Incrementally Better Today

The Farm Up the Hill, 2007, Oil on Panel, 8x10

Well, I have been spending my days resting. Or trying to. I do actually nap a bit during the day, mostly because I wake at night because of the cough. Even though I don't consider myself to be a high energy person, just sitting around all day is really hard for me. So I still get up every so often and do some small chore, just to keep moving a bit. I did catch up on some paperwork yesterday, in bed, while watching TV, so that made me feel somewhat productive. And I have been able to get in some reading and knitting into my busy schedule.

I am trying NOT to think about how screwed I am if I can't back to the studio next week.

Oh and I have been meaning to recommend a new blog that I have been interested in lately. Sustainability is an important topic these days and I think it's great that artists are taking it on as well. I am very careful about the waste generated from my work, as well as recycling and using more natural products whenever possible. I will talk about the specifics of all that in a future post.

Blueberries

My son and I spent the morning picking blueberries at a local farm that has over 5000 blueberry bushes. In late summer the public can go in and pick their own blueberries for 1.60 per pound. Despite complaining the entire time, my son kept pretty good pace with me and we picked about 14 pounds! We are going to have a killer blueberry cobbler for dessert tonight, and the rest of the blueberries will be washed, measured and stored in the freezer in two cup portions. I will use them up over the winter, for muffins, breads and other baked items.

We have four blueberry bushes of our own, and they have been quite productive this summer. Each morning I go out and gather a good sized handful to add to my yogurt. But they are young plants still and it will be a few years before we get a big enough crop that we can store for the winter. Blueberries are a favorite fruit around here so finding a way to keep eating them without buying them from the grocery store is a must.

Tomorrow we are going to the farmer's market to stock up on all of the things that our garden failed to produce this year (ahem, I blame Doug) that I can also freeze, like corn, peas and beans. I am not sure I want to tackle canning this fall so mostly I am going to stock up on foods that can go in the freezer. We are also going to buy some meat there (not much as we don't eat a lot), from a friend of ours who sells pasture raised organic beef, pork and chicken.

Oh yeah, this is an art blog. Huh. I have to spend the rest of today painting and in fact, will have to work Saturday and Sunday as well. I have to do this because I have been procrastinating terribly and only working for a very short period of time each day. Right now I am regretting my enjoyment of a few leisurely days. It would be ok if I didn't have any deadlines, but well, I do and yet I still procrastinate. I have to finish up at least 10 pieces by next Friday. Yikes.

Oh and go check out my website. It has been long overdue for an update and I finally just got the info out to my web person. There are a lot of new paintings up, although you have probably seen most of them here at some point. At least they are all in one place now though, and you don't have to wade through all of this yakking to see the pictures. Heh.

Nothing Like a Good Book

View Along Armstrong Road, 2007, Oil on Panel, 12x16

My flight last week to New Mexico had two stops, including one plane change, so there was a lot of sitting both there and back. Before I left though, I took care to choose a good book. I thought it would be a really good distraction for me, plus I could read without any distractions. Nice, huh? I have always been a prolific reader, usually managing to finish at least a few books per week. But in the last few years with all I have going on, I am lucky if I can read a full page before I fall asleep each night. This annoys me to no end and I miss being able to breeze through books that seem so interesting. Reading this little each day makes it so difficult to follow a plot line or to really feel what the book is saying. However, despite the fact that I can hardly read one book each month I have not stopped buying books that interest me, and I am guessing I could start up my own small town bookstore with the number of books I have stacked next to my side of the bed, all patiently waiting their turn for me to get to them.

I have been itching to read a book that I have had on hand since practically the day it was released. "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. And then Bridgette mentioned the book to me awhile ago thinking I'd like it and boy was she right! It was the perfect book. While I didn't read so much on the way there, I finished the entire book on the flight back home. It's about the author's family and how they spent a year eating only local and in season foods, or food they grew or raised. The purpose was to order to cut back their reliance on the foods that use incredible amounts of fossil fuels to get to our supermarkets as well as to support local food growers. It's a fascinating book, full of research combined with their experiences and certainly has inspired me to make some changes in what we buy and when we buy it. We already do some things, we try to grow our own food (try is the key word there, heh), we have the eggs and I do buy local food especially during the summer when the farmer's market is open. I mostly cook our meals from scratch and I do a lot of baking as well. But I confess to buying too many packaged foods, mostly crackers, pasta, and cereal, and I have a tendency to buy a lot of bananas and other fruits and vegetables out of season.

So I am all charged up now, and Doug and I are going to make a more serious effort at growing a better and more productive vegetable garden next year. This year the garden got away from us and while we had great greens for awhile plus strawberries, garlic, zucchini and the tomatoes are looking good, the rest got eaten by pests or smothered by weeds. Since I want to grow so many other things, I am putting together a new plan for the garden, which will be a ton of work (um, starting next month). But good worthwhile, albeit backbreaking work.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book. It is well researched and sure highlights how messed up our food system here in America has become.