My Picture Of The Day
Maria Wulf Full Moon Fiber Art
Digging Up The Dahlia Bulbs
The dahlias had a wonderful summer. The cold nights, warm days and lots of rain made them very happy. They made me happy too, and I hope some of you who got to see them in Jon’s and my pictures.
Dahlias are surprising easy to dig up. One push on the shovel, a little tug on the stems and up they come.
I just shake off the extra dirt then put them in paper bags or boxes and store them in the basement until the spring.
Zip hung around for awhile, trying to get my attention (which he did). That’s him in front of the wilted dahlias. Fate also kept me company, mostly eating apples off the ground while I worked.
The donkeys and sheep were happy to eat the dahlia stems as wilted as they were.
Now I just need to rake up the bed and spread some donkey manure on it. Maybe I’ll have Braeden help with that the next time he comes to the farm.
Our GoFundMe…..”Bringing Jon and Maria’s Blogs Together”
Jon blew a kiss towards his computer, then hit the button to launch our GoFundMe to raise money to merge our blogs.
We planned on launching it today, but we finished writing it yesterday and decided not to wait.
We are grateful to see that, as I write this, we have raised just over $3000. Thanks so much to everyone who has donated to help us make this happen.
We still have a little more than half to go, and it’s a truly encouraging beginning.
We’re both very excited about merging our blogs. It’s another step in our creative lives together and with all of you.
So if you can and you’d like to help us bring Jon’s and my blog together, just click here. We are grateful for each and every donation and all your good wishes.
Thank you all once again.
Hoar Frost
Hoar frost, those shaggy crystals of ice, that feather branches and lace leaves and grass.
The temperature dropped below freezing last night for the first time this fall.
I broke the ice on the hens water bowl and refilled it, but had plugged in the heated water bucket for the sheep and donkeys the day before.
I went to muck out the barn and Kim and Lori were already at the barn gate waiting for grain. Lori hasn’t had grain since last winter, but she knew where to meet me to get some this morning.
The sheep won’t eat frozen grass, and when it freezes it has less nutrition, so I put out two leaves of hay.
They ate it all.
By late morning the frost was all gone and the we had blue skies, a warming sun and green grass. This afternoon the sheep and donkeys were back out grazing, not the least bit interested in hay.
About Merging Jon’s and My Blog, Thanks For Your Thoughts. We’re Asking For Help To Make It Happen
“Thank you and I look forward to how you are going to merge your blogs. There is such sweetness to you both that it is tangible through the screen. …I want to say that you both give me some respite in this time of chaos annd confusion we see in this country and throughout the world and you provide some joy in my life.” Deborah
Deborah’s message about Jon and me merging our blogs was very nice to receive. I also got a few messages that expressed concern about it. And I am grateful for those people who wrote to me too.
They mostly expressed the feeling that my blog is a safe and nourishing place to be, as well as being an established community of women. That also felt really good to hear, to know that we had created that together, it seems to have happened organically.
I don’t think that has to change.
Although I understood it a little more when Sandy asked how the comments would have handled. There are more people on Jon’s blog, so they will now be invited into the Full Moon community too.
Jon and I will still monitor the comments as they come in. I will respond to the ones directed at my posts and Jon at his. I can’t control what other people might comment on, but as always, I won’t allow any comments that are gratuitously mean or angry.
In my mind, as much as I saw my blog as mine, I also saw it as something that Jon and I do together.
His blog and my blog, have run parallel to each other for a long time. The two together complete the picture of our lives individually and as a couple, along with the animals we live with and the farm we live on.
But I do have a sense of our blogs as occupying their own spaces. And that will change. I believe for the better.
When I think of the new blog, I see it as a new space. One that is shared by two individuals whose art, writing and life on the farm, with our animals overlap. But also have distinct boundaries.
It will create a picture of our lives that is more rounded, more whole.
And if Jon’s readers are not interested in what I’m writing about or mine are not interested in what he is writing, they can just scroll on by.
So if you have any questions about the merging of our blogs, please just ask. You can leave a comment or email me at [email protected].
Last week we spoke to our Web designers at Mannix Marketing and got a proposal for how the new blog would work.
We still have things to figure out, but I do know my blog, up to the point where we merge, will be archived. This way it can still be accessed and I won’t lose the 18 years of work I’ve put into it.
Then there are the changes we’ll have to make to Jon’s blog to make it ours.
It will more expensive than we thought. My jaw literally dropped when we heard the estimate of $7000. But after understanding all that needed to be done, much of it because our blogs are so big because we both write and take pictures and videos so often, we started to think of ways to make it happen.
