Thanks to the wonderful fabric paints generously donated by iLOVEtoCREATE, we were able to create our own one-of-a-kind, earth-friendly reuseable grocery totebags!  No more plastic bags for us!  I was absolutely wowed by the beautiful creations of CreativityCentral last night – here are some photos – I think you will be VERY impressed!

Kevin starting what turns out to be an absolutely BEAUTIFUL creation

Joanie starting her creation – by the time she is done, she will use the iLOVEtoCREATE donated spray paint so effectively her totebag will look like suede!!!

A closeup of the suede-like effects Joanie created.  In addition to the fabric paints supplied by iLOVEtoCREATE, Joanie in this photo is using a COPIC marker donated by COPIC Marker (Imagination International)

Progress photo of Kevin making his BEAUTIFUL butterflies

Closeup of Kevin’s lovely totebag

Above and Below: Both sides of Joanie’s softly luxurious and lovely creation

Kevin and Joanie hard at work – Happy Busy!

Kevin displaying his amazing grocery totebag Who wouldn’t feel happy using this tote?

Closeup of the sparkly butterflies and detail of Kevin’s wonderful totebag

Another fun totebag made during last night’s CreativityCentral

A sun in the making!

Some of the GREAT products donated by iLOVE toCREATE that we used to make these useful & fun totebags

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Check out this video – this squirrel is AMAZING! It’s hard to believe how daring and fun this squirrel is, with lots of personality. As you will see in the film clip, this squirrel LOVES a challenge – rather than eat the food that’s easy to get, she decides to hang upside down, fend off birds bigger than she is, and eat… and eat… and eat… One truly amazing squirrel! Enjoy!

Here are some stills taken from the video:

Squirrel Getting Caught in the Act!

Quite the Balancing Act!

Why eat the Corn right next to me, and miss out on all the fun of hanging upside down?

Streeeeeeeeeetch!

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In the video below you will see Contented Peace, Bliss and Happiness at our magical bird feeder! If only the whole world got along this well! Our bird feeder is so busy, pretty soon we are going to need an air traffic tower! We sometimes have 10 black-headed grosbeaks at a time – most of them males (only about 3 females), but we have so many other birds too! This video shows many birds – all of them but one are black-headed grosbeaks – note that there is a feeder on a table that actually has 2 grosbeaks at it – one you can see clearly but one you can only see through the plastic of the feeder because that second grosbeak is on the far side of the feeder, so you need to look closely.   There is also one large dove in this video, eating on a feeding tray -and as you will see, they all get along fine!

In the photo below, you will see a FEMALE black-headed grosbeak – unlike the males which have the coloring of monarch butterflies, the females have browns and whites on their heads (striking stripes) and peachy colored breasts – they look ethereal! Like the males, they have large thick beaks. No mistaking these lovely ladies for anything but a grosbeak!

A Lovely Trio of Female Feathery Friends!

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Injured Grosbeak has a new friend!

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Thanks to my amazing friend Carol, we went with the Ventura County Garden Club on a SPECTACULAR tour of Santa Babara’s Ever-Bloom nursery – and all I can say is… LOOK AT THESE PICTURES! I am so inspired! Imagine acres and acres of gorgeous gerbera daisies, seemingly dancing a colorful ballet as far as the eye can see. These gerberas are all from imported plants from Holland (The Netherlands). MANY THANKS to Louise and Janet and the Ventura County Garden Club for making me feel so welcome and arranging this tour, and to my talented friend Carol, and to the lovely Ever-Bloom nursery. What an inspiring treat for an Impressionist artist!

Here are just a few examples of the lovely gerbera daisies we saw:

Have you ever seen gerbera daisies like this? WOW!

Look at these spikey petals combined with that blaze of color - Van Gogh watch out!

Cheery Sunny Gerbera - I got to take this one home! On a blue vase, it is AMAZING!

Another unique gerbera daisy at Ever-Bloom nursery

A "sea" of gerberas - this photo reminds me of a wave!

How can you look at these and not be happy? B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L !

Such a variety of color! These cut gerbera daisies in line to be boxed and shipped.

Tis Bliss To Be Surrounded By This!

The above is a video to show how huge just ONE greenhouse is – and Ever-Bloom has several greenhouses like this, and other greenhouses serving younger plants at various stages of growth – a full 15 acres under glass, as they say! -And the technology behind it all is IMPRESSIVE

It won’t surprise anybody when these lovely gerbera daisies pop up in my garden AND in my paintings!

