There’s Nothing Like a Good Stick

I love trees. Especially intact trees that have not been cut down. Lumber trucks loaded with freshly cut tree trunks make me cringe. I avoid the use of new lumber, paper, and other tree products as much as possible for this reason. One thing I can get from a tree without guilt is a stick. Sticks normally fall from trees for a variety of natural reasons, and can be found anywhere trees are. Sticks are useful for many things.

My first son was playing with sticks by the time he was nine months old. He has been a stick connoisseur ever since. His younger brother has learned the value of a good stick from him, and many a scuffle has been born over ownership rights to found sticks. These include one particularly memorable stick conflict that took place at the very edge of a 300 foot precipice at Pinnacles National Park, as the condors circled hopefully overhead. My husband terminated this one by snatching each party up and away from certain death by the scruff of the neck and proclaiming them “Idiots!!” . . . . Well, it was a good stick.

Because good sticks are so abundant in our area and because I love sticks, I use them for lots of things around my house and out in the field. Curtain rods, towel racks, wall hangings, garden stakes, bird perches, decoration, furniture, hiking sticks, mushroom hunting sticks, etc. I know a lady who once fought off a mountain lion with her mushroom hunting stick. Yes, a good stick can save your life as well as help put food on the table.

This year I decided to make a stick fence to keep our chickens and ducks out of my new fairy garden. In this way I could honor my appreciation of trees instead of contributing to their demise, however small the gesture. The fence works well, looks quaint, and cost about seven dollars for two rolls of eighteen gauge wire to attach the sticks to the boards, which came from a discarded trellis. It took several months to attach all the sticks, but I was never lacking for a steady supply. Every walk or hike we took in the woods yielded at least a couple of good sticks for the fairy garden, and our backyard trees contributed regularly. My boys were great help in this endeavor. Of course, they always kept the really good sticks for themselves. And to this day they still fight over the best ones, precipice or no.

Truckers Like Horse Art Too (conclusion)

After having so much fun adding vibrant colors to Valraven, I was a little reluctant to bring it back down to grayscale. I had to do it for the book though, and I couldn’t wait to see which colors other artists might choose for it. It took its place as page fourteen in Fancy Prancers – A Fine Art Coloring Book of Horses.

Truckers Like Horse Art Too (cont.)

The sketch was originally intended to stand alone and I called it something generic like “Pony in Motion.” Later I grew bored with the plain graphite image. I wanted a more dramatic background, some color, and I wanted to play with acrylics. After some collage work, I mixed up a bunch of paint and carried everything out in the front yard.

My two boys were hopping around like fleas in their excitement over me being outside with cups of paint. They’d never seen me splash paint on a canvas before. Not that I hadn’t done it a thousand times already with watercolors, but that was mostly before they were born. So I splashed and flicked and poked and splattered to the tune of “Can I do it??!! Can I do it??!! Can I do it??!!” Not that they hadn’t done it a thousand times before with finger paint and watercolors, but this was different – this was Mommy’s “‘spensive paint”.

So I let them each flick some paint on with a large brush, and they were somewhat satisfied. What they really wanted to do was fling the paint at each other. I was more satisfied after gluing the graphite pony on and adding a coat or two of varnish. Valraven was fun to do, and I believe more fun to look at than a plain graphite pony.

Truckers Like Horse Art Too

Not long ago while on vacation, I was riding in our van with my sketch pad in my lap. I was working on the horse in Valraven, a mixed media painting. Wearing motion sickness wristbands, trying to convince myself they were working, I scribbled, erased, scribbled, erased. The guys were listening to a book on CD and my husband was in a driving trance.  We were on a four lane highway in Northern California, heading south.

An eighteen wheeler inched up along us on my side. He was keeping the cab of his truck right there, next to me. There wasn’t much traffic, and just as I started to wonder “What the . . . ?” he tooted his horn very briefly. I looked up and saw him leaning forward, pointing down at my sketch, which was almost finished. He smiled, gave me a big thumbs up, and then rolled on past us.

My husband glanced over. “What was that about?”

“Oh, just 80,000 pounds of art aficionado . . . “

There’s A Problem With My English

I know there is a problem with my English because my youngest son is hearing different messages than what I believe to be issuing from my lips. Early this morning, while trying to get out the door to go to work, after directing him to wash his face, brush his teeth, and put his shoes on, he met me in the foyer with a loud “Bang Bang! Stick ’em up!!”.

The message that actually reached his ears was “Go put on your cowboy belt with holster, your Indiana Jones hat, and a pair of Zaffre blue latex exam gloves (they’re in the veterinary bandage supply cabinet which you aren’t supposed to mess with, but it’s okay this once) and then come back and pretend to be a cowboy with OCD as if I don’t have to be at work until noon.”

I Rescued A Spider With My Bare Hand Today

Lifelong arachnophobe that I am, my left hand reached down in an unauthorized move and deftly scooped the creature from the churning waters, then unceremoniously dumped her on the floor while the rest of my body fainted. I had been running water for a shower, waiting for it to warm up, scowling at all the dead hairs from yesterday in the bottom of my tub, when I felt one brush my bare left shoulder. “Oh great, one more hair away from complete baldness.” Only it wasn’t a hair, but a hair-like leg of a Pacific Northwest house spider with uncommonly long, thin, well, hair-like legs and a body smaller than a lentil.

It was falling from the shower curtain, spiraling downwards toward a swirling spider deathpit. Instantly, my brainstem and insular cortex were at war. “Let the turbulent gush shred it!!” shrieked the brainstem. “It’s struggling so hard not to drown!!” shrieked the cortex. I had made peace with these frail, wispy roommates many years ago, but the agreement is no physical contact. Ignoring the alarms issuing from below, the empathy center overruled. . . . . afterwards I felt supremely evolved.