day lilies

The day lilies, whose flowers last only a single day, are in full bloom. There were several varieties here already when we bought the country house but about half came from a friend who sent me bulbs from at least a dozen more. Thanks Linda!

They're not all crisply in focus as the camera kept wanting to focus on the foliage and there may be a duplicate or two since I took these over a period of about a week and at different times of the day so the light changed which affected the brightness of the colors.

mother's day

I'm not much for holidays. Oh, I like holidays. I like having the day off from the usual expectations and activities of every other ordinary day. I like having a day off when I don't have to come up with my own excuses for taking it.

When I say I'm not much for holidays I mean that I'm not much for participating in the expected behaviors of whichever particular holiday it happens to be. Though I enjoy the decorations and foods that others indulge in, I just don't seem to find the point in working myself into a frenzy for a holiday instead of kicking back and putzing around.

Holidays fall into categories...religious, national, and commercial. Some occupy more than one category since the rampant commercialization in our country never fails to miss an opportunity to tell us that we must buy buy buy to show just how loving, faithful, or patriotic we are. This irritates me more and more as I get older.

And now Mother's Day is upon us once again, this national holiday that falls heavily in the commercialism stream that tells us how we are supposed to feel and how we are supposed to express those feelings.

This was not a day I cared for as a child after a certain point in my growing up, or even as an adult child. My mother is dead now so the issue is moot except where my own kids are concerned. I get phone calls on the appointed day just because they do love me (at least I hope that's what motivates them), unlike my own feelings for my mother whom I did not like very much and held any love I might have had for her in abeyance so that any call or gift she got from me was strictly out of duty. She was a selfish self centered woman and I could expect no real affection or even interest in my life from her in return. Our jobs as her children; my sister, my brother, and I; were to orbit her and reflect well of her.

I've never wanted or demanded that from my own kids who I adore. No gifts or flowers or simpering emotion required. No guilt or recriminations doled out should they let the day go by unmarked. I would prefer nothing from my children than the resented dutiful phone call, appearance or gift that was expected of me.

Not all women are suited for motherhood but before the cultural changes of the '60s that's what all women expected of their lives, what was expected of them. You got a boyfriend, got married, had sex (or had sex and then got married), and had babies. About the only way to avoid having children was to be infertile or to never marry.

As it turned out, my mother didn't really like children. They were messy, time consuming, and demanding of her attention and affection. She liked the idea of children as it fit into whatever role she was currently playing, but she didn't actually like to spend time with her children. Oh, I'm sure she loved us in her way but she just didn't have much interest in us til we became teenagers, something she would freely admit to.

I think she liked teenagers because that is where her self image stopped growing. In her mind she was perpetually that pretty girl who the boys sought after, going to parties and hanging out with her friends. Once we became grown and had families of our own, her interest in our lives waned.

Since she didn't take to motherhood I suppose it was unrealistic of us to think she would be interested in being a grandmother, which she decidedly was not. She didn't even want them to call her any of the variations of grandmother. They were to call her by her middle name, Lou. So, of course I, in my perversity, instructed my children to call her Grandma Lou.

She was happy to see her grandchildren as long as it was a short visit and they came with a parent attached. There was no spending the day or the night, there was no babysitting even for an hour or two so I could go meet a client, there were no week long visits away from home. My sister, elder by three years who married and had her kids young, filled that role for my children.

Mother told us that she would wait until they became teenagers only by then my kids had no interest in spending time with a woman who wouldn't be bothered to get to know them while they were growing up.

Besides, they told me, she had too many rules at her house.

 

what I've been doing with myself

no, not that!

So, I've mentioned that I've submitted proposals for two 20' walls that will just be fabrication on our part, no design work. Mid-April, I attended a second meeting and met more of the people involved in the process. The company that proposed the walls and is doing the design work had a full size mock-up made and they taped it up in place where the actual glass will go. This wall is a map done in diagonal lines. There will be blue glass installed against the wall and the etched glass map will be installed in front of the blue glass.

the mock-up

The etched glass part of the panels will only be 16' wide and flanked with clear glass because of the proportions of the map. So far I've done three samples for this wall. Three samples and three proposals. The man in charge of the budget has assured me that they are committed to the project and are waiting for some final specs to issue the purchase order.

The second wall has a mountain motif which I gather is their company logo. It will be a more interesting piece to work on as it will be done in carving and shading. They decided to shorten it to the same 16' for consistency except that they aren't even on the same floor. I've also done three proposals for this wall.

the mountain

I've also been doing sketches for a residence, the front entrance sidelites and two side doors.

one of the six bird panels, 12” x 17”, for the sidelites

And then last month I did designs for a powder room mirror and spent about a week consulting with people and getting a proposal ready for that for the designer but no word yet on if the client will go with it.

mirror design with silvered bevels and stuff

And we did a little door with a grape cluster design which they still haven't picked up yet.

