the squirrel highway and autumn.

I stood in Griffith Woods as a storm was blowing in from the mountains. The living trees shook and the dead ones crackled as squirrels hurried across the broken down log, their own highway of sorts. I thought about the imagery of a tree being knocked from its roots and falling down in front of me. I shuttered at the way a tree stands so tall, then quite suddenly, something like the weather roars and rattles, swallowing whole what once stood so tall and it made me begin to wonder about the very strangeness that is my own life.

These woods. This wind. The cutting down of our snapdragon crop. Never knowing if it is too early or too late to pull the flowers from the ground and making dried bouquets. I take what is left of the tomatoes and watch them ripen on the kitchen windowsill. Dreaming, always dreaming of berries cooked in pies and the way sunlight bends through these spaces we have come to know as ours.

my life in photographs

 It has been thirteen days since I last posted here — which quietly breaks my heart. I found an interview I did years ago and it reminded me of why I began blogging in the first place. It was not for the applause or the very small promise that is sharing your inner world and hoping others like it too.  No, it was an escape shoot from the mundane, a way of finding myself as a girl, as an artist, and beyond all, my own way of figuring out what it meant to be a human being. I could convince you with certainty that I am a better woman for having had this blog. It has been the greatest task I have ever followed through - because of what I have learned, because of who I have met, because of how vulnerable these blog entries turn me and I am so glad to have shared these years with you.

sunlight on the staircase

the wild call of summer

Where has the time gone? It seems to me that it was only yesterday when the wild call of summer came knocking on the door, now it is passing us like a sprinting pony and all I can do is try to hold on without quivering or crying at the thought of this warm hug of a season leaving me. I had plans, I had dreams, I had a lot to say in the months of June, July and August but mostly, I simply moved through the days and now I am here, sitting beside the climbing sweet peas, knowing one day they will be no more, but doing what I can to remember how good it is when they are here. I guess this is what happens when you make an album or take a dream from your head and try to make it into something you can hold. You spend so much time sitting on the stoop thinking about it, wondering if it is good, if it is worthy, if it is the best you can do. Art is a strange thing and nothing swallows time quite like over-thinking.

How to press flowers

A few years ago, I wrote this post and it still remains as one of the most asked questions around here: how does one press flowers. I decided to post it again as August is nearing its departure and petals are blooming all around - the perfect time for flower pressing!