculpture. It’s the second piece I have bought from artist Jennifer Tetlow, a stone sculptor who lives in the UK. I follow her blog on which she posts pictures of her work. Awhile back she posted a picture of two small birds which she calls hedge birds which I loved. I waited a month or so before I contacted her if they were still available and if so how much. Of course, they had already sold but she offered to make more and in January I got an email with pictures of four little hedge birds. I selected two and they arrived Friday. Here are my little hedge birds, so called because they were inspired by the little birds that inhabit the hedges that line the countryside in the UK.

I consider my art collection to be one of my objects and I could easily fill a big chunk of ‘my life in 100 objects’ if each piece counted as one object so my dilemma has been is my entire collection one object, in which case I would post a selection of pictures or is each individual piece a separate object or maybe I’ll divide it into categories, each category being one object. Anyway, I’m due for another ‘object’ post.

Saturday was warm enough and dry enough to work out in the yard so I pruned back the four roses in front of Pam’s house, worked on the wild mass of stuff on the east end of the shop, and in my yard cut back the rock rose, the clump of fall aster by the driveway, and the bigger area of wild Mexican petunia. That leaves one small patch of the wild petunia, which I may do today (or not as it’s cold and windy out), and the banana trees and my yard will be done. Audra and the great grands were across the street visiting Robin while Mikey worked in the shop so I got some baby time.

Monday and Tuesday nights are going to be well below freezing…again, and so I will have to cover the ponytail palm and a few others and bring in those pots that I have moved outside. Covering the ponytail is a two person job and a pain in the butt. I had a welcome surprise earlier though. I used to have a nice bunch of toad lilies in the ground outside my back door that would bloom every fall but the last four years or so that we have been getting these arctic blasts fewer and fewer have returned in the spring after dying down for the winter so last fall I dug up the five or so struggling roots I had left and put them in a pot and brought them inside. All but one stem died down but I watered them regularly and the other day I saw that those roots have sprouted new growth.

I’m having to fill the bird feeder twice a day, granted it’s small, probably only holds half what my old one did. Cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, titmice, house finches, sparrows, white wing doves but the most abundant right now are the goldfinches tanking up for their flight north.

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Three items today out of the many, from the Department of Petty Vindictiveness:

Trump and Musk illegally retrieved $80M in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funds from New York state’s bank account because they don’t like what it was being used for.

The Missouri attorney general is suing Starbucks because he thinks too many women and people of color work there accusing them of racist and discriminatory hiring practices ie not enough white males. “Such practices force Missouri consumers to “pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services,” he argued, because making hiring decisions “on non-merit considerations will skew the hiring pool towards people who are less qualified to perform their work.”” As Jeff Tiedrich puts it “here we go again with this inane fever-swamp insistence that women and people of color can’t possibly be qualified to do the jobs for which they’re being hired. it’s fucking Starbucks, you imbeciles. they’re pouring coffee into a cup and putting a lid on it.”

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be arrested for informing undocumented immigrants of their legal rights.

In other news, the Finding Out part of FAFO is in full swing. Trump voters are surprised to learn that that leopard is an equal opportunity face eater. They are also losing jobs, benefits, relatives, and federal grants. "I didn't vote for this!" Yes, yes you did vote for this. We warned you but you wouldn't listen. You just thought it would only happen to the people you don't like.