So today (a day early) Jon and I launched a GoFundMe to help with the cost of creating our new blog, The Bedlam Farm Journal and Full Moon Fiber Art. If you can and would like to, we’d appreciate the help in making it happen. You can find it here.
We know it’s a difficult time to ask for money, but we also know that there are a lot of people who read our blogs and if everyone chips in a little, it can make all the difference. We can’t do it without help.
The idea to merge our blogs came from Jon’s wanting me to be able to take over his blog when he is gone from this world. (As most of you know Jon is 17 years older than me so more likely to be gone before me) It’s something that would benefit me because he has many more readers and donations to his blog than I do. I could also more easily continue doing the work of the Army Of Good.
Even after doing what little work we have so far, I appreciate so much that we are doing this together at this time so I won’t have to deal with it by myself at some point in the future.
Thinking about our new blog, I have a feeling of what it will be like. But I also know that there are things that will occur, that I can’t imagine. It’s the Gestalt idea of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole.
Creativity is like that. It likes change, it likes to be shaken up from time to time, to step out of the known into the mystery.
A little unnerving and exciting at the same time.
My Picture Of The Day
Jon and Me, Merging Our Blogs
Jon and I have been working on figuring out how to merge our blogs. Jon wrote about it on his blog today and I’m going to write more about it tomorrow.
It’s a big step that feels right, but we’re going to need some support to make it happen.
Jon is alway quicker than me when it comes to writing about the important things going on in our lives. It takes me a little more time to gather my thoughts.
You can read what Jon wrote today here.
Joy Deep Inside
This morning, as I sat on the back porch with the rain for music, meditating, the idea of where Joy lives in my body came to me.
I was feeling good after the long walk on my day off yesterday, so it was easy to find the feeling in my body.
It was in my brain (my thinking) and my throat. Sometimes I thought, at special moments, Joy lives in my heart, a swelling that goes right to my eyes. But that never lasts long.
I thought of the rest of my body, the colors and locations of the chakras guiding me. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, to be able to feel joy in the first, the grounding charka. Deep red and rooted, the first chakra has always been the most serious to me. The one reaching down into the deep, dark earth of my body.
I spent the rest of my meditation, funneling the good feeling inside of me to every part of my body.
I saw sparkling raindrops washing through me. They poured down my arms and filled up my fingers. They puddled water I sat, streaming down my legs and into the soles of my feet.
Joy is such a fleeting thing. I never thought of trying to embody it. To let it live inside of me, instead of just visiting. Not something that comes from the good things outside of me, but a joy that comes from within.
I took that idea into my studio this morning.
The tree I made two years ago for one of my Holding Pillows, was pinned to my wall, waiting. It didn’t work on the pillow I made it for, but it was just right for the start of my new Meditation Mat.
I stitched it onto an old napkin, those dark roots and deep red surround.
It took me a while to find the direction I was feeling. Those deep reds pulled at me, but it was the bright colors of light sparking in raindrops I was looking for.
The photo on top isn’t the best to show the colors. It was raining when I got as far as I did, so the light wasn’t the best for taking a picture. It’s hard to see, but within those flowers on either side of the tree is a joyful glowing green.
I picked up that heart-chakra green in the patchwork piece I made for the center of the Meditation Mat.
Not done yet, I have a few choices lined up for the piece that will go on the bottom, then I just have to figure out the sides.
But I’m far enough along so that when I look at my unfinished Meditation Mat, I smile.
The Hens Outside My Studio
The hens are still molting, losing their feathers as the trees loose their leaves. They spent most of the day sitting in the fallen leaves under the lilac bush outside my studio.
I won’t rake those leaves, they are winter mulch for the little garden under my windows and a warm, soft nest of the hens to rest in.
Insulating My Studio Foundation With Bags Of Leaves
The wind had done most of the work for me. So many of the leaves from the three old maples were piled up against the fence across from my studio.
I had just gotten home from walking at the Saratoga Battlefield with my friend Jackie, but the walk had invigorated me instead of tiring me out.
By tomorrow the leaves, finally dry after days of rain, might be taken by the wind once again and scattered throughout the fenced in area. I didn’t want to pass up this opportunity to fill up the big plastic garbage bags with leaves to use to insulate the foundation of my studio.
Because all the leaves were right where I needed them to be, it didn’t take long to fill up enough bags to line the north-facing side of the foundation.
There is still a good pile of leaves that the wind gathered by the chicken coop. This weekend I’ll bag them for the east side of my studio. That’s the other place where the wind creeps in and make my studio floor too cold to stand on (even with slippers) in the winter.
Over the past few years I’ve found that the bags of leaves work wonders at helping to keep my studio warm.
