Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
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!
5 goals for June
The golden light of June is upon us and I am not sure if this is the best time for me to be making a list of 5 goals as I have been given to the grumps all day. Or, maybe, it is the perfect time to make such a list as life continues on despite the mood you find yourself in and sometimes the best way to fight the blues is to find new things to live and hope for. Here are my 5 goals for June.
What are yours?
- Finish the vegetable garden. I have been a little behind in the garden this year - despite the fact that I write of it and talk of it so often. I could have swore yesterday was the first of May and now quite suddenly, the calendar says it is June. Time, remove your sneakers please!
- Shoot the How Long Blues music video. Just typing that sentence gave me goosebumps of the happy variety. I will be posting behind the scenes stuff on my instagram if you are interested in following along. Mostly, I'll be pinching myself to make sure it is all real.
- Spend as many daylight hours as possible underneath the sky. June can be a treasure trove when it comes to exploring, so I want to tuck myself into those warm sunbeams and live live live!
- Bake a chocolate cake. I have been craving one for the last few weeks and there is nothing that can compare to something homemade.
- Press wild grasses. I often find myself pressing flowers, but this year, I want to try to learn the art of pressing wild grasses, too.
How are you?
Tell me of your dreams, your goals, your plans, your curiosities —
the woods in October
When you step into the woods and the month is October, you can be sure a ghostly and surreal mood will climb up your spine. I treasure the feeling. It reminds me that I was born. I carry a thermos filled to the brim with hot chocolate and I sit where the steam rises and tiny clouds of breath appear as I mumble words to myself. For a moment, I am the only human being left in this world until a joggers footsteps appear in the slushy snow. They say hello. I say hello. Everything is how it should be. I am not thinking about tomorrow or the summers passing - I can only see fog and the delight that comes with absolute solitude. I want to stay here for awhile, not because I have nowhere else to be, but because it is important for a lover of the woods to stay where trees are tall and the fog is hanging low. If I rush and run home to a world of buzzing and lit screens, I will have failed myself and a bad mood might follow. It is better for me stay put - listening for the cooing owl or the pheasant rustling through the brush - to feel the chill of October air on my cheeks is to be born again.
Music has been everywhere as of late. Over the weekend, I played a festival and it caused me to grin ear to ear. I got a standing ovation after playing a full set of my songs -- as it happened, I felt like I could have broken down crying. Never in my life did I anticipate a stranger could stand up for me and applaud to the air, almost as if they were saying "don't ever stop." If you're an artist yourself, you know the quiet battle that we tread on. We constantly ricochet between yes and no, good and bad, right place and wrong place, all in one day. We love what we do, but mostly, we need to do what we do. It is our food, our breath, and our livelihood. There are days where I want to lay the banjo in a case and stay in bed. There are shows where I return home feeling defeated, but for every moment of cursing the stars for being who we are, there are moments like these and they remind us of something so easily lost in the hullabaloo of life. Art matters. It keeps our insides from dying or being hooked up to a machine. Nothing should stop us from creating and being strange in our pursuits. If I can do it, this is a call to an art maker's arms and it says "don't ever stop."
I have only a few moments in a day where I can be quiet in the woods. It fills me with the right kind of joy and understanding. I return home as one who found a compass leading to the meaning of life would. I remain strange and my life is greater because of it.
and then there was autumn.
Tomorrow, we leave for the sea. You can't be blue as a berry when a road trip is ahead of you. I can almost feel the sea waves tangling my hair and the early morning rising with an extra spring in my step. I know it will be beautiful, especially at this time of year. There will be trees dressed in fox-like colors and their leaves will look electric as if tiny soft televisions are falling from the sky. I won't have any need to gulp my coffee as if it were water and I was thirsty. No, instead, I will drink slowly as I wander by beaches and beach glass and sea birds flying high.
And then there was Autumn and it invited the sea,
my favorite place to be.
If you'd like to follow along on my adventure, visit my instagram.
outfit details: winners sweater, topshop hat, montana tackstore boots
summers from the past
My summer has been built by plans - something there, something here,
something tomorrow, and something today. I am hoping to see a quieter
August where more hours are spent at a turtle speed. For now, I am feeling a bittersweet nostalgia for yesterday so here are some photographs alongside words from the summers of the past. My favorite season.
Squirrels and Dandelions
I wander to a field with my banjo, I feel lonely as only one can feel
when they are alone in a field and everybody else is a stranger. The
trees cast shadows and I look to them for company as I sit down in the
tall grass. This is who I am — a girl who needs
solitude as much as she needs spoons for stirring and lungs for calling a
loved one home. Surely, it is in these moments of wondering whether I
am lonely or simply alone that I realize how much I need to be wandering
freely on my own, how I thirst for such an occasion. If I am to have
ears for listening to my friends and happiness within each tooth as I
grin, I need to keep and hold onto quiet moments where it's only me.
