Wow… I know memory is a tricky thing, but I really don’t remember being so late to start working in my garden ! Actually, I think I was not completely aware of it when this Spring season sprang… I have kept myself so darn busy, I ran through the whole miracle of the yearly rebirth mostly unaware !
Separating my showing space (the Blissfull Gallery) from my home studio where I still paint is having an enormous influence on my daily life. Particularly in terms of available time… Being 4 days a week at the gallery, where I can paint only very small watercolors, gets me to cram everything I want to do in the 3 days left… shopping, chores, resting, painting, seeing friends, gardening… and no matter how much I get done (I do get done a big lot), it feels like I never really catch up with my projections…
There is nothing I want to drop either! Gardening, though messy and demanding, brings me so much good energy, and joy, it’s like a meditation, grounding myself smoothly by touching the earth, watching as Life expands and does its thing, season after season… Traveling, because I have family half a world away and because I love discovering always more parts of this benevolent planet… Networking, with its myriad of connections and encounters, my computer like a tether to the rest of the world… Printer appointments, visits to the framer’s and the joy of looking at nature and photographing it as much and as often as I can…
And then Painting…ah, painting! the one thing that is at the core of all my other endeavors… day in and day out, if I don’t actually hold a brush, I think about the next strokes anyway. It’s sometimes frustrating to get all the other things done, required by the creation of an art gallery and all that it entails… but I can envision a time of relief when I’ll be able to delegate a lot of it and have so much more time to spend at my easel! I guess that is part of what keeps me focused and relentlessly working.
Once in a while I get to spend some time just enjoying the moment or reflecting on what is happening, how things develop and evolve, and every time, I am stunned by the course of what we call time. Where did these last 5 months go ? how comes I did not get to see and smell the Acacia in bloom this year ? They did bloom, I am sure. But without me. And I always make these tiny bouquets with the fragrant Cecil Brunner roses that I planted a few years ago for their exquisite avalanches in May… but this year it’s been exploding in thousands of buds and I was not there to enjoy it either. Yesterday, as I was sitting on the warm ground and pulling weeds, I could feel my body relax in the sun and I could let go of projects, numbers, adds, contracts, invitations and all that pertains to business; I just kept clearing the ground that will receive the seedlings very soon and that simple task, in all its simplicity and monotony, was exactly what I needed: it placed me back where I belong, right here , right now… at the threshold of Summer… in the open green door of Spring… A beautiful portal indeed, facing this year of harvests to come.
May you have a wonderful spring !
More later…
