House Projects #1

Bob and I are starting a series of on-going House Projects. This serves double-duty in terms of simply sprucing up the house and yard, but it also establishes our entire property as an art project. I am thinking of places like the fabulous Watts Towers or the place in France that a former postal worker spent years creating a fantasy environment. (Does anyone out there happen to remember who or where this was?)
So in keeping with this theme, here is an inaugural project- mulching the strip of ground along side the house and driveway (where a few daffodils are appearing) with white quartz rocks. I collect these stones, both large and small, while on walks with Jules or at the horse farm where Crisco the Stallion lives. Bob uses the quartz in his sculpture and this provides him with an overflow bed of available stones. It will also serve to brighten that side of the house as the outdoor light is out and we're unsure of where exactly the switch for it is. But at least the door works better thanks to Bob's intervention!

Another Cute Gratuitous Dog Posting and a Prayer

Does this look comfortable?

Jules seems to think so. He likes to sleep on the bottom step, with his face all mashed up against the wall, and his right side legs collapsed onto the stair and his left legs dangling. To each his or her own! (Notice attractive stain to carpet above Jules' midsection. Additional note: Jules' nose is really black but he'd been digging a furious hole before nap time).
However, the real intention of this posting wasn't simply the charming shot of our sleeping prince.  It is to sneakily deliver my version of a prayer to the Gods/Goddesses/Powers/Spirits/Forces/Resident Deities- Whatever of New Neighbors:

Please be benevolent, oh Gods, Goddesses/Powers/Spirits/Forces/Resident Deities/Whatevers.
Grant us New Neighbors who are neither Intolerant
Nor Bigoted. Let them neither flyeth the flag of Confederacy nor Don't Tread on Me.
Leadeth them not down the path of Republicanism nor Tea Party affiliation.
Let them not belongeth to Religious Cults or Peculiar Engines of Proselytization.
Let them not spreadeth toxic Lawn Chemistry.
Let them not use an excess of Power Equipment in the form of humongous Lawn Tractors and
Blowers of Leaves, especially on a Saturday morning.
Keep them indoors, away from mine eyes until our Fence is constructed.
So be it.

Manure and Me

Here I am with our first deposit for the compost pile. The horse farm where Crisco the Stallion* lives has manure heaps to rival the mighty Himalayas. Trust me, I was told that horses produce something on the order of fifty pounds of manure a day so there's plenty to go around. (The horse farm has somewhere around fifty horse. Do the math!)

This pile is located directly next to where the vegetable garden is going. We've gotten smarter: we used to place things like wood piles and then move them eight or nine times. When the horse comes home to live (after we put up a fence) the manure situation will be that much easier. Shoveling shit is hard work and composting is a fine art.

*No, Crisco is not a stallion (he's a gelding) and his name is actually Crispin. But my mother (aka Mommy) couldn't remember his name but knew he was white (like shortening, I guess!) and told her neighbor that his name was Crisco. The neighbor inquired as to whether he was a stallion, so the name fit!

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.