Continue reading here..
Birds and Dandelions
We went to Griffith Woods to take these photographs. I had hoped the
bird covered shirt would invite birds to sit high on the treetops and
look down over us. I was feeling blue for days leading to these moments,
not for any reason I could name, mostly just because I am Amy, I was
born in December, and I always carry a little bit of that winter shade
of grey inside of my heart. It is the shade I've come
to know which compels me to write, to sing with the belly, and to listen
for songs by birds and other worldly things. I came to Griffith Woods,
not only to take these photographs, but to remind myself that there is a
bright kindling of afternoon skylight within me too.
A few proud flowers
Several times a day, I look to where the sun is pointing and I put my
body there. I could sit underneath the sky for hours, even when it's
warm like a kettle after it coos. All I need is a few proud flowers, a
cold cup of water and a spot in the shade for when my cheeks turn rosy
from the sun. I don't want to miss anything, not the ladybug, not the
bare sleeve, nor the green foliage that lights the forest like moon
shimmer on a boat at sea.
Continue reading..
What makes the gardener garden
I wander to the watering hose and fill my bucket till
it weighs like a full grown dog leaped upon my lap. I use all of the
strength I've ever known to lift it. I water the flowers. My arms
twitch. I find a sense of motherhood by carrying a heavy bucket to give
life to delicate living things. Other times, I feel like a hurricane,
swishing and sloshing as wobbly me carries the bucket from the hose and
into the garden, losing most of the water along the way. There are
little things in the daylight of June that make even the most melancholy
of my moods disappear and seem forgotten until darkness comes around
again. I understand myself best in the world of shoveling soil, carrying
buckets of water, and being hugged by the electric blanket we call
summer. I see everything as it is — short lasting but bright like a life well lived.
Continue reading here..
Be Here Now
Most of my regrets have something to do with summertime. If I don't
wander enough through the green grass or eat enough fruit underneath a
golden sun, then I am left hollow and full of regrets like a boy whose
too afraid to tell his father how he doesn't like fishing. I want to
touch every wild oak as if my hands were new to me. I want to taste the
raspberries as if I had never tasted sugar. I want to walk into the
garden and see the flowers climbing towards the blue sky, not dying and
becoming crumbs of what summer was supposed to be.What will be will be, I say to myself. If a hailstorm were to arrive, like a grave in the ground, here only to bury my garden, I would have to let it go. I spend so much of my waking life being bothered and worried about tomorrow. I stand at the edge of seawater thinking only of how I will miss the sea when it's gone. Sometimes, this way of thinking is beautiful and nourishing to the spirit. Other times, I feel like I am living on the last sentence of my own chapter book.
Continue reading here..
August Thunderstorms
Continue reading here..
About a dream
I realize now, as I look longingly onto the garden, a place where tomato
plants burst and bloom like tiny emblems of a passing summer. Maybe,
the dream only hollers of my wish to be swimming, to always be summer
bound, and to be free as the apron which flour spills onto. Maybe, the
dream is less of a dream and more of a tiny siren song warning me to
live a little louder before the riverbed dries.
Continue reading here..
How to be an explorer
If there ever is a time where
boredom feels like my only season, I can always count on a day of
exploring to lift my spirits. Stepping outside of myself, wandering to
where sunbeams sit on the trees, peeking through binoculars, embracing
my five senses, taking mental field notes and coming home to share all
of my discoveries, this is how I cure the boredom blues and find
happiness again.
Continue reading here..
the grassy hills of July
Breath has been delicate as I sing out with my banjo and guitar. I dream of stories to tell as I bring a bucket of water into the garden. I try to capture the sunlight on my strings as I put one foot in front of the other. I am both eager and confused by my busyness in July. There are festivals, there are campsites, there are rooms waiting for the singers and songwriters to loudly and proudly croon. Some days, I want it all even if wanting it all means missing the garden because I am too busy singing, but then on other days, I want to sing only for the flowers and the backyard sparrows. It is in this dilemma, I find myself grateful to be a puzzle piece. Tomorrow, it could all be taken away. Dreams for so many mean holding onto kite strings and hoping the wind never carries too heavy or dies in the air.
I want to hold onto this, the way you might hold onto a summertime fruit, it's bounty is not endless, so you eat it slowly and savor the sugar even if it makes your hands sticky. If there ever was a place for music-making or realizing what kind of day today could be, it was in the grassy hills of July.
outfit details: eshakti dress
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