Here’s a neat idea I’ve just read about: the “perpetual nature journal.” Several bloggers credit Lara Gastiger with the idea. You start with a blank journal, and give a date to each double-page spread. Gastiger actually assigns a week of the year to each spread. Then every year, you revisit the pages and add a small drawing/sketch/painting/words of something from that day/week in nature. You don’t fill the page; simply add some small new thing each year. Over the course of several years, the journal builds piece by piece until you’ve captured a deeper look at your seasonal journey.
It occurred to me that my blog is something like a perpetual online journal. When I first started blogging on this day in 2009, I wanted to write about following the Pacific Northwest seasons day by day over the course of one year. I planned on posting photographs, seasonal recipes, poems, quotes from my reading, and short personal writings. I fulfilled this commitment, and for several years after, I posted something every single day! This is now my 10th year of blogging.
I do enjoy looking back on my old posts from time to time. I thought I would use my postings this coming year as an opportunity for you to look at my perpetual journal. I will skip over blog posts about my travels or special projects (like Thoreau Thursdays or painting a moon snail shell 100 times), but I will provide links to the posts with seasonal themes and my ordinary days over the past decade. I hope you enjoy this look back over some old posts from this day in my life.
This is the time of year in Seattle when trees are greening and blossoming. My eyes and soul feast on their fresh tints and colors — life resurrected once more.
“For a few days only,
the plum tree outside the window
shoulders perfection.
No matter the plums will be small,
eaten only by squirrels and jays.
I feast on the one thing, they on another,
the shoaling bees on a third.
What in this unpleated world isn’t someone’s seduction?”
— Jane Hirshfield, from “French Horn,” Come Thief: Poems
Here is the latest display I created for the Greenwood Public Library:
It celebrates the art of the hand-written letter. The display features books, of course, but also 10 Mail Art Tips from the Postman’s Knock blog.
Inside the library is a cart full of books of letters and correspondence ready to be checked out. Even though few of us write letters anymore, I still enjoy reading compilations of other people’s letters.
This past weekend my husband and I took a road trip to Eastern Washington with the goal of seeing some sandhill cranes on their spring migration. Three years ago I had traveled to the Platte River in Nebraska to witness the sandhill crane migration in our nation’s heartland. (You can read my posts about that experience here, and here, and here.) This year I was looking forward to seeing something similar without having to travel so far away. In my own home state of Washington, this was the weekend the town of Othello was hosting its annual Sandhill Crane Festival.
Unfortunately, we were skunked by the sandhill cranes. We saw not a single crane.
Yet the drive through this part of my state held its own rewards. The scenery was interesting and beautiful in its own way. Othello and the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge are situated in a scoured, dry landscape called the channeled scablands.
I am not sure why we did not see any cranes. One Fish and Wildlife employee said just the other day he saw a flock of about 1,000 sandhill cranes in the refuge. Perhaps it was too windy on the day we were there. Tumbleweeds crossed the road. We saw hundreds of them piled up against the buttes and cliffs.
Giving up on the cranes, we spent two days driving even farther east into the Palouse, the state’s wheat-growing region. Many of the hilltops sported giant windmills — clearly this is a windy part of the state.
This early in the year, many of the vast fields were still brown. A few brilliant green fields were shockingly beautiful — harbingers of Spring. My eyes just soaked in the fresh color. I am so enamored of the rolling hills in the Palouse. The landscape reminds me of the desert dunes of Namibia — covered with fertile soil rather than dry sand. I love taking photographs here.
So in spite of the absence of flocks of sandhill cranes, our weekend getaway was a delight.
I am delighted to invite you to a show of my art during the month of June. Mark your calendars!
Local Wonders:
Nature in Watercolor and Ink
by Rosemary Washington
When: June 1 – 30, 2018. Artist Reception/Open House on Thursday evening, June 7th, from 5:00-7:00
Where: Elisabeth C. Miller Library, Center for Urban Horticulture, on the University of Washington campus, 3501 NE 41st Street, Seattle
The exhibit will feature selected works in watercolor and ink — mostly plant and animal portraits — inspired by nature in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Art works will be on display and for sale* during the Miller Library’s regular open hours.
Please stop by for a visit.
*All sales by cash or check. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the UW Miller Library Fund. Buyers can pick up their art on or after June 30th.
Just a couple more paintings for Valentine’s Day. I’m seeing lots of robins these days.
