nothing much to show.   just going slow.  slow.  slow. slow.

 

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for awhile, like a few days,  have felt like i can't let this one go.   Needed to KEEP it.  but today,  waking from a nap,  that was gone.  I don't need to keep it.    And i wondered why i thought so much i did?,  and it turns out that it is the smalle doodle here,  in the middle….just ink markings on muslin.   It's been floating around for years,   just as is and i have loved it.   It was suddenly The Thing to place here.   So, it's letting go of that.  But also letting go of the All that made it right in this Cloth.    I know tho now, that the Making is now Inside me.  Has become a part of me.  and it's Good.

 

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today, mostly, it's the SKY.  This Cloth has "asked for" things, all along.  Things i didn't think of as necessary,  and to day it wanted Sun.  ok.  Deb Lacativa's thread…and there was such a good sense of Rightness to this.  ok.

7:40 p.m. and i am sweating.  Naked again.  Sweating.  Neighbor Sydney and her daughter Talulah came a while ago to get some FRESH  Goat manure for a poltice Sydney is making for some woman's fruit tree that has borers.  I had to put my Water Dress on.   or…???,  maybe i didn't???,  but i did and we gathered it as it came out.    The recipe called for a "scoop".  How much is a ….scoop?…..

so, we collected that.  Done.  and  Sun is just now heading for the Rim.   There's some WIND and i got word that my granddaughter Alyssia,  her half sister Veronika and my greatgrandson Julian will arrive here on Saturday for three days.   I think of this as i wait a while more to Give water.

 

GIVING WATER.   

Sun approaches the Rim and i go out.   Letting the water run slow,  on the Seep function of the nozzle.

 

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at the base of the Young Cottenwood.

 

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sitting on the log of the cucumber bed,  which is mostly eaten up by Something now, but replanted yesterday.  Sitting and looking at this Old Mexican Elderberry which is ….uhhh,   well, lets just say Quiet this year.

 

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and looking Over,  thinking again how i might make a passage way for the Goats.  From the Way Back,  Through,  Through to the Middle.  How it would give them a Choice.  Of their own accord.  Where to be.  

 

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it would be inconvenient for me.   I would have to have the helper guy who has lead in his balls build me two more gates.   So i could bring wood over in the winter.  In the winter,  when Wind is Sharp and Hard,  it would be ….inconvenient.   But i am looking.

 

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Snowbunny listens to me Thinking

 

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and i am back to where i started.   I finished Giving water.  I filled the Goats water bowls and tubs.  It's so dark now,  i was working by memory.  Time goes fast.  and i think….What is Time FOR?  What's it all FOR?

and if i did this,  this corridor from Way Back to Middle,   how for sure it would exclude me from ever having a beautiful……………yard.   But then,  how much happiness it would give them to suddenly decide to go somewhere else????????????????????

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34 responses to “still “warm” ~ then later. Later…………….”

  1. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Birds on the cloth look like acrobats, swirling and twirling on the sun threads, spiraling as if dancing, as you must be to know that family is coming. Julian, Alyssia and Veronika will come and see, sit, touch, walk, feed goats, feed themselves, listen to the wind, sit under the apricot tree, be bewitched by your plant people and tell their stories as you will and this is all so simply loving, joyful and filled with huge happiness.

    Like

  2. handstories Avatar

    There is so much freedom and music in this cloth.

    Like

  3. ali Avatar
    ali

    so all me crazy, but I just glanced at the first image while reading and it took my breath away–I saw a wild horse running–the way the top thread cut across the top of a horse’s head, the other threads making the outline of lifted running legs, the mane full and long in the wind. it reminds me of an old tapestry I found in a dusty corner shop in hanoi–it has four running deer embroidered on it and they seem totally free and powerful. I will try to remember to send you a photo. grace, I love this piece it all its iterations. it has a strong presence, a real voice if you will…love to you, dear woman

    Like

  4. grace Forrest Avatar

    ali…i won’t call you crazy.
    since i was so young and small i have been a running horse.
    a running horse.
    back in the attic of my childhood home, i separated out all the National Geographics of the southwest and imagined, before i could read, that i was a running horse
    a running horse on some mesa
    so i won’t call you crazy. you saw something that i have
    spent my whole life resolving.
    now, it’s living with running Goats. and they Feed me, this one with the heart of a running horse

    Like

  5. grace Avatar

    yes. kids. kids. young ones. My beloved Alyssia. who she brings. Yup. Here.

