Summer Evening Pleasures.

WHAT do you get with a summer evening in Oregon?
If you are lucky, you're not wearing a jacket. (Tonight, no jacket.)
If Mother Nature feels generous, you get a great sunset. (Tonight, great sunset.) Pleasant breeze? Yes, we've got that. Flowers? You betcha!
Today started off with gray skies, and I got grumpy and gave up. I put on my wool socks and clogs. But in the afternoon things cleared up and the sunshine was back. I guess that's the prediction for this weekend. We'll see ... .
I came home tonight to paint paper and finally got down to it after doing a little blog visiting. I get so tired of sitting, though, since I do it so much at work as I proofread and edit. I just couldn't stand it. Standing and painting paper is great relaxation for me, even if I do feel guilty listening to the Mister running machinery in the backyard. But then, he could paint too. I wouldn't mind. Especially since he gets a bit over zealous sometimes whacking away at shrubbery, trees and plants. I thought I would show you these floating daisy faces before they either fade or mysteriously disappear.
Here is some of the painted paper and I don't really know what they are going to turn into. (7x12 inch sheets, folded in fourths) I think I want to fold the edges about an inch and piece them together somehow. With glue? Thinking ... thinking ... THINKING! I don't know. Something will spark an idea. I had talked about maybe quilting/piecing them together.
Seth at The Altered Page has another collaborative project going: On July 16 post one or two of your own favorite posts. If you want to do this you need to go to his blog and leave him your name and he will post the links to all those who want to collaborate. He's calling this "Buried Treasure," and since there's not enough time in the day to read everyone's blog, he thought if we put our best stuff out - hence, Buried Treasure - then folks could get some genuine booty, pirate's gold, with these quick reads at folks' sites. Click on the link above for more info.
Don't you love these lilies? They are the ones over 6 feet tall. Wowser! Last summer was the first time they bloomed and this year they've gone crazy-beautiful.
Here are my Tanabata wishes I hung in the magnolia tree July 7. Since it's the festival of the stars, I thought it was serendipitous to find the wired stars in a drawer. You can see the sunset against the side of the house, pleasant breeze blowing the paper strips and the drying lawn from our drier summer weather. The ferns are still magnificent though. They don't give up for nuthin' - femminismo

Painting Paper and Then Cutting "Viewpoints"

AFTER stamping this paper, front and back, Thursday night and Friday morning, I was so pleased with the color combinations I didn't think I would do a thing with them, except maybe inscribe them with a poem throughout.
Then this morning I began arranging them and I wanted to see some of the blue contrasted against the orange and so I got an Exacto knife and began cutting slices of them away. Then I thought, why not cut and bend back a few sections so I can save pieces and see various colors against each other. Then I thought why not keep cutting and see more and more color combinations!?! Voila! Turns out the stamped papers weren't so very precious after all.
So then I started cutting up practically brand-new New Yorkers, which haven't even been read (like that's going to happen any time soon!) and using some of the illustrations to look at through "viewpoints."
Tell me if you can think of things that are more pleasurable than scissors and paste? Well, OK, there's other things, but therapeutic? Oh, my, yes!
Outside the Mister was chopping weeds and I was trying not to feel guilty and I did a pretty good job of it. The Solomon's Seal is shooting from the ground, growing inches in a day. I cannot wait to see the white pendulous bells hanging from its branches.
Remember the brand new gel pens I said I found at Office Depot? Well, I started doodling - inspired I think by Fairy Shoes and Other Things "Arthur Rackham trees." Or another blog? I can't find it now. The blogger was talking about a field in England where certain purple flowers grow, sprouting in fields from the blood of Danes lost in battle. (Wait! I'll google it!) Found this:

The Knights Flower (M. Il-Warda tal-Kavallier) is the name given to the fruit of a wild creeping plant commonly believed to grow between May and September, within Fort St Angelo, and nowhere else. According to tradition, this plant sprang out of the blood shed by the knights in defence of the fort during the Great Siege of 1565. The fruit resembles the eight-pointed cross of the Order of St John, but two of its points on one side are slightly tilted at an angle with their opposite points.

Since classical times there have been numerous metamorphosis stories relating how human beings were transformed into trees. In the story of Polydorus in Virgils Aeneid (Book III, lines 22-68) the tree grows out of the heros tomb. An old French chronicle relates how sweet-smelling roses grew out of the corpses of the fallen Christians, but briars and thorns out of those of the Saracens. (Oh my goodness - my comment on this.)

The flower on the blog looked something like a trillium, but dark purple with a taller stem. Sorry, I don't know whose it was. Well, that's what I get for wandering without leaving bread crumbs - femminismo

Today Is A New Day.

WELL, actually, today is almost over. Only a few more hours here and it will be tomorrow.
But it was a new day today and somehow it finally worked out OK. Some more gloominess today and trying to figure out what is going on. A good cry, some talking, some work in the yard, took some pictures, had a hot shower, then painted some paper.
April is National Poetry Month and I have not honored it here yet - so let's get on with it!

THE RETURN
Earth does not understand her child,
Who from the loud gregarious town
Returns, depleted and defiled,
To the still woods, to fling him down.

Earth can not count the sons she bore:
The wounded lynx, the wounded man
Come trailing blood unto her door;
She shelters both as best she can.

But she is early up and out,
To trim the year or strip its bones;
She has no time to stand about
Talking of him in undertones

Who has no aim but to forget,
Be left in peace, be lying thus
For days, for years, for centuries yet,
Unshaven and anonymous;

Who, marked for failure, dulled by grief,
Has traded in his wife and friend
For this warm ledge, this alder leaf:
Comfort that does not comprehend.

- EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

I WANT to show you the little book (up above) I made of my papers I painted (last post). There is a special punch and some plastic binders the receptionist at work uses, and she showed me how to operate this and the papers got put together. My friend, JoAnn, said maybe instead of the plastic, use ribbon, yarn or wire. That sounds good, too. Next time.
Tonight I started painting more paper - greens on one side, purple and pink on the other. Does the transfer of the eye detail look familiar? It was on Seth's blog, a detail from an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I believe.
I also took pictures of my Disintegration Project this afternoon as I worked in the garden. I decided to turn over the book pages and allow the back side to get some of the sunshine due in the next few days. AND I couldn't stand giving the slugs refuge for much longer, so they are now g.o.n.e. Pictures of the pages coming soon. May 1 is the day to figure out what to do with them.
And Judy Wise, who attended, taught and learned at Artfest, is doing some self portraits on her blog, and since I like to steal her ideas, I did my own self portrait tonight. I'll leave you with that - femminismo