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How can one not be inspired by this time of year in the garden? We just planted the vegetable garden, and it is amazing! Just as these little plants are the start of this year’s vegetable crop, so too shall these plants be the start of my painting! I have a feeling the harvest bounty that I will show in my painting might be just a bit bigger than the yield of my crop! -But this time of year, I’m always so hopeful. I see the six pack of tiny corn plants already full grown, with at least one big, inviting ear on each plant. Gophers are unheard of in my painting! -And insect pests? Forget about it! The only insects in my painting garden are friendly and inviting, like butterflies, ladybugs, and the friendliest of spiders (all these kindly spiders related to Charlotte of E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web,” no doubt!). Mosquitos won’t exist in my painting. Bunnies only eat their fair share, and no more, always leaving at least half of each lettuce for me. That’s what I love about painting – each canvas is my little world, to populate with all the things I love, and to disregard those that, well, aren’t up to snuff! Here are some photos of this newly planted garden, my inspiration for the painting I am working on:

It may be only young plants now, but in my painting they will be full of tomatoes and corn!

So pretty and sunny!

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This is such a miraculous time of the year. The garden boxes transform from barren to full of hope; the yard is all a-twitter with birds – even our blue bird houses have residents (but not blue birds!). As last year, we have four raised vegetable boxes total – one is our “berry box” (not shown, going on its 4th year) that has blueberries, black berries, strawberries and raspberries (and now one tomato that we just didn’t have room for anywhere else); one vegetable box has some sweet yellow corn, sweet bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, broccoli, eggplant, kale, and romaine, as well as colorful Swiss Chard remaining from last season; a third box has newly planted tomatoes, peppers, and red and green romaine, and also has the previously planted “Methuselah” artichoke plant that has been there for four years now, as well as Swiss chard and spinach and even one brave miraculously-made-it-through-Winter tomato, each respectively planted from seed last season, and some remaining leek and brussel sprouts also from last season; and the final (fourth) box, fairly small in size, has a red flame seedless grape (3rd season) and a tomato. I still need to squeeze some fresh basil in there somewhere! Also what we hope to start this season: COMPOSTING! Oh my!!!!

A fun quip from my husband: Whenever we go to the garden to harvest some veggies for dinner (such as when we snip some Swiss Chard that has graced our dinners all winter long), we call our harvesting trips to the veggie garden “going grocery chopping” – I so love his sense of humor!

Here are some before and after photos, that show the transformation from barren beds to sunny gardening bliss:

BEFORE PHOTO: Lovely greens and marigolds waiting in their little six-packs to be planted and thrive!

BEFORE: Empty beds waiting - as you can see in this photo, before planting everything looks barren, but it won't be long before these boxes are full of happy little plants!!

BEFORE PHOTO: Little six packs of Veggie Hope all lined up!

AFTER: Such a Sunny transformation!

AFTER: View from the garden gate - so inviting! Bring your coffee!

View from inside the gate looking out - see our little Chihuahua-Pomeranian-Papillion-One-of-a-kinder dog waiting for us to toss his ever present tennis ball!

Another photo of our little dog - If you throw that tennis ball, that would be GREAT!

Everything looks sunny and happy!

This is our Swiss Chard grown from seed - I never knew how much I loved Swiss Chard until I had the fresh-from-the-garden variety! -And adds beautiful color too!

Squirrel Mort says hello! He's been eating some of the greens we planted, I think!

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Last night’s Creativity Central creativity therapy workshop centered on knitting – knitting using a new way. Creating this knitting adventure for my creativity therapy group reminded me of a poem I had written about knitting, and life, some years ago, when I was starting anew before I met my wonderful husband. I think that poem might be timely to add here, as the poem is apropos of so many of life’s changes and decisions:

Life is Like Knitting

Life is like knitting
Sometimes each stitch falls easily into place
Each row upon row flowing with grace
And then, a mistake, not easy to erase

A choice must be had
Do we go ahead flawed, looking a bit bad
Or do we unravel and then
Begin, begin, begin again?

With each new start
The old design deliberately picked apart
Carefully the yarn from the needle unfurls
Undoing all the knits and pearls
Cautious not to harm
The tender texture of the yarn

This life’s thread must be used to stitch again
In our universal pattern of row upon row, til time’s end
There is no shame in each start anew
No matter how many restarts or how few

The rows undone
In the redoing are part of life’s fun
The lessons learned along each knitted way
Can be used another day
To last, to warm our souls a little longer
Making our life’s knitting that much stronger.

(c) 2006 M. Nicole van Dam.  All Rights Reserved.

Now about the creativity therapy workshop of last night, aka “Knitting-the-New-Way!”

Last night was the first night we used the wonderful Authentic Knitting Boards donated by the Authentic Knitting Board Company – and these knitting boards are amazing! You don’t need to know a thing about knitting to make something colorful and fun and useful, in just a few hours. Here are a few photos, and I think we all gave these wonderful knitting boards a thumbs up!

