An Artist's Garden of Gas Cans

Along with all manner of junk, we also inherited many useful items, too. But where one might suffice, we now have five, six, seven or even ten. So it is that we now have numerous gas cans in all sizes and colors. There are several more available because we're considering offering them as hostess gifts and door prizes. There's one to match your mood or wardrobe!

Studio Time

I am finally getting some time in my studio. What with moving and re-moving and not being able to locate anything (including both art materials and my art-making brain) there has been no time for Bob or me to actually make art. I suppose the irony here is that I've always maintained that if I never made another piece of art, I'd have plenty to show for the next hundred years. Ha! I had the opportunity to show four times this winter thereby proved my point... but it didn't make not producing any new work any easier. And exactly why is it that the very things we love to do and NEED to do (for mental and spiritual hygiene) are always the things that get shunted to the side in favor of questionable activities like paying bills and going to work?
So it is with trembling hands and twitching facial features (and what the hell! throw in the occasional bead of spittle flying from my lips) that I try and martial my spiritual forces, line all my muses up in a row and get to work. Looks awful, feels great.
How's that for an unappealing portrait of the artist as as middle-aged crank?

What Is It? (Number Four)

Okay... what is it?

Here's a hint: it's in our bedroom, across form the windows on the wall where we now have our bed (interior wall). The previous owner, who produced this fine hole, had his bed between the windows and facing this hole. I know what the hole was for, so I'm ahead of the game for a change. Many of the mystery openings throughout the house remain just that and boy there sure are a lot of them!'
Give up?
It's a TV hole. We saw it with our own eyes when we looked at the house last August. Lie in bed, watch the built- in tv... simple as that! However, we like our heads lying to the north so the tv hole is now behind us and essentially useless. I did conjure a scenario where we lie in bed, have the tv above us in the hole and cleverly place a mirror at the foot of the bed and watch television backwards. We haven't tried it yet but it's a thought for a slow evening at home.

Exciting Archaeological Discoveries

So we're walking across our lawn and we see this:

Later that day we saw this:

We got really excited. The first stone could have been the random or accidental scrawlings of nature. The second stone implied "intentional" and hinted at some dawning awareness of numerical systems and order. Obviously, some nacent intelligence had visited our property at an earlier time

The clincher came on Day Three when I stumbled on the most important discovery to date:

Here was all the empiric proof we could have desired. Put in correct sequence, we now had 40-50-60. We are hoping beyond hope that our further investigations will yield "20" and "30" or even "70" and "80". Our fingers are crossed.

Endless Potential

No, that's not our house in the picture. That's our neighbor to the north east. (We're getting new neighbors as the house just sold a week ago). In any event, this is the site of our future vegetable garden. Interestingly, we own a funny triangular piece of property in  front of this house. What looks like a big flat soccer field is actually half ours and as it recieves sun all day long, it's where we plan to plant vegeatbles.
Just watch this location change! We're putting up a fence soon but first we have to find an elusive pin or pipe that marks the edge of our property. It's all surveyed so it shouldn't be that hard.
Bob and I always maintained that we'd like a buy a property that had a good survey map as so mnay times, people contest borders or are unclear as to what's where. We're lucky that we have a map... if only we could find that pin!

And this is going to be the site of one of the flower gardens. This place really is a blank slate; no gardening to speak of and lots of open grass. It's refreshing to be looking around at unbroken ground and thinking, "Soon enough- flowers".

Welcome

I think I could have posted a picture of our entry earlier... but there was all that pesky snow and ice blocking it. On the other hand, is this the front door? Or the back door? Every face of our house has a door, and yet the orientation is subjective. This feels to me like the back door, but the doorway on the side nearest the driveway is narrow and a bit tight for a front door. The actual front door is now in the room acting as my studio and it's blocked by several cabinets... possibly a fend shui issue?
You're all perfectly welcome to come over and see which door works!

What Could Be Hom-ier?

(Above, a partial bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough. Some has been baked and some has been consumed raw. Face it: you're either a dough eater or not.*)

When Bob and I were residing in our interim house, the one thing that proved especially hard for us was that the oven didn't work. Bob breaks amazing bread (French sticks and conventional loaf-shaped loaves and the occasional boule). The only cooking I do is in the form of cookies, muffins and cakes. (I am the "entertainment director" where I work, in charge of themed cakes).

It has been especially important to our sense of rootedness to start baking again. The house smells so good and it makes it feel like "home". This is a real boon when it's been hard to feel like we're anywhere; what with moving twice and our studios both still in states of raucous confusion. And now with the troubles that have plagued Japan, it's essential to be able to enjoy creature comforts like freshly baked food.

* I am an inveterate raw dough eater. I could give a hang about bacteria; I've been consuming dough and batter of all kinds since I was young. Hasn't killed me yet. Just watch someone tell me I have a greater chance of dying from salmonella than I do from radioactive fallout!!!