Cottonwood
It’s possible I’m making this up, but I think I read once that the best way to approach a wild bird is to come at it sort of sideways. You turn your face and your bellybutton away before moving in steadily at an angle, legs crossing and uncrossing as you go, until you arrive.
Proof that it sort of works!
Looking at these pictures, it strikes me again how wonderful a time it must be to be a plant. We’ve had oh-so-much rain already and every time I think it’s done (like right now), another storm seems to blow through and drop another half inch. In places, the grasses have grown to my waist. In others, the seed heads reach my chest. We’ve taken the tractor on a few laps of the property, re-carving our morning walk route, and now it’s like we’re strolling through canyons of green whenever we run the dogs.
As of last weekend, all of our 2023 trees are planted, hooked up to the drip lines, and ready to put down some serious roots. Thank goodness! At this point we’ve planted almost a hundred trees here - but oh, the new cottonwood. It’s something else.
I went to pick it out myself, a brief stretch of time all my own (so rare these days!). Up and down the rows I walked until I just knew - that was my tree. Our tree. Remi’s tree, really. The root ball was giant - and getting it off our trailer once I’d made it home nearly tipped the tractor - but out it came. The hole was nearly nine feet across, at least three feet deep, and before we planted this beauty I made sure we all touched the leaves at the very top. That way, hopefully, one day we’ll all be able to look up at our beautiful, magnificent, giant of a tree and know that, once, we’d stood right there.
As a followup to my spider infestation drama from the last post, I just wanted to say I’ve found a solution that seems to be working. In the worst places, a drop or two of straight lavender essential oil. In the not-so-bad places, a spray mixture of lavender oil, water, and dish soap. I have not seen ANY SPIDERS in the past few days. It’s amazing.
The two pendants I was working on are finished. Oh, oh, oh - my first “someday for sale” pieces in so long…it’s felt like I’d never make it back here. Soon I’ll put together a little photoshoot to document them, just like I used to - but I’ve got one more inlay piece to finish before these will get their “official” photos taken. Basically, hang tight.
With the pincushions, I’ve hit a roadblock. After spending a couple weeks (and too many hours) embroidering, I decided my French knots were hiding too much of the silver. And then I realized that the embroidery itself had made the felted forms too HARD - aka, I wasn’t going to be able to pop them in once the silver backings went on (this will make more sense when you someday see them finished!). Anyhow, I’m back to the drawing board - a little frustrated, but that’s life. And art. I’ll figure it out eventually!
