What do you have for breakfast?

That was the question posed by Deborah Davidson for a mailart call on her blog HERE  and this was my response........

Unfortunately it is the awful truth that I eat more pills than food sometimes!   By a strange coincidence (aren't they by nature strange?) one of the other contributors shared the same Alma Mater, the Canberra School of Art, with me albeit 10 years later. Given that the number of graduates is pretty small compared to other places in the world and Debbie's blog originates in Japan, it is probably low odds that this would happen. It's a small blogosphere! 

                                                                                           

Oh frabjous joy!

A room of one's own! Well more of a cupboard actually, but a place where I can happily paint, sew, paste and ponder while looking out at the changing scene before me. Previously I have shared a room with the Prof who is not the neatest person and having two 'not the neatest persons' sharing one room equals chaos. Files would appear in the middle of my stuff, stacks of reference materials grew like mushrooms over every available surface, there would be paint spills and tears...oh dear.
Just coincidentally the little front room in our house which was previously a porch and usually called a 'sunroom' was in need of repair, so, in went new windows, a clear out of junk, a paint job and voila, my new room.

It is so nice to be able to see out to the park across the street, it is a very lively, well used park, weddings, picnics, barbeques, tennis courts, bowling club, Gay and Lesbian Festivals, Christmas Carols, African drummers and even a bagpipe band that practises every wednesday afternoon. A few weeks ago we were privileged to see and join in the celebrations for the King of Thailand's birthday, as I said a great park.
Another bonus is the frangipani tree right outside the window, I am looking forward to some heavenly perfume in the summer months.
Now all I have to do is produce some work to justify all of this.

Still no nijimi.....

I am trying to get a feel for these new cards (I have lots), so I am ploughing on. I suspect that they require a more spontaneous approach (something like Shungo san's work) than my constipated style. I live in hope that something good will come out of the experiment.
To cheer myself up I have written on the gardenia card that good things are worth waiting for. I do wait all year for the gardenias to bloom and I fill the house with their heady perfume and imagine myself in different places like a seraglio or a salon or a boudoir, okay, I'll stop now!
As for the art well, still waiting,....waiting,...waiting.

I love the look of the great tousled heads of the hydrangeas and I imagine them in dialogues with each other as they droop in the heat of a warm spring day, sadly in this climate they don't last long when the real heat comes, one 40 degree day and pouff, they are burned and sad. I do love it when they survive to develop the lovely tints as the bracts toughen up in autumn.

To anyone who was wondering how the Prof's trip to the USA went, he returned unscathed on Friday night and the only delay was here in Australia, at Brisbane airport when the little Dash 8 he was to travel on was declared medically unfit and he had to wait for 4 hours after hauling himself all the way from Iowa. The cold weather in Des Moines was a bit of the shock to his system but he did Ok for an old guy :D.

No NIJIMI!

I was fortunate a couple of weeks ago in that some friends of mine attended a conference in Kyoto and made it their mission to bring me back some etegami cards. I now have an assortment of different cards to try and the ones I tried first are quite easy to draw on but have no real absorbency (or nijimi) so the images are more clear cut. It is fun to try with my homemade  bamboo pen which usually blobs away on the paper and is very hard to control. On these cards it behaves impeccably!

This Jacaranda card has a distinct 1930's vibe going on..what do you think dear reader?
Oh, and another attempt at Haiku.

Ah, what can I say, I have read Karl Marx (the Classic Comic edition LOL) and am persuaded that every man is worth his hire and that extends to bees too! Also, another excuse to use the bee stamp I carved.
I never fail to ponder on the labour of those little critters every time I spoon some honey on my breakfast crumpet and give thanks for their sacrifice however unwillingly made.
Speaking of thanksgiving, the Prof has gotten himself into the unenviable position of having to fly across the USA on the eve of Thanksgiving...visions of the Steve Martin, John Candy classic movie "Trains Planes and Automobiles" have been plaguing his dreams for the last week.

