Thursday, March 22, 2012

spider carnival

Sometimes I don't get out for my walk until mid-day or evening.  Thank goodness I woke up early this morning, put on the kettle (so I'd have hot water for tea when I got back inside), laced up my boots, and got out while the fog was still low.  There were spiderwebs EVERYWHERE, as if the spiders had had an extraordinary, predawn festival.  There were thousands of them, high and low, some of them were shaped like a kind of double hammock, with one slightly concave net suspended just about a centimeter above a second same-sized net.  Others were bell-shaped like cloche hats.  I've never seen so many spider webs on a single morning in my entire life. I don't know when they built all these webs.  Was it yesterday?  Was it this morning? I like to imagine that a million spiders were waiting, in party-like anticipation, in hopes of a hearty spring breakfast while the sun was creeping around the horizon and dew fell in their webs while people and birds and bugs were just beginning to stir.



Tuesday, March 13, 2012

mini-cards


After spending a whole day running my own one-woman assembly line, I got all of my new mini-cards cut out, folded, labeled and tied.  They are now for sale on my Etsy site, and better yet, at the stationary store Rock Paper Scissors on the Charlottesville downtown mall!


bunny, fig leaf
strawberry, tomato
red-bellied woodpecker, owl butterfly

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

a bee on a hot brick

an endearing book
In the midst of trying to keep up with a long, unruly (and growing) list of things to do, I've been reading An Irish Country Village by Patrick Taylor, and really enjoying it.  I like it so much that I can't help but read it before I go to sleep... even on the nights when I'm crawling into bed at 2 a.m.  It's comforting tinkering around the Northern Irish village of Ballybucklebo with two doctors and their mild mischief and all the little quirks of small town life... except the scene of Jenny Murphy giving birth.  I really almost fainted with the descriptions of the delivery of her baby.  The book is full of colorful Irish figures of speech, for instance, "What's the matter?  You have a face on you like a bulldog that's just licked piss off a nettle" or, "I've been going around today like a bee on a hot brick."
one of my new Spring pillows!