    Like

  6. grace Avatar

    it’s how it really is. Freedom. Music. what is
    Natural
    if we can let it

    Like

  7. Nanette Avatar

    picture 8…..love the little face at the gate,looking, watching 🙂

    Like

  8. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Inconvenience/goat happiness/ Beautiful yard/new pathway: What if the goats go with Jenny someday and you decide to stay put,what then of your sacrifice of your yard, your garden? From what I’ve seen, the goats are more than happy,even managed to weather the confinement that occurred recently. They have a large area to run and frolic, to play and wander.
    Long before the goats came, your plant people in your beautiful yard were your universe.Seems to me that as it stands now, goats are happy, you are happy, plants and even the creatures who are enjoying your garden, are happy. Just saying…

    Like

  9. jude Avatar

    a beautiful yard? I have to laugh with that one. has to do with many stories and neighbors, but too long to tell now. i like the sense of constant change in the cloth. the sky here is giving a bit too much water at the moment. but really the trees look happy about it.

    Like

  10. Jan Stevenson Avatar
    Jan Stevenson

    somewhere in the middle is just right. . .here in NE Ohio we had four hours of gentle steady rain yesterday afternoon into evening . . .garden rain. . . . .and I sat here purring. and yes, I have many stories as well, about the yard and differing ideas of beauty between myself and my neighbors. figuring out what the land wants rather than what I want myself. all I can say is, last year my back yard was full of crickets and there were none in the adjacent yards. crickets near the indigo vat and crickets on my eco-dyed dress unrolled onto the grass. and all those weeds in the flower border? preserving integrity of the soil, I guess.

    Like

  11. Joan@CopperCreekers Avatar

    grace needs to ‘do’ for grace as well as her plant people and the goats. marti’s been at your home and her advice sounds good. i feel she would tell you if the goats need this extra room.
    my opinion… you should keep this cloth that resonates within you because it holds so much of what you are striving to nurture. you should have your beautiful yard because of your love of beauty and again the way you nurture your plant people.
    GRACE needs to be nurtured too.

    Like

  12. Tracy Leppold Avatar
    Tracy Leppold

    My favorite part of the new cloth is the little worms and nematodes.
    Wearing a wet dress while sitting in front of an ocillating fan can be a great thing. Do the goats mind the heat? they look like they don’t mind very much.

    Like

  13. Karen Avatar
    Karen

    I think you have a beautiful yard…and WHAT defines beauty but what it is for yourself. The cloth…it reflects your profound love for the land. It is so beautiful as well!! I love the scenario…a naked Grace stitching~Mother Earth creating her child.

    Like

  14. Mo Crow Avatar

    your land needs regular rests with mulch from the compressing of tiny hooves, just move the herd from the nearby to the way back by lead goat every now and then and one day take them out for a long walk with some good goat herding dogs to keep the wild ones at bay.

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  15. Mo Crow Avatar

    PS the sun is beautiful in this land soul cloth

    Like

  16. deb Avatar

    have you ever looked down on your property from above…I wonder if Google earth would come close enough?

    Like

  17. Martine Avatar

    Who needs a beautiful yard?
    Have been away for a week and there where goats around me that made me thinking of you………..

    Like

  18. Martine Avatar

    Mo you sound like a real goatmomma…………

    Like

  19. Mo Crow Avatar

    have looked after a lot of animals in this lifetime, in one place there was 77 all up of horses, cattle, goats, chickens, geese, ducks, dogs, cats, a 30 foot (10 metres) carpet snake and a cockatoo!!