Aaah Beauty, so hard to capture.

Have been having an enforced break from painting and having a little trouble getting back into the groove.This one is for a lovely friend Marcia who brings me goodies in hospital and who turned up the other day after I got home, with some gorgeous epiphyte flowers. They only last a day but were very lovely.

I thought the quote was appropriate because for most of the year the plant is a bunch of succulent, bare stems and no one could imagine such a large, soft, fragile and beautiful flower springing from it, frustratingly difficult to paint though.

People who know me...

People who know me would be unaccustomed to my silence for over a week but, you guessed it, I am back in the 'slammer' again! A slight problem associated with too much prednisone, wonderful drug but it comes at a cost.
I hope to be home and etegamying soon, nil desperandum is my motto (easy to say)!

Mon préféré le Français M. Pierre de Ronsard

Ah oui! My favourite Frenchman Monsieur Pierre de Ronsard.

The view from my back door.

This rose reminds me of a candy we have here called cocoanut ice, always homemade and sickly sweet but redolent of warm kitchens and motherly love. Before we became so clever  and aware, mothers would make this to be sold on 'sweet stalls' to raise money for their child's school along with the toffee that has pulled many a six year old tooth from it's roots! Now I prefer to have my sweets as 'eye candy' so I fill the garden with shamelessly romantic plants. Not for me the rigid lines and clumps of decorative grasses beloved of garden designers nowadays, our garden is high maintenance all the way and I love it.

This huge Hippeastrum is currently taking pride of place on our verandah where I can admire it as I eat 'al fresco'.

On the merry-go-round

Wake up, use the machine to  'cough assist', two nebulizers, two puffers, two nasal sprays ,change the intravenous bottle, check emails, laugh hysterically, ponder the meaning of life, decide it is perhaps worthwhile, start all over again.
In between treatments I am trying to do something productive but the garden seduces me and I find myself wasting hours just staring at the new greenery and peering into the flowers, kind of floral navel gazing!

The etegami community is busy working on New Years cards featuring the Year of the dragon.
Not being horoscopically minded but floriferously minded, I harked back to when as children we pinched the flowers of "Snapdragons" to open their mouths to make them roar.

I really love seeing what everyone else is trying out and I want to have a few more tries before the end of the year.

 This one features the Louisiana Iris that are growing in my pond. They come out in a huge flush of flowers lasting just a couple of weeks so I had the Prof bring me in some to the hospital to draw. I have always been intrigued by Iris who was a Greek goddess represented by the rainbow. Surely if there is a connection between heaven and earth it would be via a rainbow.

Home again, home again, jiggedy jig!

I'm a happy little pig being back home in the bosom of my family (himself, the insecure dog and the geriatric dog) and enjoying the splendiferous verandancy of my garden.
I did not escape completely unscathed,  still on IV antibiotics for a further week to completely route the bugs and get me back to what passes for normal 'round here.
Only a couple of etegami done while I was away shall post tomorrow!

Fast forward......a flock of cranes.

Just a note of record, my last post was about being home from hospital, well, that didn't last long, I am back in as of last Saturday.
Seems I picked up another hospital acquired infection in my ratty lungs while I was here before. Not something that bothers the general population but boy it is bothering me!
Consequently, not much happening on the creative front though I do continue on with my origami crane project. For the last several hundred hospital admissions I have been using my dinner menu printouts to make cranes. These are now numbering in their  hundreds and are destined to accompany me to Valhalla on my final journey.  (I gave up on the 'thousand cranes will cure you' thing a long time ago).
It is almost becoming like OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and any bit of white paper that comes under my hands becomes a crane. A friend explained that it is only OCD if you dread bad consequences if you don't do something. DUH! I figure that while I am making the cranes I am still here.....death does seem like a bad consequence to me.
I over dramatize, my doctor is upbeat as usual, that man laughs at death (his day will come), just longing to get back to my green oasis at home and enjoy what is left of the Spring weather.