So you think you can write?

(A stop on my walk in the Harwich Conservation Land, Cape Cod)

A party of amazing women rented Saturday Farm for a retreat and they are arriving on... Saturday :-) . They all met at a writers workshop by Joan Anderson. (Joan is the author of A Year By the Sea, An Unfinished Marriage and A Walk on the Beach.) I'm excited about their visit- Saturday Farm is perfect for artists and writers. This brings up thoughts about my writing insecurities, though. Of course, I've never claimed to be a writer. I keep journals and journals of poems, art, collage, dreams, and phrases that come into my head. I've been cleaning out the barn and I found a piece of paper with a bunch of words I wrote several years ago. I read it and thought, 'What IS this? Where did this come from? Is this some attempt at a poem, a story....? What kind of writer am I??? Who writes like this? Read it and tell me what you think. I seem to be lacking 'comments' (interaction) on this blog and I would love to hear from you.

Camelia writes of wrens while blue birds find ladies who fry
bacon in burnt pans in the alley with shoes and spiders and
love. How
many wrens fly kites over that alley?
How many times? And do they run into
other birds with their kites in the
rain? Yesterday. Yesterday it rained. It
rained in tear
drops rather salty on my face and in my hair - I had to use
swimmers shampoo to
get it out and even then it dried in pink streaks --

Hmm.. maybe from the
ink running off of the wrens'
kites.

I caught a fairy!

I could see her little toe peeking out from under the mat at Island Cottage. So, I lifted the mat and bingo! Here she is!

Fritz's Marbles

I haven't had a chance to take the Baa Brothers to Fritz Glass yet, but you must go. He is an amazing glass blower and you can watch him work right there in his shop. Fritz and his wife, June, are very friendly too. Hillary Rodham Clinton decorated the White House Christmas tree with his glass.
It is a long walk or very short drive from Saturday Farm on Upper County Road.
Here's his link
http://www.fritzglass.com/

Be kind to yourself and sweet dreams.

Saturday Farm roses

Roses pretty much surround Saturday Farm. The old rambling roses in the side yard are at their best right now so I took this picture today. It was a little overcast....

The Mermaid and the Dolphin

Here is the mermaid I painted for Island Cottage swimming with her friendly dolphin. {Yes, she is totally naked from the waist up :-). I had so many hits on my post about Harry's mom (see 'Totally Naked' ) I'm tempted to try another post with the same 2 words to see if the popularity was about my story, Harry's mom, or the words 'totally naked'. :-)) This mural is about 16 feet high and 20 or so feet wide. It took a lot of paint and I'm not done yet. I work on my murals whenever I'm in St. John. I hope you will plan to vacation at Island Cottage one day; then you can see her 'live' :-)..
See http://www.vrbo.com/108972 for more info on Island Cottage

Iced Tea with Mick Jagger

Today is shaping up to be the perfect picnic day. Harry and I are going to pack up a cooler, our beach umbrella and books. We might be at the beach all day. The gloriousness of the day reminds me of the day in my Iced Tea with Mick Jagger painting that we have in the stairway tower at Holly House.

Meanness and Grace

Does it seem to you that people are more gracious this year? Harry and I have the opportunity to meet a lot of people through friends, work, and vacation rentals. This year people have been more gracious than ever. It's wonderful. What have you noticed? I want to hear; please comment..
(The above mean photo is of my cat, Smudge. This was taken last year. She's a little sweeter this year :-) Below are photos of grace that I took at Watkins Farm, Jason and his granny, and a couple singing to each other at Pleasant Bay Nursing (where his granny is now).)

Totally Naked

I love Harry's mom, Muma Lee. She is witty, petite, and Irish. Tuff, but fragile too. I sat down with her the other day and asked her about her new apartment. She has an amusing way of speaking in short bursts. And, as her kids know, each burst can be potent. She said to me,

"I sit and look out my window. There's a bench right there, right outside of my window. These men come by, same time each day, totally naked."
"Totally naked??"
"Yes! Totally naked. From the waist up!"
"Totally naked 'from the waist up' isn't really naked, Muma Lee."
"Luvie, I'm tellin ya, it is disgusting."

