Fruit

Gentle painting with my girls....
Is something beautiful for my soul.

Washing Line Poetry

The Sky is just waking.

Icy sunlight eclipses powder blue.

Dew glints from green.

An emerald garden, a mine of jewels.

A sparkling world.

And a row of clothes outline the shapes of those I love.

Those dear to my heart.

Stains washed away with the love of my own two hands given away to the wind.

To be gently dried anew by creation.

The soft whispering breeze.

The smile of the sun.

How to make recycled paper... and some other happy scraps

We have been having a lot of fun making our own recycled paper recently as part of our going green "one small change" project... So much so I thought I'd share a little of the fun here!

What Ingredients will you need?

• We used some medium weight multi purpose paper for this project.(You can use almost any kind of paper)
• Some dried rose petals and lavender (optional but they do look pretty)
• A few drops of essential oil (optional, but it does smell nice)
• Liquid starch

What Equipment will you need?:

• A large tray both deep and wide enough to immerse your frame and paper mulch in.
• A sponge
• An embroidery hoop
• Some netting (like the kind you find on fairy dresses)
• Some large squares of felt.

How to make the paper:

We began by tearing the paper into small pieces. Then we loaded it into a blender with some warm water (enough water to just cover the paper)

The thinner or more watery the solution the thinner the paper sheets will turn out to be.

Then we emptied the solution into a large tray before sprinkling in the essential oil and dried flower petals.



Once the solution had been well stirred we immersed an embroidery hoop that we had clamped over some netting into the solution.

Here is a picture of the embroidery hoop and netting we used...


Make sure that the netting is covered evenly with the paper mulch before lifting the hoop out of the solution.

Once all the excess water had dripped away we covered the entire hoop with a large piece of felt and gently tipped the contents over (like turning a cake onto a cooling rack) dabbing away at the underside of the netting with a dry sponge to release the paper mulch from the netting.

Here is the paper mulch resting on the felt to dry.


We sprayed the top of the paper mulch with a little liquid starch and left it to dry (drying takes about 10 hours)
The finished result looks like beautiful rustic art paper.
I'm hoping to get a rectangular frame soon so that we can make some writing sheets!

Watch this helpful video about making recycled paper. A great step by step guide!

Sunshine After Rain

My Mother brings me Sweet Williams wrapped in brown paper.

The sunlight offers a gift of green silence. A gentle, womb of space.
I take her offerings, both the wrapped and the unwrapped.

And show the brown eyed girl how to cut stems, peal leaves and arrange blooms in ice clear glass.

Once submerged wilting petals revive almost instantly.

So do I.

Words, unguarded somehow escape like the sudden dash of light within a writhing cloud.

 Unnamed spaces grace long ago, sun draped days.

 Held tight for years. Like a bud.

In the sunlight, her hair is almost pure white. She is getting old now. I notice more and more, the slowing movement. The squinting eyes in search of beloved child smiles.

And in this space of both sunlight and rain I let go. And I embrace. And both feel equally good and right.

Florence playing with sunlight and petals

Garden Beauty

Modern life and the Child's Spirit.

spir·it (sprt)n. Definition.

a. The vital principle or animating force within living beings.

Do you ever find that elements of modern life can seem at odds with your spirit?

  I remember as a child I kept trying to find ways to heal and replenish my spirit.

 Sometimes that meant doing nothing much in particular.

Sometimes it meant immersing myself in music or writing pages and pages of poetry that would only ever see the light glimmer from the dust on my bedroom floor.

These deep soul cleanses too quickly became linked to a shameful feeling that I wasn't tough enough, productive enough or even "normal" enough to get along with the customary portion of social, academic or structured events.

My soul became brittle over time.

I began to forget the magic of my childhood heart.

Disengaged

 I have come to see now that many people learn to disengage from communion with their spirit

They detach themselves from their inner being as a coping mechanism to deal with the demands of a life that has become overwhelmingly centered on material goals.

And it's not their fault.

This is the way things have become.

Slowly yet definably.

Expectations

Society's expectations about emotions and children's emotions in particular is oftentimes unhealthy and judgmental. 

People who have compromised their own emotions are often impatient dealing with the emotional responses of others.

Yet an authentic, compassionate life is one that embraces the messy, scribbled lines and the coloured over edges.

 Priorities

As long as my children's spirits are nurtured first everything else will naturally fall into place.

I am learning this lesson.

They are teaching me this lesson day, after day.

And I often fail at assimilating it, but when I make mistakes, I try to be honest with them and ask their thoughts, their forgiveness their time and their co operation.

We are in this thing together.

“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.”

Stephen R. Covey