December | 2021 | my90acres

Monthly Archives: December 2021

Introspection

Posted on December 19, 2021 | 3 comments

I have an exhibit coming up in January and was recently asked by the gallery director what the title of my exhibit will be. Duh? You would think that a person who has spent most of her life in the creative field would be more imaginative in this respect. Uh, my name? The types of paintings I’ll exhibit? I finally landed on the title: Introspection.

Alone. Intimate Spaces – Breaking Bread series. Acrylic on canvas. 30 x 24. Kit Miracle

Introspection seems to represent what we do at the end of the year and the beginning of the new year. How were things? What did we learn? What do we hope for the new year?

Let’s face it. It’s been a difficult year. Most of us did not expect to still be dealing with a world pandemic. Wild weather and climate change. Economic and world political disputes.

This led me to contemplate my Intimate Spaces: Breaking Bread series of paintings. I plan to include several of these pieces in the upcoming exhibit. Many of them represent the theme of being alone. Eating alone or limited to a close group of friends and family.

Sunday Dinner has taken a new meaning these days. A small family gathering at a restaurant.

Some people seem to have handled being alone better than others. For an artist, this is a normal state to reach down deep to access my thoughts and determine how best to express them. I enjoy the time with my thoughts and am not lonely, just alone.

Other creative people – dancers, musicians, those who work in large studio groups – thrive on the lively input of many minds. What looks to me like chaos is their life blood. With theaters shuttered and musical venues closed, I can only sympathize.

Dinner at Octave. One of our favorite restaurants. Very eclectic with all kinds of people.

For me, being alone whether spending time in the studio, reading, taking a walk in the woods, or even attending a movie or performance alone is an enjoyable experience. It doesn’t really matter who I’m with or how many people are around me.

But being lonely is no fun for anyone. And, yes, I’ve been there, too. This is a much more nobody likes me emotional state. You can be surrounded by people and yet still feel hollow and disconnected.

Alone II, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30. I saw this old guy having breakfast at a fast food place. I don’t know if he was widowed or, perhaps, an old veteran.

This has been a difficult couple of years for everyone and the holiday season is an especially emotional time. Maybe you’ve been separated from your family and friends. You’ve been working from home and don’t have any work buddies to pal around with. Maybe you’ve moved and don’t have any friends in your new city. I’m not a psychologist but I do know that people are not going to knock on your door. As a friend told me a long time ago; there are always people like you (in the area); you just have to go out and find them.

Even if you live in as unpopulated an area as I do (and it would be difficult to find many counties in the Eastern part of the United States with a more sparse population than mine), there are still some people like you out there. Go to the library, join a club, start your own club. What special interests do you have? Hiking, biking, fishing, playing ball? Maybe you like to volunteer at the animal shelter or help others. Young people who are new to a city or area often reach out through online groups to plan activities.

Whoever you are out there, I hope that you can enjoy the holidays. That you’re not alone or lonely. Let us all hold higher aspirations for a new year.

3 Comments

Posted in contemporary impressionism, country living, opinion

Tagged alone, depression, end of year, introspection, kit miracle, lonely

Arbor day in December

Posted on December 5, 2021 | 1 comment

We’ve had some pretty warm days this past week so I thought it would be a great opportunity to plant some seeds that I’ve collected this past autumn. I had the kids help me collect a five gallon bucket of black walnuts, and I harvested all my bee balm and redbud seeds.

Three containers to plant. The blue bucket holds redbud seedpods, the coffee can holds bee balm seed heads, and the large white bucket is filled with black walnuts which are already losing their husks. I recommend wearing disposable gloves when handling them.

I took a walk up to the big woods to sow some redbud a couple of weeks ago. This is a beautiful understory tree with pinkish-purple flowers in the spring and heart-shaped leaves the rest of the year. You barely even notice the tree when it is not in bloom. It seems to grow well wherever dogwood will grow. We have lots of dogwood but no redbud except in the yard. I collected all the seed pods that I could (a two gallon bucket) and sowed half of them up in the big woods.

The beautiful redbud is an understory tree, totally hidden most of the year but adding a brilliant touch to the woods in the spring.

This week I sowed the remainder in the second-growth timber on the west side of the property. I crushed the pods by hand and just scattered them as I walked through the trees. I’m sure some will take eventually.

Also, this past fall, I collected all the bee balm seed heads that I could find. I got a coffee can full. I had noticed earlier this summer that the bee balm that I scattered along the road frontage few years ago had made a nice stand of flowers. Our pollinators always need some more help so I thought this would be a good thing. These seeds I scattered in the west second growth timber, along the lane and more road frontage. We’ll see.

Bee balm is in the mint family and is a favorite of pollinators. Easy to grow.

The walnuts are a different matter. These are black walnuts and, as I reported earlier this fall, they can make quite a mess in the yard. Highly desired by cooks and very expensive to buy in the store, the trees can be very prolific as they were this year. We had walnuts everywhere. The trees also emit a chemical called juglone which is often poisonous to other plants nearby. Not counting the mess. I thought if I could get some to grow elsewhere on the property, then we might remove the trees close to the house. In past years, local youth groups would come and pick up the nuts and take them to the mill for money. We were happy; it helped them and they helped us.

The large nuts are covered in a heavy protective husk. The husk comes off eventually, revealing the nut. These nuts are particularly staining to anything they come into contact with – hands, clothing, sidewalks, etc. Ink was once derived from this nut.

So earlier this week I took a walk carting a heavy bucket of black walnuts and a shovel. I planted some and others I just tossed out. The squirrels do a great job of planting the nuts. An arborist friend said they do just as well to be scattered as actually planted.

So later this week, I took the remainder of the big bucket of nuts and scattered them in the woods to the north of our house. We have some oak growing there but plenty of room for more trees. We’ll see.

Looks like some cold weather moving in again so I won’t be planting any more bulbs or nuts or seeds this fall. I would be happy if even ten percent of what I sowed this fall comes up. That will make a difference. And help in my fight against the invaders of honeysuckle, multi-flora roses, Russian olives and privet.

It was nice to see that the Virginia pine trees that we planted over thirty years ago are now tall trees. But most of the white pine were eaten by the deer. Well, somebody benefits in the long run.

If you’d like to learn more about planting trees, I highly recommend the book The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohleben. I asked my local library to order this book last year. They were a bit skeptical and thought it would have limited interest. However, I was recently told that the book has been off the shelf ever since they got it in. Now it is in audio format, too.