Not long ago someone wanted to order the card with “the red bird singing”. Which one was this? I have a cardinal and a sparrow, I thought, but neither of them is singing. Then I remembered what I have always considered to be the card for Valentine’s Day mainly because of the heart image, the symmetry and yes, the hopeful message on the back ” Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come”. I made this card, it is true, with Valentine’s Day in mind, thinking of the paper doilies that we used to glue to the back of cut out construction paper hearts in school, the white fringe and fragile hope that someone somewhere would offer up their heart or at least a chocolate. But this singing bird card could be for any day really. I first heard this saying from my father, a dedicated collector of quotes, of borrowed words to trace the poetry of life that runs beneath the surface of things. He has written the quote on a board which he nailed to his fence that runs along the lane at the back of his home. It is the same place where he offers up to passing strangers a garden of roses and cosmos and rescued flowers which bloom for no one in particular and everyone at the same time. This saying, a Chinese proverb, is just that. Open your spirit and keep faith and there is a possibility, though not a certainty, that beauty, grace and yes love will enter into your life.
Open
New Year
It is already mid January 2012, the start of another year and I have been thinking a lot lately about what kind of year this will be. Or what kind of year I want to make it. Last year portended difficult times from the very beginning when I missed the first day of the kids’ school back after winter break-scrambling and mad dashes are not the way to begin a year. Then multiple disasters that hit Japan in March cast a watchful and wary pall over the year. I can’t remember it being cloudier than usual but there were days that felt so. Mind you, there were also great trips last year– in Montreal for the book launch, driving to Vancouver via Glacier, kayaking on Cortes Island, seeking art in New Mexico, and rediscovering New York with a pilgrimage to the Whitehorse Tavern and the High Line in November. Actually, a lot of travel.
So what kind of year it will be, this 2012? More reflection and less hurry. Less thinking about what I didn’t do, or need to do, and more where I am at the moment. Writing, drawing, being present. One recent weekend I was listening to NPR, the On Being program. A panel of scholars and religious leaders from three main faiths had come to honour the Dalai Lama. The topic was happiness, what it means and how it can be found. Happiness, said one, is behind us and all we need to do is slow down to let it catch up with us. In other words the potential for happiness, fulfillment, peace is with us always. Listening, watching, breathing, calming the mind, being still while moving forward one step at a time -that is what I hope for this year.
(Photo of dawn in Quemado by T Brooks)
Steiner Holiday Bazaar
Here are some photos of my table from the recent Rudolph Steiner Holiday Bazaar and Children’s Faire, Dec 2 and 3. 
I have been at this event for about four years and as always it is a really great event, well organized by dedicated parents who turn the school into a holiday event to stimulate all the senses and who welcome a good sized crowd who appreciate all things handmade.
Been a busy few weeks. Today just finished the first of three holiday sale events, Homegrown at Cobblestone Farms, and despite the soggy weather a good turn out from people already into their holiday shopping. The space, often used for weddings and receptions is in the barn on this historic property and today it was festive with white lights, nice music from a trio of local musicians up in the loft, great Salvadorean food below and a good group of local artists and craftspeople all about. I think everyone was happy about this first time ever event. Good work!
New Mexico
Last week I went to New Mexico with my mom. She is a sculptor and installation artist, and for a long time I have been thinking of taking her on a road trip that would inspire her in similar but different ways as her experience of the Arctic did. I knew it had to be someplace elemental, where you feel a connection to earth and sky. So we went on a pilgrimage to the Lightning Field a permanent land installation by the sculptor Walter de Maria in western New Mexico. It was commissioned in 1977 by the DIA Foundation of New York and has been maintained by them ever since. From May until October six people are allowed to stay at the site overnight in a homestead cabin, the small ratio of people to landscape being a requirement of the artist as is the almost 24 hour experience of it ( and no photographs of the work). There were two spots left for Oct 17. So after a few lovely days in Santa Fe we headed for the tiny town of Quemado three hours away and the jumping off point to the remote location of this mysterious work.
“very windy when we arrived. No lightning forecast, but no matter. The poles, all 400 of them more than 20 feet tall stretch out in all directions, fading into the distance. Vertical markers in this high desert grassland are in a one mile by one km grid, each 220 feet apart. They look absolutely still, like sentinels, until I touch them and they are vibrating in the wind that sweeps across this plain. Lying down in the middle of this silent space I see blue sky and hear nothing, save the wind and the clicking of grasshopper wings. We walk and find beautiful anthills formed of tiny pebbles.
The poles are like reason and intention imposed on this wild land, and you can see how their tips create a perfect plane, a straight visual line drawn across the distant mountains – their order a paradox of perfection and human effort in a landscape full of its own natural order and ease. I step inside the “field” described by the poles and I think – perimeter, parameter, boundary, edge, limit or limitless, the end or the beginning?
Now the poles are catching the light that is fading fast, their shaped tips gleam like small flames. Now the sun has disappeared over the western horizon but the sky is slipping into every shade of violet to black. Now it is night and a thousand stars stretch across the sky and us, stretched out on our backs, wrapped in blankets and the silence and our own thoughts. Now it is day and a big headed owl is hunting low in the dawn darkness and a chorus of coyotes starts up when the sun breaks through the lip of the eastern horizon.”
