Living with cats....

I come from a long line of pet lovers and have always had cats and dogs. I've had a few birds, a rabbit and countless fish as well. It used to be I called myself a dog person that put up with cats.

But over the years the cats grew on me. Even ole grumpy gus here, also known as Zeke. This old guy had a feral mom and is not fond of being handled though he has always let me handle him. He's very sensitive to touch and will let you know if you have overstepped your bounds but he follows me around the house like a puppy. No matter where I am he is close by. I had been drawing here at the table and you can see he just joined the party.

Here is his compatriot, Smudge. Smudge is as sweet as Zeke is not. Having said that, Smudge is not the brightest of the bunch, if you catch my drift. He is also quite large which makes his lack of foresight and intelligence, well, more noticeable. He is always miscalculating and knocking things down or making a mess somewhere.

These are not my first cats but they are probably the first cats that have made me laugh and admit that yeah, maybe I'm a cat person as well as a dog person after all....

How about you? Are you a cat person? A dog person? Neither? Both?

When our online friends leave us...

One of the things that has occurred with the rapid influx of the internet into our daily lives is that we have made online friends. We have never met them but in many ways they are quite close. So what happens when one of these online friends gets sick and then dies? There is a separation of reality and empathy for there can not really be closure. Most of us are not going to travel great distances and intrude on families we've never met and yet, there is a grieving process that is hard to explain or share. The people in your 'real' life don't quite get your very real feelings of loss so we end up turning to our other online friends, who we also haven't ever met. It's a funny world out there in internet land.

For those of us on Etsy, the loss of our dear friend and compatriot, cheerleader and supporter, Kathy Kroll of Four Dog Day has been both shocking and saddening. We got word of her passing on Saturday. Most of us knew she was sick and over the last few weeks it had become obvious that she was not getting better, but still.....it seems almost surreal, especially since we never actually met her. We have been missing her cheerful comments and funny stories for months now but the finality and silence are settling in to stay....

I wrote more about this a week or so ago on my Open Salon blog and you can read it if you'd like.

The edible landscape...

Do you forage out in the wild for greens to add to salads, for berries and nuts, for leaves, twigs and roots to make teas or other concoctions? I do a little bit and each year I am learning more...Remember Euell Gibbons? I was always intrigued by him but also a bit nervous about picking all that stuff in the wild and eating it....

This winter I took a class about edible and medicinal wild plants and over the years I've gone to various workshops, including a few on edible mushrooms. This year I am hoping to do a lot more with this. After all, I have an organic yard full of food ready for the picking right now...

I have a LOT of young dandelions--you have to get these early, before they grow flower stalks or they will be pretty bitter. Right now they are perfect for adding to salads and are also good steamed with other greens.

Shepherd's purse is pretty common as are common violets and both are quite tasty added to a salad but get them while young and tender.

And of course there is wild onion and garlic grass--quite common popping up in yards at this time of year. The wild onion is preferable to the garlic grass but both can be used, especially now before they get too tough. We have a lot of this in my yard and from the descriptions it is the garlic, being tubular, rather than the onion, which has a flatter blade. The garlic grass can be very strong but if you just trim the tips to add to a salad, scrambled eggs, dips, etc. it is quite lovely.

Can't wait to get out there and learn and do more! Am still taking classes and am looking forward to making some sassafrass tea and lemonade soon.

Celebrating Earth Day

Each year celebrating Earth Day seems to gather a bit more momentum. Frankly, I'd like to see every day declared Earth Day but hey, you take what you can get.

The unfortunate aspect of declaring one day a special day for honoring the earth is that people get all excited about it and then they forget. What if we made a few small changes throughout the year that added up to big changes? Now that would be something to celebrate!

I have been thinking about easy and quick changes we could make. Some may be more challenging than others for some people but it should give us all something to think about...

