Catching up

Well here we are on a Sunday. I was going to send in a grocery order and go pick it up in town when we got a phone call.

Rich's nurse is coming out at noonish today. He called while I was doing morning chores.

So instead of doing that, I am readjusting my schedule once more.

Before the Rich got sick, I did a nice long hike in the neighbor's valley.  There is this very gnarly and twisted tree in the grassy part of the valley that always fascinated me. The tree has been dead for quite a few years and has a lot of interesting lichen on it.

I've always wanted to do a 'good' shot of this tree but never quite figured it out. So here is the tree. Once I decided to convert it to black and white, it seemed to stand out a bit better.

It is surrounded by a variety of plants and quite a bit of golden rod shown below. I'd read an article about shooting through a plant at another plant to give a bit of interest to the shot. 

So I shot the tree from the other side with the lens close to the golden rod for a light blur effect. Below is the result. It only took me a gazillion years to get a shot of this twisted tree that I liked. And there it is.

During the big melt down on February 25th, I spent quite a bit walking around through the creek bottom. In my bag I had another Titan 13. This one is gold. I thought with the late afternoon sun he'd surely shine.

I had a bit of excitement when the Titan fell forward into the rush of water. I had to chase him downstream a bit to rescue him. The water wasn't deep at all. But I had to try another shot just for the heck of it.

I thought he'd look more regal and I wanted to shoot more up at him than this direction. I'll find another time and place to do that but without the water.

That run off on the 26th was really quite beautiful. I enjoyed taking it all in. The sound of the water was relaxing and invigorating at the same time.

Now I'm trying to figure out my new routine[s] and get used to another change in our lives.

Including creativity is going to be a new challenge to explore. I can think of it in a way as being pushed to change things up.

Caught up and now moving forward.

Something different. Stick Bouquets?

When I went to the grocery store the other day I stopped and looked at some Christmas decorations that the florist had.
They was a huge variety of things.
Little plastic trees that lit up and changed colors. Charlie Brown Trees, and a beautiful glass vase of sticks. 
Sticks.
Sticks that had glitter and snow puffs on them.
$15 for sticks.

I stood looking at the 'sticks' and something clicked in the back of my puny little brain. 
I could do that. I could do that and one better and I could do it for free.

When I got home I dug in the recycle bin and found two tomato sauce jars. I soaked the lids off and spray painted one of them. It really turned out ugly. But I like a challenge.

I went outside and walked to the edge of the yard and woods. I snagged some branches from different trees.

I found a sparkly snow flake and hot glued it to cover up the paint mess. I used silver glitter glue to make gobs of 'snow' on the sticks. And because I intended to give this to my neighbor just for fun, I added some fake jewels to the side of the jar.

After all, you can't just get a glue gun out and not do much gluing.

Something was missing from the bouquets. 
I recall walking with my mom and grandmother to find milkweed pods and 'nobbin' knockers to make a winter bouquet. I think Grandma painted her stems and the milkweed pods to add color and Christmas cheer.

I had an "ahah" moment. I needed to go find some wild things. I donned on my winter coveralls, a hat and gloves...camera bag, nippers, and off Morris and I went. We hit paydirt in the middle of a huge cornfield.
Back home I sorted things out.

Then...I got out the glitter glue again and put some sparkles into the fox tail grass and the other items. Just enough to catch some light but not too much.

This is where I am at right now. I'm a bit undecided about what I'm going to do next. 

I'm going to leave the stick decorations on the kitchen window sill as they are. They are simple. I took some mini tree decorations I had laying around and put them in the bottom of the vases.

I hung soft glittery snow flakes on them and called it good.