There were no storms for us at the Lightning Field, and so we never saw the way the work literally connects the earth and sky by drawing down the lightning. That iconic image will have to remain on the cover of Artforum and in our collective imaginations. But being there that sunny late autumn day was special. Leaving it was like walking backwards across the sand, walking lightly without leaving a footprint, moving from an extraordinary moment back to a regular life.
2012 Calendar on the way
Its been a while since I have written. The Homegrown Festival came and went on what seemed like a gust of good energy and fun. The calm before the storm, since we have had nothing since, weather wise, but chilly rain and the garden is feeling quite neglected. Just as well I suppose, for me since have been buckling down in the studio preparing for the new calendar. 
Am glad to report it is almost ready to head to press. I am pleased with the images, having conceived them more as a whole this year, with an eye to the rhythm of colour and form as you flip from month to month. Many of the plants in the new calendar are ones I have encountered throughout the year, most having made their way into the 
garden or the city via the open meadows or woodlands of this region. Some, like this spiderwort is a variety I have in my garden -a more stylized riff on the native species. As always it has been a pleasure to do the research on them – discovering details of their growth habits, their beneficial relationships with animals and insects, their traditional uses and the puzzle of their naming, both common and scientific. It is like unraveling a mystery. As a friend once said, upon learning the full names of trees he had known all his life in Vancouver, it is like getting to know old friends.
HomeGrown Festival
If you are looking for good food, good drink, good crowds and good music I hope you will stop by the fourth annual HomeGrown Festival in Ann Arbor’s historic Kerrytown market. It runs throughout the evening which is a perfect fit for its lively crowd looking for new eats and old friends. This year I was invited to redesign the website to reflect some of the look of the designs I have produced for them these past years, and I am glad to see it up and running. I will have a table there selling my cards and other handmade paper works and, with luck, like last year will come home with a few delicious bartered items – Al Dente pasta anyone?!
late summer
Come August there isn’t a whole lot to do. Its too early to start moving plants around, too late to start anything new in the garden (except some lettuces and radishes I put in to fill some empty beds), too mosquito-y to do much in the morning and too hot to work in the day! So I have just been enjoying – watching the dahlias emerge and the cosmos start poking through the zinnias, nibbling on cherry tomatoes as they ripen and cooking up an endless supply of eggplants and shishito peppers. This year I was testing out combining flowers and vegetables in the beds – nasturtium, calendula, French marigolds. Sometimes they worked well, giving splashes of orange and yellow next to the dark purplish stems of the eggplants or chard, and other times they swamped out the vegetables. 
The beds aren’t terribly big and I think it would work really well if I had a bit more space. Nonetheless it was a good way to integrate the vegetable garden with the surrounding perennial garden and herb border. The cucumbers which I had hoped would take off didn’t quite, I think because of the drought mid July. This year though, I put scarlet runners on either end and between that and a grape that is winding its way up made for a nice mix of texture and colour.
One of my favourite parts about having a vegetable garden -apart from its dinner time inspiration- is its flexibility and forgiveness. 
Year by year I try out new things – ways of combining plants, different varieties, different locations in the garden. Sometimes there are disappointments (like I will never grow edamame or okra again. Remember the year I produced one pod per plant?! ) but other times complete delight – like the silkiness of cutting into a fresh butternut squash. I suppose if I really knew what I was doing I would have it all down pat, but I don’t and not knowing is part of the fun. I do make notes – which I sometimes reread -and I suppose accumulated knowledge through trial and error accounts for much of what I do but I always feel like I am starting at square one when I see that garden turned under in early spring. Humbling and at the same time hopeful. And I suppose that is what gardening, and by extension Nature, is constantly reminding us about. But before I start to wonder what I will grow next year I better just sit back and enjoy the flowers and vegetables doing their very best today.
my summer vacation
Well, it has been nearly a month since I opened this page to write. Since then the weather has turned from wet and cool to scorching hot throughout all of July. Mind you, that is what I heard from friends who so patiently watered the garden through the worst heat while I was out west with my family. Driving cross country through the grasslands of North Dakota and beside the Yellowstone River is like moving through geological time. The ribbon of road and center lines unspooling beneath our little Honda hybrid burning, all the same, fossil fuels above the fossils of Montana. The land is beautiful, wide and unbroken in so many places. So as not to get tired of this ritual drive we headed away from the I-90 through Glacier National Park with its clear, deep lakes and keen visitors with binoculars.
Across the border into Canada it became quieter as we wove through the mountains of the Crows Nest hwy into the sand and sage coloured hills of the Okanagan. It felt like entering a stage from behind the curtain. Driving down the steep slope of the the Coquihalla brought us to a final rolling stop into Vancouver. It was cold there, unseasonably so everyone said. Had a rain cloud been behind us the whole time? But what else is there to do on the Coast but gear up and get out. And that we did.
garden update
It has been raining non-stop which while good for the plants has them also running amok and untamed. A few that have struggled along -kirengeshoma and the phloxes – are looking as they should finally but it has been a challenge to get the vegetable garden going. Here is a view of the small pond we have in the backyard. 
The frogs and toads have been enjoying the steady rain, and there are now a thousand little black tadpoles swarming the edges. And in one of the rare sunny breaks in the clouds I managed to get the cucumber structure up, an annual event using the same set of bamboo poles I have used for many years now. 
This year though added to my usually Suyo Long variety from Kitazawa Seed company – a great source for many Asian vegetables- , a Sastuki Madori variety from Seeds of Change. Will keep you posted on how they turn out!
