Spring has nearly sprung...

... but not quite, just yet. In between some really nice days are the long, dreary, grey and rainy ones that make you go "bleccch!" 

 

But the robins have returned, the daffodils are blooming up in bunches everywhere, squirrels are busily gobbling up all the sunflower seeds and nuts I've left for them, and a few early froggies are singing beautiful nighttime arias outside our window (and you know how much I love that).

In a nutshell: I've started my new job, been workin', and loving it lots. Just what the doctor ordered!

Had some time in 'tween to undertake a few really big outdoor landscaping projects, including one that was needing immediate attention - the neglected Frog Pond out back. It had gotten overrun with the crabgrass from Hell and looked dreadful. I don't honestly think I genuinely *hate* anything, but I'm telling you, crabgrass comes awfully close to it. I mercilessly hacked my way through the tangled jungle and felt nary a pang of guilt. In fact it felt rather good!

So the Hubby and I got up early, and all day long, we dug, dug, dug... ripped weeds... rearranged the rocks surrounding the pond... laid down fresh weed preventer fabric (it says it lasts 10 years, and it BETTER cuz I don't plan on doing this again any time soon - my spine won't allow it!) .... put down about 250 square feet of brand new soil .... and voila'! 

All we need to do now is put down the rest of the rock border, add plants and flowers, and sit back to enjoy the hundreds of frogs and toads that come to stay here each summer. Can't wait!

Another huge project that took a few weekends was Stump Henge. It too had become a disorganized and overgrown mess, with bushes and weeds encroaching everywhere. We cleared out several hundred square feet of overgrowth, including something I'd never encountered before - this nasty, awful sticker vine that grows straight up from the ground like a thick barbed whip and intertwines into every bush and tree it comes into contact with. It was very alien and absolutely nightmarish! Even with thick leather work gloves, the huge thorns were able to pierce through, which was extremely unpleasant and painful. We had to be very careful about handling and disposing of it. 

                                                      Stump Henge before

But we successfully rid the immediate area of it, and created a wider, prettier area of Stump Henge, including a little shaded grotto area that you walk into through a natural tree arch. The beautiful cement bench we got from Ronnie Twist's statuary shop was moved further into the Henge under an overhanging tree branch. We sat there for a spell, enjoying the fruits of our labor, and were amazed at our creativity mixing so well with the natural landscape. The finishing touches will be added (more statuary, a bird bath, humming bird feeders, flowering plants, etc) and will look even better once the fresh grass seed we laid down grows in. It will be a shady, quiet little place to sit and meditate in.  

            Stump Henge after! You can now walk easily into and around it

The little potting shed table area behind the well house got a big cleanup as well, and so did the little brick wall around our ancient apple tree. Here are a couple before and after photos, with more pics in the coming weeks and months to show its progress. Right now, as it's still officially winter, there is not too much green, but seeing as this is middle Tennessee, that will soon change and all will be luxuriantly green beyond imagination.

 

              A calm and breezy Henge (L) and the revamped potting table (R)

One other project I'm working on is bringing my latest character to life. Here is the early rough drawing of him. Yes, he's a Viking, and his name is Snjarnl.

                                                    Isn't he cuddly?

Yeti is 15 years old, and while she's gotten just a bit slower, she's still very alert and active. Recently she made a new friend - a sweet West Highland terrier (or, "Westie" to those who love them) named Shelby, whose Mommy is my dear friend Linda. Shelby and Yeti got to have a play-date here at our home a few weeks ago. It was very cute!

                                Yeti and Shelby meet, as Linda watches

And yes. Yeti still loves to do the "water game" each and every night before I go to bed. She runs upstairs ahead of me, jumps on my bathroom counter, and not-so-patiently waits for me to turn the faucet on.

'Mommy! Hurry! Turn on the faucet, quick!' in her loud, yowly Siamese/Oriental  voice

*    *   *   *    *   *   *

Today is the 7th year anniversary since Everett passed away.