    Like

  20. grace Avatar

    Snowbunny watches Everything. She is amazing at being
    so tuned in to whatever is going on…thoughts, even…

    Like

  21. grace Avatar

    we’ll see. it would just be a “temporary” corridor. am
    still just looking.

    Like

  22. grace Avatar

    well…when i say beautiful yard, it should be taken
    with a grain of salt too. but well it IS beautiful in
    it’s own way

    Like

  23. grace Avatar

    even weeds photosynthesize. i keep thinking about that.
    CricketLand. nice. very very nice. i will wish you
    fireflies too

    Like

  24. grace Avatar

    not the whole yard, just a small runway. it would be ok
    if i can figure out how to do it.
    and the Cloth…just the experience of being its “handmaiden”…of letting it make itself has been really
    wonderful. Now i want to learn other ways to express
    the same things, but even more…..and that just takes
    beginning again.

    Like

  25. grace Avatar

    yes..i want to get better at nematodes and microbes
    Goats have been exactly the same. The time of high heat
    in the day is their time of cud work anyway, so…their
    routine isn’t changed. It might be hard for them if it
    stayed hot in the night. but it doesn’t, becomes
    so softly cool

    Like

  26. grace Avatar

    it’s all so tender, really.

    Like

  27. grace Avatar

    Smile…”some good goat herding dogs”….oh lordy…the
    last thing i need, but hmmm, i have given thought to
    a new dog….
    i really wish i could take long walks with them.

    Like

  28. grace Avatar

    no…i can never figure out how to do Google Earth. Maybe
    when the kids are here they can show me

    Like

  29. grace Avatar

    yes and i saw your little pig friend….i love how our
    places on earth are so varied…..

    Like

  30. ali Avatar
    ali

    amazing, grace, because I, too, am a running horse–often running the fence, it seems, but not always, sometimes running wild and free. I love this connection, right down to the Nat. Geographic images of southwest desert, sunset, sunrise, wild horses running or drinking. do you ever read cormick macarthy? not my typical genre, but his images are so strong and the south, southwest setting feels right. in “all the pretty horses” a character describes how wild mares are rounded up, trapped, and then separated, isolated from one another and broken for riding — reading that it struck me how our culture does that with human females too–women separated, isolated from each other in individual houses with endless domestic chores — many unnecessary and scripted by societal expectations…so yes, to the horse, wild and free, and to the goats, good companions for horses and women

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  31. grace Avatar

    macarthy?, no. but i know very well of it. and know that i would see things through the writing. so yes. and i will.
    i will.
    the wild horse. from so young an age…i guess 4. 5 maybe.
    running the mesas.
    on the playgound, my friend Beatrice, pronounced BE AT TRICE and i would Rear, SPIN, Whinney in shrill piercing sounds. in kindergarten or first grade. The principal at
    the elementary school called my parents in. He was concerned because we really WERE horses. We were.

    Like

  32. ali Avatar
    ali

    of course you were. horses. so many of us young girls were, I think. before they broke us. or tried. still calling, running, one of a kind and yet part of a here’d–wild herd

    Like

  33. grace Avatar

    thing was…we were supposed to write what we wanted to be.
    When we grew up. on that old kind of paper that was lined just so for lower case, upper case. so the fat pencil would have room to make the marks of our writing. We were supposed to write what we wanted to be when we grew up. in that grade, just a sentence would do. But i wrote more. Because i’d seen in the National Geographic…Stuff. I saw it and i TOOK IT IN. i wrote that i wanted to be a wild stallion, shining obsideon black…plagerism, yes, direct from the N Geo. but i didnt know about plagerism then. i just new
    wild. shining. obsideon black. and then in my teens, i found a BOY who was shining obsideon black haired…rode like the wind, wild and i went on to find boys. they became my wildness.

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  34. grace Avatar

    until i CLAIMED IT. UNTIL I CLAIMED IT as my Own.

    Like

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