1. Use detergents and soaps that are non-toxic and don't add to the nitrogen loading that is so common today. Stop using bleach. Really. You will live without it. Longer, too.

2. Compost and recycle. I always assume everyone does this but actually, many people are not on board yet so make this the year...

3. Give up plastic bags, including baggies. Our grandmothers didn't have plastic bags. They used all sorts of containers that were reusable. What about freezer bags? They didn't have those either, just used freezer paper. And, they used frozen food very quickly.

4. Give up the power leaf blowers and weed trimmers. Really. It will be more peaceful, you'll save money on gas and oil, you won't be polluting the neighborhood and you'll get more exercise. Win win all the way around.

5. Plan all your errands for the same outing or at least plan to do things that are in the same area on the same day. Save gas and time, too.

6. Walk or bike to work one day a week if you can. Look into carpooling or public transportation if you can't.

7. Be conscious of your water usage. Shorter showers, turn off water while brushing teeth, washing a few dishes in the sink rather than load the dishwasher, etc. Consider using a rain barrel to collect water to use in the garden and on the lawn.

8. Use organic garden and lawn products. You'll be healthier and so will the water supply.

9. Give up the paper plates and cups, plastic utensils and those throw away plastic tablecloths. Use washable, reusable items instead. You can do it....;-)

10. Don't throw your old prescriptions down the toilet. In fact, don't dump anything into the sink or into the ground that you don't want to drink....it all seeps into the groundwater which ends up in our glasses, on our bodies and in our cooking....

Even if we all just do one of these things....the earth will thank you!

Nurturing Creativity....

takes effort. It isn't unlike planting seeds for the garden...

Planting the seeds is easy. Ideas are like seeds....we have tons of them but if we crowd them, they will not have room to grow. Sometimes we have to weed out our ideas and choose the ones that seem strongest, the ones that will survive even when we neglect them for a bit.

Seeds need to be carefully tended if we expect them to grow strong and healthy. We need to separate them, feed them, water them and make sure they get plenty of sun and fresh air. They need room to grow but they also need to be turned around so they don't lean too far in one direction. We want them to stand tall, not all bent and leggy.

Our creativity is like that. If we do not carefully tend to it, it can become weedy, bent over and feel starved and thirsty. It can blanch and pale beyond recognition. It needs sun and fresh air.

My creative juices need to be revived. It's spring. The sun is shining. I'm packing the dog, the binoculars, the sketchbooks, pens and watercolors into the car. I'm going to do this for the next week. I can't afford to go off on a special retreat but I can make my own retreat, right here in this beautiful place I call home and I can jump start my tired old creative self. I'm going to go off by myself, listen to myself and do a little drawing, painting and writing. I'm sort of excited to see what shows up.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

2011 Bird-a-thon is right around the corner....

This year I will be a team member for the Mass Audubon Long Pasture Catbird team for the upcoming Bird-a-thon 2011. I put a link on the sidebar to make a contribution or you can go to my Cape Cod Art and Nature Blog and read more about it and contribute there.

Writing essays and short stories....

is sort of an exercise in futility these days. Or is it? There are fewer and fewer outlets that will pay for your work and yet more and more places to put it out there and get responses. It is an interesting time for those of us earning a living in the creative fields, especially those of us who are older, for times, they are a-changing.

I seem to always pick something to do that has little or no commercial value. I paint watercolors....the only thing that sells for less than watercolors is pencil drawings. And yes, there are some folks who make big bucks selling their watercolors but there aren't many. Watercolors are considered impermanent and hard to keep from fading or changing color so they are worth less than oils or acrylics. I make paper, I do collages, I sketch and I write short pieces. None of these are things that make any money any more. These days people are giving them away for free or almost free and it is not only difficult to compete with that, but exhausting and often not worth the effort.