I think of him frequently ... and know he's busy doing his next job, which consists of helping animals. I don't profess to know all the answers when it comes to wherever it is we go to when we die, but I feel in my heart and soul that he's in a much better place, where he is happier than he was here on Earth. Anne Marie (his mother) is coming out to stay with us in a few weeks. I'm so thankful that she and Cynthia, his sister, are still in my life.

I blush with glee and pride!

http://www.strangelittlegirlblog.blogspot.com

Ya know, I just flat-out enjoy this blogging thing. It's fun, it's delicious, and it keeps me off the streets. 


I spend time happily spewing verbiage in my own little teensy blogosphere of life out here in the boonies. With a few exceptions, I don't really expect anyone to stop over here, yet they do seem to find me from their remote corners of the worlds. And really, when they do, it's a most wondrous and pleasant surprise indeed. I never take for granted that anyone would truly enjoy latching onto my personal stream-of-consciousness ramblings, but when I see I have visitors from diverse neighborhoods such as Moscow, Glasgow, India, Ontario and more, well, it just gets me vibratin' all over in a warm n' fuzzy way... 


In turn, I enjoy visiting other's blogs and leaving the occasional good comment here and there, cuz I believe in paying it forward. We're here to make things nice for not only ourselves, but for others, and knowing I made someone smile or smirk (or grimace) is just what my big black heart needs every now and then.   


Now let's multiply that uber warm n' fuzziness ten-fold as I just discovered one of my dear Followers, the exalted Frog Queen from Frog on the Pumpkin, has bestowed upon my humble little frog lovin' head a bonafied award! Wow! Talk about coming out of left field when I expected it least. I'm thrilled that my simple, humor-filled comments on her blog would garner such notice, and I most humbly accept her award. Thank you, thank you, thank you.


Now! What YOU need to do, kiddies, is go visit the Frog Queen's site and have a look around. Leave a comment, if the spirit moves you (and it likely will, because she provides a mighty awesome blog to titillate the senses). And tell her I said hello!   

http://strangelittlegirlblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/while-we-are-talking.html

An Illuminated Frog

Because Life is beautiful... 

I had long wanted to create a new site where I could explore not only the beauty in life, but the truly good, under-appreciated "little things" with a lot of colorful visuals, music and inspiration. If you've ever had a crummy day and needed a pick-me-up to make you smile and feel better about things going on in the big bad world, then I'm hoping this site will provide that for you.

It felt really, really good creating it, even though I sat the entire day at my desk doing it and in the process made my already-sore back ache like crazy. A small trade off for the overall good, I guess! It features a lot of my personal photography and digital work, along with inspirational quotes, poetry, and feel-good stories. I have linked it to one of my favorite sites (SaveTheFrogs.com) because I have loved frogs and toads my entire life, and this site does all it can to educate the public about the good these wonderful little creatures do for our ecosystem, and how threatened with extinction they are fast becoming. I've vowed to contribute to their worthy cause in every way I can, and I hope you will, too.

The archetype of a frog sitting silently on a lily pad evokes a sort of mini Buddha, contemplating the mysteries of life as it seeks to be One with the pond (its universe) around it, which is why I chose to title my new site, An Illuminated Frog.

Frogs and toads have had an important place all throughout history, too. Native American lore tells of the frog as a great female spirit protecting the waterways, a fecund and sacred place of birth and rebirth (I love the water metaphors). The same beliefs were held by the ancient Egyptians as well, in their Nile frog goddess, Heget.

In Japan and China, they are symbols of good fortune. And colorful amphibians have long held the imagination and love of people in movies, books (my faves being The Tales of Beatrix Potter and Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows) and animation - who doesn't love the Michigan J. Frog character from the old Warner Brothers' cartoon, Some Froggy Evening, who jumped up and sang "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my Ragtime Gal" only for his current owner?

To me, frogs and toads are simply magical creatures, capable of great transformation that we humans can only imagine of: from a tiny egg, to fish-like tadpole, to a four-legged adult that is at home both in the water as well as land... that really is magical!