The results from the Magical Knitting Board

Close-up of the Knitting Board in Use

Wonderful Donations from Authentic Knitting Board and Kathleen

-And of course, our earlier projects aren’t forgotten – we just picked up the framed mixed media work my creativity therapy group (“Creativity Central”) created – we call it “Jammin Jungle” and it is now on exhibit at the hospital:

"Jammin Jungle" Project

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My husband has been hard at work – harvesting today’s crop, making me smile, and putting up two blue bird houses, and being all around wonderful! I have seen a few bluebirds – beautiful red-breasted Western Bluebirds – in our neighborhood, so I decided to try to set up a few blue bird houses for them – which actually means my kind husband set up the houses! Here is what we did:
We purchased two houses – each with a hole towards the top, a hinge AT THE BOTTOM (so you can check for nests) and absolutely NO PERCH outside (that protects from predators and egg thieves). We also purchased two 7.5 foot lengths of 1″ copper plumbing pipe (will get a beautiful patina as it ages, at least that’s the plan!), 4 brass brackets (2 per house to bracket the pipe to the back of the house), and two 1.5 foot lengths of 1″pvc (test to make sure the copper pipe fits INTO the pvc and can turn a bit). The idea is dig a hole and put the pvc pipe into it, and then bolt the birdhouse to the copper pipe (using the brass brackets) so the house will be at least 5 feet off the ground (again to ward off predators), and then slip the birdhouse-copper-pipe combo into the pvc that you already put into the ground and – PRESTO- you’ve set the first house in your blue bird trail. It’s especially easy when your husband does all the work! Here are some photos:

Close-Up of front of bluebird house - hinge is at bottom.

Closeup of how copper pipe gets bracketed to birdhouse using two brass brackets. We hope to be able to see the babies learn to fly from our windows.

Detail showing how copper pipe fits into the pvc that you first set into the ground. This enables you to turn the bluebird house away from the wind, etc.

Our "bluebird trail" - we set two birdhouses along this trail - I've read that bluebirds like to nest over open spaces and yet within some ten feet of a tree for when the baby birds learn to fly. I hope this bluebird trail of two houses is set in an open enough area!

Our Leonberger dog waiting for bluebirds! "For Rent - Two Bluebird Houses with great security system!

Because I have a bit of a cold, my sweet husband also did today’s harvest from our garden – rainbow Swiss chard and fresh tomatoes. Made for a great dinner! My husband came up with a great line – he called harvesting the fresh veggies from our garden going “Grocery Chopping!” I love his sense of humor – no one makes me laugh like he does!

Today's Harvest, Thanks to Hard-Working Hubby!

-And a few photos of our rare black-headed grosbeak – he’s still here!

Our Black-Headed Grosbeak in the Trees - you can see how his one wing hangs down slightly, but he can still fly!

Here is our black-heaed Grosbeak in his favorite resting place and cafe! I think he is waiting for his flock to return from Latin America, which should happen around March I think. I wonder what will happen then?!!

A fun HAPPY update to this post: On February 23 at 8:30am I looked out my window and saw… a beautiful, perfect FEMALE black-headed grosbeak! HURRAY! Our little fellow isn’t alone anymore! I hope to have an opportunity to photograph her soon. It’s wonderful when things end RIGHT!

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For those of you that have been following my postings, you will know that at our birdfeeders we have seen a black-headed grosbeak wihich has a broken wing. He has wintered here with us, when instead he is supposed to have migrated to Latin America with his flock, so Cornell Ornithology tells us this is quite rare, and asked me to record the sightings in their database, which I have. Separately, we also have a squirrel with a broken leg, who visits our feeder, and at first it was really sad to see, but now that squirrel is doing much better. The fun thing is, in these videos below, the two of them are chowing down their breakfast together, and I am so happy each of them has made it through the winter. This seems like a fairy tale ending for two struggling creatures who now have turned the corner to better, sunnier days. HURRAY! It’s nice to see a story end right! As an aside, I had named the squirrel “Molly” – but now I can clearly see it’s a boy, so the new name for this Squirrel is “Malty”! Fyi, several earlier videos of Molly (now Malty) are posted so you can see how far the recovery of this inspirational squirrel has beem, and I think our grosbeak bird is doing much better too!
Here are some videos of our happy, busy bird feeder:

VIDEO 1: As shown below, this video starts with Malty the Squirrel eating and then he is, to his (and my) surprise, joined by our broken-winged black-headed grosbeak. You can see Malty give the bird a quick scolding for scaring him, but then they get down to the business of eating…and eating…and eating! What is GREAT to see in this first video is how well our broken legged squirrel can jump again, when he is surpised by the visit by the broken-winged bird:

VIDEO 2: A happy, contented continuation of the first video. All’s well that ends well! I’m so happy to see them doing so well, and to be so friendly together:

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