Chicks...

Well, the great chick adventure has taken a disappointing turn. On Friday, we were ready to move the chicks outside, and boy was I glad. John set up a temporary coop for them to stay in for a little while - they need to be bigger before they can move in with the older chickens. The weather outside was gorgeous and they now had room to move about and fly a little. We were all very excited.

But, unfortunately, tragedy struck on their first night out. I guess the temporary coop was a little too temporary, and we were perhaps too optimistic about their survival. Some animal was able to break into the coop and caused a little bit of a ruckus. When John went to check on them in the morning, four of the five chicks were just gone. The remaining chick, who we call Top Hat (she's of the "top hat" variety - weren't we clever with the name?) was outside the coop, hunkered down nearby. She's the one you see in the last picture with the funny feathers on her head. We couldn't find the others, but we didn't find any remains either - so maybe another one or two will come wandering back. I'm sure they'll come along any minute, along with Franny... we're holding our breath.

Painting!

I meant to post last week that I had been painting. I did some still lifes and was feeling good about the act of painting, but the paintings themselves weren't anything special. Then this week, I started painting some more still lifes and I feel like I've finally done something I'm happy with:




Last fall, you may remember, I did a painting of our living room, and then began one of the kitchen. But then I got sick and quit painting and by the time I felt like painting again the plants and pots in the kitchen had all been rearranged and the leaves had fallen off the trees... so it seemed like a hassle to go back to it. This week, when I was getting ready to do a new still life, I noticed most of what was unfinished in the kitchen (or at least unbegun) was the bottom, and it made the perfect backdrop for a still life - and voila! The still life with interior you see here was born. It is kind of neat because when I started it, it was so nice outside and the daffodils were blooming out the window (though they weren't in the painting), and now the trees are still bare, but we just brought in a few early daffodils to save from the frost - so it kind of came full circle. Now I'm really excited about it so don't say anything mean.



I was so excited about this improvement of my boring still lifes, that I decided to go back and put an interior behind one of the still lifes I did last week. That's how this second one came about in the reverse this time (sorry about the glare). The first one definitely has more light and interest than this one, but I think it's a definite improvement from where it was (it just had a yellow wall with shadows behind it before). I also like some of the elements in the interior like the paintings within the painting. The one you only see part of through the doorway is one of Polly Jone's paintings - which I like because she's been a big influence on me since I graduated - and you can probably see that in these paintings.


And also, for any of you who haven't been to our home, in these two paintings you pretty much see it all. Kitchen, living room, bedroom. Maybe you should watch for a painting of the bathroom soon.

I've started a couple more, maybe I'll post them in coming weeks.

Icon Workshop

I attended an icon workshop this weekend and had the best time. I have always been interested in early christian art, and recently I started to learn about icons. We covered Byzantine icons in my Medieval Art class this semester, and I found both the imagery and the theology surround the Christian icons very interesting.

The Eastern churches today follow the same traditions and rules for icon writing as they did during the early Christian and Byzantine periods. So the class was very traditional, and as you can see, all the students icons look very much the same (we all copied the same 13th century icon of the Mother of God).

In addition, I got to learn about egg tempera, which is surprisingly a lot like watercolor, and I had my first successful attempt at gilding. It was very neat.

pictureless

John was supposed to post a cool picture of our christmas tree, which we put up last sunday. And i was going to talk about the new ornament i made, by jamming pieces of our 3 year old popcorn strand into an empty glass ball. I thought it would make a nice sentimental ornament when the popcorn strand has fallen apart.

But alas, I have no pictures. John is hanging on to them. Taunting me.

Quilting

Last year for Christmas, I asked for fabric scraps, and Granny and Aunt Glenda sent me a bunch of neat ones. Granny included a lot of Christmas scraps. So, this week I started doing a crazy quilt tree skirt. I intended to post a picture, but digital images have been really inconvenient since I gave the school's camera back. (Hmmm... digital camera, Christmas item?)

Aunt Glenda also included some neat scraps from flour sacks that came from my great grandmother (I think). I have been saving those for something special, and I think I'm going to start a baby quilt soon. I don't want it to be all crazy quilt, but I thought I might do a patchwork puppy, like the story book Mom has. Anyway, I will hopefully get started on that soon and post pictures.

Halloween

I got a pumpkin for us for Halloween, and (I think this was Sunday afternoon) Laura felt well enough to carve it. We roasted the seeds with some wershteshier sauce (that's how it's spelled in my mind) and butter.

For Halloween we bought some candy, just in case some kids came by. We placed the lit pumpkin precariously atop a bale of hay on our front porch as a beacon to any candy-searching youngster and their suv-driving parents who happened to be tearing past our house at 79 miles an hour, which is the usual means of travel round these parts. But nobody came. Gary, our pumpkin, was noticeably saddened.

Green Eggs

Thursday night I was up late, and at one point I went outside and I could hear the chickens squawking in the woods, which usually means something's out there. I ran out to the woods to see what was up, only to realize that it was night and I couldn't see anything. I went back for the flashlight to find the chickens pacing around the coop, anxious and nervous. But I didn't see anything. I trained the flashlight all around the coop and under the hen house, and then I heard a snap on the other side of the pen. It took me a while, but eventually I started pointing the flashlight in the trees, and that's when I found a large possum about 12 feet up a tree next to the pen.

Laura won't let me have a gun in the house, so that's when I went back for the baseball bat.

It took two throws, but then I connected. The next day I went out to check on the chickens, and that's when I discovered that our second hen, "Penny," had just started to lay eggs. And they're green.

Really the two stories aren't related, except that for the briefest of moments, when I first saw the green egg, this thought went through my mind: "Maybe the it's the possum's."

Subbing for Laura

Laura has had the pukies for a couple of weeks now and hasn't been able to post much; or eat, go to town, juggle, speak French - though some of those things she couldn't do before the morning sickness, in all fairness.

We got prescription medicine for her yesterday, and so far it's been promising. In the meantime, I (John) am subbing for her on our (Laura's) blog. This is a picture of me at my desk doing just that.

Wooden Hook!

My cousin Michael visited us a couple weekends ago, and he brought me this really cool crochet hook that he made. Now I've forgotten what kind of wood it is. I'll have to ask. The picture isn't so good, but the two rings on the end make neat tinking sounds when I crochet.

Regrowth

When we went to visit Granny earlier this summer, John and I pulled up some of granny's excess peppermint and potted it in a little paper cup. We've been wanting to plant some at home but have been having trouble finding any.

The morning we were leaving we stopped at the hospital to visit with Granny and say goodbye to everyone. It ended up being kind of a stressful day and we stayed longer than we had intended.

By the time we got back to the car, the poor mint had dried up. By the time we got home 11 hours later, it looked like a potted stick

I planted it anyway, since I hear its hard to kill, I thought maybe it would come up next year.

Now, just a few weeks later it has sprouted new leaves and is on its way to recovery. Soon I'll put it in the ground.

I was thinking about expounding on one of the various metaphors for life I could draw from this little experience, but I'll let you draw your own. I'm just enjoying my new little plant.