Unexpected things.  but All traveling the same thread.  

 

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just at dawn i looked.   Sky on cloth has always presented a dilemma for me.   is it just an expanse of cloth sky coloured?   is it barely stitched silk gauze like in the Woman Flying With Crow?   i would like some symbolic repeating image that says SKY.   and i think this might be it.  i like it.  we'll see, as it goes,  with this cloth.

 

and Marti is UP.  as she always is.  before dawn.  and sends a photograph of today's Pot.  her cauldron.  Marti doesn't blog.  doesn't want to.  too bad for Us.  

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the colors are off.   but this is a print out of the photograph she emailed.    What is important to me, that made me want to put it here,  is the total and complete Love of the Pot,  it's alchemy.  of anyone i know,  she most loves the Experience of Relationship with the plant materials,  the cloth.  This was true when she lived in other places and it is true again now.  She goes OutSide.  and for her now,  it's not OutSide to a vast landscape.  it is not OutSide to an extraordinary Garden of plants.  no.  it's a small,  relatively plain OutSide.  but there, she Sees and Finds

Everything.

and from OutSide in combination with her food scraps,  she tends her Pot.  she makes her cloth.  she stitches her cloths together and she is Filled.  to her Brim.  no more, no less.  Enough.  i Respect this.  Very much.

 

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this is the Living Room OR, maybe just less than 2/3rds of the Living Room of the house i clean every other Monday.   This House and i are always Alone Together.  no human is ever home.  Just me and this House.  I know it like i know my own.   it is my favorite of all time.  behind that shelf on the left is a piano.  They are geologists and they are Musicians.  this room is FULL of musical instruments.  and when i clean here,  i sing.  the acoustics of the house are wonderful.  because i think the rooms are so Large and also relatively empty, really.  but i Sing and i sound so really Great.   and guess what was on the kitchen table????

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not "hers".  she had brought it home from somewhere.  she does not have flowers.  she has the BEST vegetable garden i've ever known in my time in N. Mex.  but she does not do flowers.  yet…here it was on the table.  ok.

 

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back home,  the tiny beads are opening.  i wish i had a camera that could show the oh so small individual blooms.   they are hard to Believe.  and because of Patricia's comment yesterday,  i searched and found this about Salt Cedar:  terrain.org/articles/27/Lamberton.htm   The Thirsty Tree   Melissa L. Lamberton.   before i talk more about this,  i need to get more printer paper and print it out.  Sit with it.  I need to Sit With It.  But it's important.  maybe even Critical to me.  Intuition.  Trust it.

 

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from Deb Lacativa.  you can find her in the Center Column of PlaceKeeping on Jude's Spirit Cloth.  Look.  oh.  Look.  BEAUTY.  and in almost every cloth i make,  the focal point is always a scrap of Deb's cloth.  it is filled and vibrating with BEAUTY.

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Tazmeena is not pleased.  The photo shoot disturbed the arrangement of pillows.

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Deb's Threads.  the Dalai Lama IS pleased.  but then, he always is.

 

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Arrived in mail,  along with Deb's Cloth.  Along with a new Logitech mouse that makes this post possible.

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farming in Kansas, USA.  farming of grains.  Wheat.  Corn.  farming of food we 

eat.

Monsanto Land.

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farming Elsewhere.  Who would you TRUST to feed  your Children?

 

and i have no pic for this,  but DO go to  stickyfingerstuff.blogspot.co.uk  and look.  Look at the photostream for Antique Boro she so lovingly gives us.  from an exhibit in the UK.  Farmers, again.  Farmers.

 

 

 

 

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25 responses to “a very BIG monday, full of ……Signs…….”

  1. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    I’m wrapped in the serene, playful gaze of his holiness, the Dali Lama; I’m wrapped in the extraordinary color of Debs threads, colors that feel sacred to me not only because of their hues but because of the way they are presented. Threads wrapped as if giving a blessing to the sacred 4 directions; this rainbow of color that is so life affirming, the man, the threads; it is a gift you have presented to us tonight grace. With thanks to his holiness, with thanks to Deb and her extraordinary and exquisite eye for color and with thanks to you grace, for putting it all together here along with food for for thought and with the Boro exhibit info, food for the soul.
    I work with natural dyes that I get from the land but now and then, especially when I see what Deb creates,

    Like

  2. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    well I hit the post button before finishing my thought: so to continue:
    “when I see what Deb creates with all kinds of color, color that comes at you as in that incredible piece of cloth with purples, blues and golds and what to me is a green fern, I am simply blown away at her color artistry.

