Prayers for the Unkempt Garden

Herbal, or Botanical Prayer
ink and watercolor pencil on vintage book page (Alice in Wonderland)
10/100 in 100 Creative Challenge. 6/19/10

My days of drawing in ink on my old Alice in Wonderland continue.

I have to say, I enjoy the prayer like aspect of it. Very much. I keep wanting to take my book with me, like to the grocery store, or when I dropped my almost 5 year old off at the week long preview of kindergarten. (Yes that's right, he's off on his first flight without mama. Can't wait to hear about his adventure.)

I do a little in the morning before work. I do a little at night in front of the tv. I sit on the deck in the sun and draw, while the kids meet neighborhood cats and dogs, after picking blackcap raspberries in our new yard.

Here I've drawn the spindly basil that I bought but haven't had the opportunity to plant into the container herb garden I am planning for the back deck. I've decided to stick to containers, because a whole yard intimidates me, and besides, the deck really is the sunniest spot in my yard surrounded with pines and maples and cottonwoods and mulberry trees.

I am surrounded by plants. And they are really seeping into my soul, I think. This is a very lush land, almost as lush as Florida, but cool. I wouldn't be surprised if bugs started showing up, too... this is a land of bugs, too. Something my budding kindergardner loves.

Also on this drawing is a sketch inspired by/copied loosely from the cover of my old Alice in Wonderland book.




Do you see it there in the gold? I am trying to resist adding gold to my little prayer/drawings. Maybe I shouldn't resist. Don't be surprised if gold starts showing up. I still feel a little guilty about breaking up this book, but it was already well loved when I got it. Already had been sketched in by children, so I just went with it. And it has served as so much inspiration and creation to me, I think it was worth it that this old lady has sacrificed herself for my art. She is still loved, just in a different incarnation.

Not only loved, but she is helping me learn to love my own life, as it comes, imperfect and messy.

No Day But To Day, or Sun Prayer
ink on vintage book page
11/100 in 100 Creative Challenge, 6/19/10

Here is another drawing I did on the day of blackcap raspberries and neighborhood pets. That night I sat down to draw, not knowing what I was doing, but feeling the need to draw a sun, the sun the shines down on us and helps us grow, gives us energy, feeds us, allows us to live. Us, everything, everyone, life on Earth.

What a wonderful sun. What a wonderful world where a design made decades ago can inspire something wild, something precious. This drawing here is still influenced by the front cover, but it's wilder, no longer symmetrical, a little ugly. But while I was drawing it, the song from Rent kept going through my head, and so did memories of picking raspberries, and getting bit by mosquitoes, and the taste of cold iced coffee in the hot sun, and music floating on a summer breeze, and the flickering shade of tall trees. And you know what?

I felt a little bit of the weedy unkempt garden within me begin to bloom. And it was beautiful. And it was sweet. And it was tart. And it prickled me when I moved wrong. And it was life.