The Baa Brothers and the bed posts

Here is what we did with the other bed. Or Harry did it; I just had the idea. The boys love it.

The Handyman Harry Gate

This is the gate that Harry made for me. I say 'for me' because without my 'I have an idea!' Harry would have made a perfectly good gate out of wood in half the time. These 'gates' are from an old iron bed. I had them in my garden for ten years with beautiful morning glories growing up them. Well, the morning glories weren't actually there, but the promise was there. I dutifully planted the seeds there every spring. I had this idea of a morning glory 'garden bed' (get it? :-) but .... I like this better. (I don't have the pressure of growing morning glories which are suppose to be simple.) We now have 2 'beds' in the yard the other one makes a little fence in front of the shed.

The bad haircut

So here are the happy boys on their way to get their haircut. They are optimistic. It's summer and a lot of wool is just too hot. They believe and I believe that after they see the 'barber' they will be cooler and stylish. How can they not be cute?
Now here is Jobey looking a little wary, probably because he is looking at my face and I'm starting to have doubt. The Shepherd is Andrew Rice from Hogget Hill Farm in Brattleboro, Vermont and he is amazing - very experienced and knowledgeable. I think he said he's sheared something like 300,000 sheep. However, a few minutes before this picture was taken I suggested that he leave their cute wooley faces and he said, 'Lady, I'm not a groomer. They'll get military haircuts.' Now I'm worried. And you know how somewhere in all of our psychies there is this knowledge that looks change everything - who we are, how others feel about us... our whole image.....?

Oh dear. Our fears were realized. I keep going out to see them hoping that by some miracle their wool has magically grown back in the last few minutes but.. they still look the same. They keep looking at each other like,' What the heck happened to you? I hope I don't look like that!' I want those sweet smiles back.... darn. Sigh. Well, I'm told the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is two weeks. I'll post new pics in 2 weeks.

Harvesting the lavender

It's lavender time!! We have 400 plants here at Saturday Farm so I'm busy harvesting and laying the lavender on layers of flat screens in the barn. I'll write more soon, but I'm leaving you a picture that I took yesterday.

The Baa Brothers first Gig

This week I was all busy and anticipatory getting ready for the boys first gig at the
Harwich Junior Theater. (www.hjtcapecod.org) The Harwich Junior Theater is a wonderful theater and they continue to impress me with their outstanding performances. It's not just for children; people of all ages love this theater.
You are probably imagining that I was putting in a lot of effort training and costuming the boys because they were going to be in a big production. No, this was a children's class and the Baa Brothers were only asked to show up. I'm the one who got a bee in my bonnet about dressing them up. I also decided they had to have a magical impact. I started making costumes and knitting little socks with bells. Of course, the night before it started raining and then pouring and pouring. When I went to put them to bed in their little house, they were soaked. (They live outside, but they sleep in this little house that Handyman Harry built for them.) Their gig was in the morning, so I decided to thoroughly dry them before putting them to bed. This took about an hour and about 5 bath towels. The next morning it was still pouring so they were all wet again. I dried them again, but it was useless because it continued to rain. I put their costumes on and their little socks became so soaked that they started stretching and stretching and falling off their feet. The boys also looked soggy and smelled of wet wool. When we arrived at our designated area it turned out that the children AND their parents were there - a bigger group than I expected. The boys had only seen this many people at the nursing home and all of those people were in wheel chairs. The children had puppets and as part of the story the children were acting out, they were to touch the sheep with their puppets. As this mass of children, adults and puppets started descending on them, Bromley and Jobey panicked and ran circles around my legs. Quickly I crouched down and put an arm around each of them. They calmed down and eventually let the children touch them. After the children touched the sheep they all got into their cars to go home and the little Baa Brothers took a couple of steps forward and said, 'Baa... Baa...? ' . It was as if they were now disappointed that the children were leaving.
At the time I thought the event was a little bit of a fiasco, but, as you can see in the pictures, it really wasn't - the children loved them, they loved the children and I actually think the magic really did happen.