And I put together a submission for a general call to artists for an art consultant.

And put together a CD for a gallery submission and sent that off.

Not to mention my garden duties, like conducting surgery on my squash plants yesterday to get rid of the vine borer worms to hopefully save my zucchini and weeding and watering and, the best part, plucking and eating.

So I've been very busy, trying like hell to get some work. It's why I haven't been around as much. It's all very time consuming, for example doing the sketches and proposal for the residence took me the better part of 5 days and I've been consulting with the people for the two walls since January when they were first proposing the concept.

The cast glass work, though, is sort of off the table right now as I focus on getting some income now that there are at least possibilities out there, an improvement all on its own.

vive la différence

little girl squash flower

little boy squash flower

new pond

Did I say I was working on my 'W' post? Hahahahahahahaha.

I'm such a kidder.

Actually, I'm thinking about working on my 'W' post. I should be working on my 'W' post.

Today, I think I'll sink the small pond, Big Mama's previous pond. I've finally picked a spot on the other side of the fence from the big pond which is not sunk. I couldn't sink it because it is snugged up against the ginkgo tree and I didn't want to cut out a big slice of its roots.

I also have four azaleas that need to be planted plus all that stuff I got at the plant swap weeks ago. It's overcast and cool this morning, probably the very last one so I want to take advantage of it. The weather guessers are predicting a high of 90˚ today and the humidity has been upwards of 70% this week.

So out I went. After a short break for a late breakfast, I finished up about 1 PM.

getting started

hole dug

leveling the pond

see, it's level!

the sun came out so I had to go get my hat

fill 'er up!

all done

The water plants have been in a galvanized tub. There's a papyrus, an arrowhead, and a bedraggled water lily that has never bloomed. I've got some others that are still in the tub but my back was saying 'enough already' and they need to be repotted.

I've already had a visitor. This red dragonfly was checking out the new digs. It's perched on the dry seed pod of a larkspur that is beside the pond. That's my rosemary behind it. Poor picture but the darn thing wouldn't let me get close enough to not have to use the zoom.

random photos from the last few days

A toad was snugged down in one of the bromeliads.

Emma, the cat, helping me with my drawings.

The yellow 13 Acre Field was mowed.

The magnolia tree is blooming.

The dewberries have been providing me with fruit to go with my breakfast.

It was a spider kind of day.

I know you can't tell from this picture but this zucchini blossom was enormous, maybe 8” across.

Either Big Mama finally laid her eggs or the fugue state that possesses her finally passed, but she hasn't ventured out of her pond for a week and a half. That I forgot to remove the bridge the last time we went to the city and spent the night and she probably spent more than 24 hours in the yard, might have something to do with it. She does seem to enjoy hanging out on the bridge though.

one last update

Because I know everyone is anxiously awaiting a new report on my snake bit foot, and yes that is me barefoot in the grass so no I didn't learn a damn thing, here's a pic.

Six weeks after the bite my foot is almost back to normal. The color is good, I think, but still a wee bit puffy around the ankle.

And because everyone was so polite and didn't gawk and point out my short toe the whole time I will tell you how I came to have a 6 yr. old toe. Actually, it's not 6 years old, it's 62 years old just like all the rest of me, but it is the size of a six year old toe.

When I was 6 years old, yeah, funny how that works, my best friends, the twins from down the block who were almost six, were playing with me in my back yard. It was spring and hot and I thought I would get us all cold cokes so I went in through the back door to the kitchen and got three cokes out of the refrigerator.

Back then, soft drinks came in heavy glass bottles, and I, struggling to hold three cokes and close the back door, let one of the bottles slip from my grasp and it crashed right on top of my little six year old bare foot on the concrete steps, yes, yes, the irony does not escape me.

The coke bottle smashed into pieces, fizzing coke and blood going everywhere. Apparently, toes bleed a lot. The friends were sent home and my parents rushed me to the hospital for stitches in three toes. What no one ever thought to check was to see if perhaps a bone had been broken as well.

Anyway, Easter was coming up and my mother had allowed me to have heels for my Easter outfit. If they were an inch, I'd be surprised but to me they looked just like the high heels my mother wore. I think I still had the stitches when I crammed my aching toes into those shoes but I was determined to wear them.

I got my stitches out and eventually, the ache in my toes went away. It wasn't until we noticed years later that the toe had failed to keep pace with all my other toes that we figured that it had broken and mended badly back then.

I'm sure cramming my foot into that pointy toed 'high' heel didn't help matters any.

Maybe that's why I'm not a big fan of shoes in general and heels specifically.