    Like

  3. grace Avatar

    yes. Yes. All you say here. and that’s what this day
    has FELT like. a
    YES
    day.
    in the middle of it tonight, maybe the kids are coming on
    the weekend. Alyssia, Julian, Veronica. maybe they can
    come here. the Goats will remember them.
    so…it’s a BIG DAY. more even than i knew.
    and vibrant. like Deb’s cloths. she does what she does and she does it with such HUGE heart…similar, same, as you do. there’s no difference, really. and this is the good and greatest thing. it’s the HEART. the HEART
    that pulls us all along in the current of it All

    Like

  4. tracy Avatar
    tracy

    The colors vibrate the cat vibrates too. But those pink salt cedar blossoms are the best. I’m glad you ket that plant. I’d love to see the birds in it.

    Like

  5. tracy Avatar
    tracy

    Aaak, my keyboard is leaving out half the letters. It’s not my fingers.

    Like

  6. linda Avatar

    i am just catching up after a few days of a lot of company here. i was thrilled to see that there is a boro exhibit in london. it is so hard to know where all the exhibits are and what’s on. i am amazed again that i find it through our stitching sisters on the web…
    i will be going to that next week..
    thanks grace for putting it here..

    Like

  7. jude Avatar

    for me i think sky can be just space, no matter what color. That is the component i most often find myself using.

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  8. patricia Avatar

    sky’s are so varied, aren’t they? so many moods and flavors. and i for one am glad that salt cedar lives in your yard. too many questions about its reputation. and afterall, it is a thing of beauty doing what it knows.

    Like

  9. Cynthia Avatar
    Cynthia

    in one of the towns we camped above..for a longish time…in greece there was a big old salt cedar….its roots finally” corrupted” the foundation of the post office building…and they took down the building..i got to see it in the spring…oh such a thread of memories and emotions you have unlocked…and the tree still stands…
    the national geographic pictures..this is what josh and meadow are living so hard for/against and it seems very grounding to find it here…but oh
    the threads…the threads..magic unto themselves, in your presentation..enough right there….
    and yet i know there is a promise of use as well..and that you will have created some thing else that speaks to the inner me..not the one who is working to try to do something about gmo labeling.. well and beyond..but the inner other me who is so nourished here in so many ways..good morning to you

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  10. Cynthia Avatar
    Cynthia

    thank you for these words..so exactly right

    Like

  11. Judith of N. CA Avatar
    Judith of N. CA

    It is fascinating to me how some critters and plants are cloaked in beauty but deadly to others. The yellow broom growing on our riverbar and elsewhere is a most beautiful yellow (and a nice dye) and it’s delicate, lovely perfume that greets me in the morning is elegant. That beauty has completely destroyed the balance of California native plants..a balance that contained a wonderful cycle of diversity between plants and animals. What a trickster the salt cedar is with it’s leafy spring green and that delicate pinkish blossom..catching our eye and that of the bird (it must be breathtaking when they alight – and upside down too – amazing)but, on a sad note, it steals water and destroys the soil.
    On a larger scale, is this just the norm of how things are in nature…winners and losers ?? Did we interfere when man moved these two plants from their native soil and brought them to N. America ? Are we guilty or are we just another critter in the grand scheme of things ?

