Found Art

This is a found art piece that I made from my digital collage, watercolor background, paper bead, and a 3-D butterfly. I will leave it at the hospital today.

Canning Time

I just checked a new book out of the library called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kinsolver. It is about how her family lived off of the fruit of their land plus locally grown produce for a whole year. I'm just in the second chapter but I'm inspired.

My own garden is winding down for the year, but I just picked the last of the green tomatoes and turned them into green tomato relish. This is something that my relatives have made for generations and my aunt and uncle came to my house one summer and showed me how to make it. Mine will probably never be as good as theirs but it will do. They would save a bit from the previous years for a taste comparison so that it would be consistent. The relish is the only thing that I canned this year besides the pickles in a previous post. We usually freeze corn and pears and make fig preserves and blackberry jelly, but this was a drought year so the corn didn't make it and the late freeze got the pears and most of the figs.

Maybe next year will be a better gardening year and the freezer will be full. For this year we will have to make do with the farm stands and the grocery store. Homegrown tastes best.

Life Comes At You Fast

I think I would like to have just one dull, uneventful day...maybe not a lot of them...just one or two. On Saturday while we were helping one son and daughter-in-law into their new home, I got a call from my older son's best friend saying that they were at the emergency room having my son's hand stitched up because he had cut it while building a deck behind their house. It turns out that he severed a tendon on the back of his middle finger on his left hand. He had surgery yesterday to reattach it and won't be able to move it for a month. That's not a good thing for a contractor. His wife is in the process of interviewing for a job, so I think they will be okay financially. He seems to be in pretty good spirits about it and I told them that something good will probably come out of this. Sometimes when things seem the worst, they lead to unexpected blessings.


Meanwhile, I am still checking on my Mom every day at the hospital. She is having some swelling on her operative leg, so she is not progressing as fast as we had hoped. Today she said that the swelling is down, so hopefully she can get back on her feet soon.


I'm trying to squeeze in a little artwork. Here is a digital collage that I did today, with a photo of a cemetery angel .

Cup Overflowing

Wow! Just when I think life will be a little calmer, my days fill up more. I have been a little remiss in my blogging because everyone else's agenda overtakes my own. That's okay. I guess that's why I'm here...to help where I'm needed.
Last weekend I had a wedding and a funeral. The wedding was at my house. My nephew was the groom. The funeral was a good friend's mother. On Saturday morning, I sat though about an hour and a half funeral that was almost totally in Spanish. It was very interesting. Then I came home and helped finish preparing for the wedding which was at 4:00. All went well despite some much needed rain. (Pictures to follow when I receive the photo disc from my brother-in-law.)

Then on Monday I had to accompany my mother to the hospital for her knee replacement surgery. I have been at the hospital every day this week. I took art supplies with me, thinking I would have a lot of down time to create but that didn't happen.

I did get to do a little art the week before and didn't get to post it because my battery in my camera died. This is my graffiti inspired mixed media collage on Tyvek. I did a series of graffiti about love.

Also, I did a digital collage on healing.

It's off to the hospital for me to check on Mom.