Snow Buddha

small snowbound Buddha
his hand raised to dispel fear
greets me on my walk

Snow Day

Snow Toast

Upon waking up to a soft, unexpected, snowfall

I raise my glass high-
bubbles gently rising to
snow gently falling

Old Year Snow Frog

                 It's the last day of the year!

Sons P and H made this snow frog and fly yesterday


the year's final day
the new year poised like a frog
to gulp the last fly

Close-up of the fly!

Snow Man

Snow Man
oil on gilt cardboard, 8 x 6 inches, 2010

Maybe I will start a new blog category: speed painting. The way I am using this term, it is a subset of alla prima painting and means getting the image onto the canvas in the fewest strokes possible. We are talking half an hour or less! Speed painting was necessitated in this case by the pain of painting while looking into the white glare of snow...excruciating. I wore a hat to cut the glare but even so...ouch. Note to self: no more snow painting midday!



My youngest son took this picture of me as I was crouched on the landing painting (I think he was so pleased that I was painting his snowman!) Very circular..taking a photograph of someone painting a sculpture created by the person taking the picture. Whoah, am I dizzy!

HAPPY SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

~ee cummings

watercolor heart by Henry Downs (assisted)

White Doom

For once, the scaremongers got it right! We were smacked upside the head with a full force blizzard Wednesday, whomping us with another avalanche of snow and ice on top of the heavy snowfall we'd already experienced just four days earlier!

Icicles on the porch

Several kids came over to play.

The boys had a ball!

I gave in to the urge to bake.

In the middle of dinner the power went out. Candlelight was pretty, but no heat was no fun.

At one point I started burning old stretcher bars. You might ask why my husband the furniture maker did not bring home wood scraps when he heard the forecast. Ask away!
Anyway, we were without heat, light or any heating power (no stove) for over 24 hours, and I have to tell you even this little tiny taste of natural disaster was pretty darn sobering. Makes you think, especially about how lucky we are 99.99% of the time..
Despite the temporary exigencies, we were lighted and warmed by the camaraderie of wonderful neighbors and the generosity of friends who opened their (warm!) homes to us.

Studio View

View from My Studio Window

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

--Helen Keller

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Philadelphia got 28.5 inches of snow this past weekend. My neighborhood "only" got somewhere about 22. It's the biggest snowstorm since 1995, when the twins were toddlers and the banks of snow were way over their heads! They toddled along sidewalks with high walls for a few weeks, probably wondering what kind of strange, mutable, new world they had come into.

Something Different

uncanny in death,
the little owl's clenched talons-
more bunny than bird

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My neighbor called me over today to see a little dead screech owl he had found and asked me to take its picture. Hiroshi has a particular tenderness for owls, and even helps band saw-whits at a certain time of year. He told me this little fellow had most likely been gotten by a cousin, the Great Horned Owl, who often eats only the heads of its victims. Nature red in tooth and claw indeed!

Haiku for this week's Haiku Bones theme of uncanny.

The Wolf Moon

christmas lights are gone
and the wolf moon comes calling,
singing in the trees

Trembling

That trembling moment
before the snow slides down-
holding my breath

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My neighbor Hiroshi's garden is a work of art, even in winter. I wrote this for Haiku Bones, the new weekly haiku meme created by my brother Bruce and myself. This week's prompt is tremble. Feel free to join in the fun, you bloggers!

Heavy Lifting

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

~Emily Dickinson

Regrets

Delicious regrets-
not from the merry feasting,
but from too-tight clothes

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This senryu is for the Haiku Bones prompt of regret, and I see it also conveniently fits the Sunday Scribblings theme of delicious. This incredible confection is a bûche de noël, a special Christmas cake we have every year after our Christmas dinner. We used to pre-order one from the local French bakery but then a few years ago my incredibly gifted and talented friend Nancy Trainer, whose family joins ours each year for dinner, decided to try her hand at it...ooh la la! Nancy makes the mushrooms out of meringue and the bark from chocolate and the holly berries from marzipan. The cake is filled with mousse au chocolat...c'est vraiment incroyable!

Merry Christmas

And Happy Everything Else!

Here is a holiday blast from the past: I made this two-color woodcut for Christmas 1991, the year I graduated from art school and got married. I cut the panels, then Paul and I set up a little production line in the livingroom of our tiny apartment (and because we used oil-based ink, the place stunk for several days!) Inspired by the yearly holiday prints of one of my teachers, Homer Johnson, I think we intended to pioneer our own tradition of hand-made prints every year for Christmas...just shows the kind of spare time young people without kids, a house or a full-time job have! However, the next year we bought our first house, and then the Christmas after that I was on bedrest pregnant with twins...and this turns out to have been a one-time only "tradition". Fun though! :->

~All the blessings of the season to you and yours~

Nuts

Nuts
is how I am feeling as we careen towards Christmas, or Stressmas as I like to joke. Ha ha.

I love this old wooden bowl and nut chopper. I can't remember if it was my grandmother's or my husband's grandmother's, but the time-smoothed handle fits so sweetly into my grip, just like a loving handclasp.

Snowy Sunday

sudden gust of wind,
snow falls from the cedar tree-
fleeting stars appear


This is for the new haiku meme my brother Bruce and I recently created: Haiku Bones. The prompt today is fleeting. Please join in the fun, if you are so inspired!

Hungry but Sassy

Cardinal Rules
We are in the middle of a snowstorm and our bird feeder is mobbed with birds. I've never seen so many cardinals, jays and juncos all at at once! Although there seems to be a rule that only one male cardinal may feed at a time: the other birds are not quite so territorial. It's not easy being red, I guess.

SNOW FALL

Slowly descending,
the sky sifting its sugar
onto children's tongues.

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My prompt of Slowly is up at One Single Impression, the weekly haiku meme.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
and chocolate cake ever after....

MERRY CHRISTMAS
and a happy Bûche de Noël to all! My friend Nancy Trainer made this sensational confection for our Yule feast: the meringue mushrooms were almost unbelievable in their realism! (There's a bit of a conundrum for you.)