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  12. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Interesting question you raise Judith. I think yes we are guilty but I want to say not intentionally but due to lack of info, more than anything else. I have a Spanish broom plant in my small backyard, it is glorious, in color when it blooms, in scent, in the color it gives to cloth. Since I knew nothing about it, I researched it and found that many were planted as a lovely landscape plant not realizing how it could take over. Since I am a renter, I cannot remove this plant without the landlords permission but actually, I wouldn’t if I owned this home because it is contained in a small area and we trim it back and are able to grow squash and herbs underneath with no problem.
    Salt cedar, again, since I am new to New Mexico, I read the article that grace referenced and found that in essence, Peter Norton, manager of the Bosque del Apache pretty much asked himself the same question and decided to do something about the salt cedar. Quoting from the article by Melissa Lamberton:
    “If humans created the niche that salt cedar loves so well, then could careful management undo the damage? In 1996, a dense stand of salt cedar trees caught fire on a stretch of the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico. The inferno spread to several thousand acres of native cottonwood trees. When Phil Norton, manager of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, walked through the ashes that spring, he noticed that the new seeds germinating in the scorched earth sprouted salt cedar trees. Something had to be done to rescue the native ecosystem.
    High Country News reports that Norton had been battling salt cedar on his 13-mile stretch of the river for a decade. Every winter, he watched flurries of snow geese and sandhill cranes alight in the trees, and it was his idea to celebrate their arrival with a local festival. Salt cedar threatened the refuge that he had promised to protect. Norton sprayed herbicides and hired bulldozers, to little effect. His attempts to beat back the spreading salt cedar trees were becoming expensive. Seeds couldn’t be controlled. They scattered on the wind, new batches arriving with every gust.
    The power of a seed—that’s where he found his inspiration.
    Revegetation after salt cedar removal along a creek near Moab, Utah.
    Revegetation after salt cedar removal along a creek near
    Moab, Utah.
    Photo courtesy The Tamarisk Coalition.
    In May, just before the cottonwood trees dressed themselves in white, Norton flooded a stretch of the river to create a rich, fertile mudflat. He had a unique tool on hand—a senior water right to the river—that allowed him to open the floodgates on an upstream dam. The resulting surge of water mimicked the pulse of cold snowmelt that occurs on undammed rivers in the springtime. Over the next few weeks, Norton watched the mudflat dry out in the sun, dreading to see it sprout with salt cedar trees.
    But when the first tentative green shoots appeared, they belonged to cottonwood trees. The experiment was a success: Norton had timed the flood to coincide precisely with the first flight of the cottonwood seeds, and they had taken root before salt cedar could colonize the area. The invasive tree was no monster after all, only a symptom of river systems that had been robbed of their seasonal rhythms.”

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  13. Cynthia Avatar
    Cynthia

    …so many seemingly small mistakes…when i was little in san francisco i so loved the smell of the eucalyptus..on foggy mornings it was magical and my sister and i played and imagined so many worlds under them..and loved every phase of their growth…and of course grew up to find that someone had imported the “wrong tree” during the time of rail road expansion..their growth is fast..but the wood splits so easily..making it to ally inappropriate for the intended rail road ties…it alters the water system..the leaves change the aquatic life where they fall…and they are really dangerous during fire season ..
    and yet over wintering monarchs are choosing to hang on them in large numbers…herons are choosing to nest in stands of them..i could go on and on back and forth….it is amazing what we can give change/havoc to as we as a species move more and more around our planet.. oh to figure the balance….
    remembering my mother in law who became a staunch eradicate the scotch broom mover and shaker…
    oh to find the balance..looking again at your threads grace….and the gentleness of that picture..good afternoon to you

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  14. Mo Crow Avatar

    “think globally act locally” still a good call & your salt cedar is OK as long as you don’t allow it to seed, just cut all the flowers and bring them inside for the beauty or do they make good goat food?
    love the new cloth and agree with Jude re a symbol for sky have seen the sky in every colour and pattern under the sun even paisley with a purple moon one night (pollution levels were high, not me)! a potent symbol is Nut the Egyptian sky goddess.

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  15. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Phil Norton, not Peter and I wasn’t able to transfer the mentioned photos.

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  16. grace Forrest Avatar

    i am watching for their arrival. Unless somehow the
    continuation of WIND might make a change???

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  17. grace Forrest Avatar

    i hope you can go, Linda. put it on your blog. Sticky
    blogged it through her eyes, now through yours too…
    and yes. maybe not a lot gets past us, isn’t that a
    great thought???
    xo

    Like

  18. grace Forrest Avatar

    i think that works, yes, when there are those 3
    blocks of 3 as in your nine patches.
    Sky is inferred.
    and also, when Earth, the horizon is clearly there. again
    the brain infers.
    but with things sometimes, i’d like to have something that says sky.

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  19. grace Forrest Avatar

    i got printer paper this afternoon and printed that article
    out…16 pages
    i need to read it first before saying much.
    but it IS interesting that it has shown absolutely NO
    invasiveness here. and there is one single on on the vacant acre to the North that has been there for years. alone. and all around are many many acres of land that are flood irrigated. nothing has seeded or taken root.
    with reading Spiritual Ecology, i am thinking Further about a lot of things.

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  20. grace Forrest Avatar

    i thank you, so much for these words. they mean a LOT
    today, Tuesday,
    LOVE,

    Like

  21. grace Forrest Avatar

    as i said…i need to read that article well before
    being able to say anything useful

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  22. grace Forrest Avatar

    my feeling is that finding “the balance” is going to
    require a LOT

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  23. grace Forrest Avatar

    all i seem to do is act locally

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  24. Cynthia Avatar
    Cynthia

    …and think cosmically…

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  25. Judith of N. CA Avatar
    Judith of N. CA

    Thank you, Marti, for the information…I’m going to pass it along to our County Agent…always good to hear others experiences and knowledge.

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