I'm feeling discouraged, that my continuing my creative life is more or less a waste of my time....and yeah, I know all about creative expression being good on it's own and all that....but I used to actually earn my living with my art work. That is no longer true....even the business I had became irrelevant as styles and materials changed. And that's okay. I was bored with it anyway. So now what? I wish I knew....I wish I had the energy to even be interested....

It is true that for the moment I get paid for writing several nature columns but every paper I write for is being threatened with financial problems that are huge and causing them to cut way back. They pay very little but one of these days they may not pay at all...

So what next? In an age where everyone gives away their creative work for free on the internet....what will the artists and writers do for a living?

I would love to hear your ideas and comments on this.

Colors of Provincetown in the spring....

If you have been lucky enough to visit Provincetown you know it is a magical town at the tip of the Cape. It is quintessentially quaint and arty; an old school traditional Cape Cod fishing village and a smart, hip community full of people who value the arts and good food. I visit as often as I can but I especially love this time of year.

Buildings are getting fresh paint, radios are blaring, dogs are lying in the sun and people are greeting each other out on the street after a long, cold winter indoors listening to the wild wind swoosh in from the sea.

It is a place full of color and nautical items repurposed.

An anchor may weigh in as a sign holder....

A brass lobster may serve as a door knocker....

Stones may be gathered and arranged in an old wagon...

Long rambling buildings may cover the docks....

and everywhere you look there are sights to please your eyes...

Every time I go I see new things, smell and taste new foods and feel grateful to live in such a beautiful place...

My new home and studio....

Not really but I wish it was....

See it down there at the end of the grass? It is almost on the beach. That is blue ocean you can see to the right of it...

It isn't very big and probably has no central heat or many modern amenities....

A good storm could probably blow it out to sea....but wouldn't it be grand to live there, paint and dream? We saw this today in Provincetown and it made me smile to imagine all that....

Magical mornings....

The sun doesn't have to be brightly shining for the early mornings to be beautiful around here....

It can be just as beautiful shining through the fog over a silver sea....

With birds waiting and preening on posts that stand like trees in the harbor....

The docks and slips are still mostly empty....

but the few boats that are already in the water remind one that warmer days are just around the corner...

Pictures taken at Veteran's Beach, Lewis Bay in Hyannis this morning....

Places we remember....

I still live in the town I grew up in. I went away to college and after college I lived in New York City for awhile but then I returned to the sand and the sea and this is where I raised my own family.

One of the interesting multi layered things that comes from living in the same place so long is how places change along with you. Lately I have found myself returning to this place time and again....

This is a pond where I came as a child when I was in a family "summer camp" while my mother worked. I learned to swim here, learned to catch frogs and toads, how to canon ball off a raft and how to swing out over the water on a rope swing. The woman who had the "camp" brought us here every day that wasn't raining and even some days that were....she let us run pretty free and we had a blast here.

Over the years the pond became a place where many people wouldn't go because it was rumored to be unsafe. Homeless people lived in the woods (some still do) and drugs were sold in the parking lot and other such things. The town bought it as conservation land a few years back, cleaned it up, put in trails and now it is a place where a lot of people walk every day. We come here often. It is quiet, peaceful, close to our home and full of birds, flowers and other wildlife.

And I can't help it, every time I stop and look out over the water I remember one of my little friends telling me how if I swam out to the middle of the pond snapping turtles would bite off my toes. He knew this was true. His sister had told him so.....He has since passed away but it always makes me smile to picture him as the little freckled, tousled hair boy who was always getting into mischief here but who was afraid to swim in the water outside the ropes because that is where the snapping turtles were....and he was right, there were snapping turtles but as far as I know, all the many people who swam across this pond retained all their toes.

Over 40 years, almost 50 years, have passed and still, those voices from childhood remain....

The pond is Hathaway's Pond in Hyannis.

A Quandary

Lately I've been paying more attention to my Cape Cod Art and Nature blog and am wondering if keeping two blogs going makes sense right now. I was hoping to concentrate more on my art and writing over here and the nature things over there....

What do you think?