31 Jan, 63 F

I tried to catch a picture of the red-bellied woodpecker
who has been eating outside my window.
Not a very good photo, but there he is!

red bellied woodpecker

Some of my original watercolors I am working with at the moment

I've been working on my watercolors and fabric patterns for this coming spring and summer, which is both exciting and annoyingly agonizing.  Yesterday I spent hours arranging and re-arranging patterns, and the day ended before I had anything I liked enough to keep.  But to make something good takes time, and when I create the right thing, I will recognize it, and it will be worth the work and the wait.  In the meantime, to encourage myself to be patient and not to overlook things that are happening outside of my seemingly non-existent pattern-making progress, I remind myself of a message I got on the tag of a teabag about a month ago:  "Every smile is a direct achievement."

a handsome bowl for 95 cents

bowl filled with Christmas Limas

Pillows for Hanna's shop

Valentines for the Arts Center

sel gris

 It's been a good day.  In the morning, I delivered three of my pillows to a shop that is opening on Main Street in Orange.  It was really nice to meet the proprietress, Hanna, and to be in the beautiful space she is setting up behind the secrecy of brown painter's paper taped all over the front door and windows.  The grand opening will be in February, and Hanna kindly said she would even like to have more of my fabrics and pillows in her shop!  Next I delivered a few herbal therapy pillows, one throw pillow and a pair of pocket warmers to the Arts Center in Orange... hoping some people will scoop them up as Valentines.  In the afternoon, I found a good bowl for 95 cents at the Goodwill.  And then, I had the luxury of going to Whole Foods and lolling around the bulk dry goods section.  I got these beautiful Christmas Lima Beans (pictured in the bowl).... and grey sea salt from France... and wild rice!  Two other good things have happened.  The past couple mornings, tufted titmice have been visiting the birdseed-filled heart outside my window.  I'd started to think the birds would never take advantage of it, but at last, they are coming.  AND... the first of the lavender seeds have begun to sprout!  The packet said germination would happen in 18 - 28 days, but these popped up in just under two weeks.  

lavender sprout

snow melting, mid-morning

a lavender patch

halfway through preparing the pots

 For a few years now, I've been wanting a lavender patch.  A big one.  Not a whole field (maybe someday!) but a good twenty plants.  Imagine all the wonderful things that surround a lavender patch... bees and butterflies, little purple springs to tie on presents or put in a vase on your nightstand, and then, one of the best things I think: drying it and making sachets!  My mom has five or six old plants that grow like a hedge around one of her flowerbeds.  Every summer, we get at least two big aluminum mixing bowls of dried lavender just from those few bushes.  Imagine all that could come from twenty mature plants!  I've been putting off my own lavender patch, thinking the spring would finally arrive when I would be living somewhere I knew I'd be staying for years on end.  But since I'm still not sure when that time is going to come, I've decided to go ahead with the lavender patch now.  I'll plant it on my parents' farm and still be able to enjoy it... and then when I finally have found my home, I can plant another lavender patch... the more lavender patches, the merrier!  I'm starting the seeds in my windowsill and so long as they germinate and take off, will transfer the baby plants into the ground this spring.  Here's hoping!

lavender seeds