As we humans struggle with our daily lives and beliefs and attempt to exist together in peace on the great Earth, so many of us dream of transforming into a better form of ourselves... 


This site will remain and continue, but in a more art-oriented direction, which was what it was initially set up to do. I kind of got off track with it, namely, as my husband and I were doing more ongoing decor and repair with our house (which, by the way, has two very awesome frog ponds that come to life during the summer here; as well as our downstairs bathroom being dedicated in decor to frogs, dubbed "The Frogatorium"), and we had several rounds of house guests over the year come to stay... I kind of put aside my hand-made artwork, which was supposed to be the main focus of The Quirk Shop. No worries, though, I'm back at the helm.

Please visit An Illuminated Frog... (clickable link) and see how beautiful life really is.

Fog, Frogs, Hawks and Winter

We've been given a reprieve here in middle Tennessee. After enduring several straight weeks of freezing winter, we had a little peek of spring before the weather turned yucky again. The clouds were absolutely amazing; huge feathery and puffy barges that drifted across the blue sky.

For a while, though, it seemed that the weather could not make up its mind - for a few days we had the thickest fog ever, which rendered our acreage with an otherworldly look, like the spooky Moors in England. I loved it! We need our  next  Halloween party to have this weather. 

I half-expected to hear the cries of a werewolf out there in the grey mists. Perhaps I shall set up a motion-activated sound system for those who come visit me and ask to see our forest....

Then... the sun came out and shone brightly, bringing the birds and squirrels out to romp and search for food. And, joyously, the temperatures stayed in the 50 to 60 degree range. A heat wave in January, whew! As I walked outside in the sun to absorb a little vitamin D, and passed the frog pond, I saw a small frog jump off a rock into the water. Wow! A froggie in the winter time! He must be a hardy little soul who was woken up from his winter slumber by the temporary warm days. Don't get too comfie with it, little fella, it won't last long.

During these few nice sunny days, I got more photography in. I love disparate imagery in the winter, especially with the abundance of dead leaves everywhere against the few bits of green, like how this old stump in our Stump Henge area looks, all mossy against the brown leaves.

 

On a hike in our woods, we found the stag skull and various bones half-buried in the autumn leaves on the forest floor. I would never, ever kill a deer (or any other animal for that matter), but since the skull was already there, we brought it back to our home and put it in a place to honor the magnificent, fallen creature. 


A few days ago, I stood in my best vantage point (being the upstairs bedroom which overlooks the entire back yardage) with my camera at the ready, and was soon rewarded: a young red-tailed hawk had been staking out the yard for prey. It sat motionless and camouflaged in a tangle of low tree branches for a while, then flew across the yard to another tree near the pasture, before flying back to the opposite side where it blended in with the speckles of shadows and bark. I got a few photos of it, but nothing spectacular - rather blurry. Note to Self: Must get a good tripod.

 Left: Can you see the hawk in the trees? 
Right: A somewhat blurry closeup

But, alas, the sun and warmth was not to stay for long. Now it's grey and chilly once again. Sigh. Not to fret, that means one thing for certain: time to stay inside and do some more creative projects. I did get some of my bird and winter photos published on two different sites. One was our local channel 4 news, WSMV, and the other, a magazine I subscribe to called Birds and Blooms. Well, hurray for me!

I recently joined a very cool artist's collective, called "Creative Souls." Now, I'm really *not* a club-joiner, per se, but I genuinely love theirs. It's a very low-key yet highly imaginative and interactive site. Once I figure out how to maneuver it a little better, I'll link this blog to it. The artists there are simply amazing, as is the diversity. I posted several paintings I'd done over the years, all different genres from about 1985 up through 1996 or so. Having joined them motivates me to get more stuff done, as I'd put my creativity on temporary hold for months while Mark and I did various ongoing repairs and decor to the house. But  now I'm itchin' to get painting and sculpting again, and have some fun new ideas to share here in the weeks to come.

You can check out Creative Souls by clicking on the colorful little badge here on the right side.