Cabin Fever?

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”
Twyla Tharp

Illahe Nursery and Gardens during a late February snow So here we are at the end of February, I found myself with several weeks off on account of switching careers from a bureaucrat back to a gardener. I had the best of intentions to get all the winter garden work done in that short period, and to my credit I did get my grandpa's old orchard sprayer working and did a prune and dormant oil application on the orchard. However mulching, weeding and such will have to wait until the thaw.  I threw a couple of photo's in of a project this wonderful change in work scenery has rekindled. So I've never in my life taken two weeks in a row off work since I started into the career world. Which when I look back on it, it is a terrible travesty, now that I realize how wonderful two weeks in a row of doing whatever you want is. We get so caught up in chasing the paycheck that we start to put off things that bring joy and pleasure, and pretty soon you are trapped in the Ouroborus circle and chasing your own tail, we consume more than we produce so we must earn more pieces of paper to pay for the consumption, which locks us in a cubicle for most of the days of the week. I was watching a really great talk by Rick Steves, entitled "Travel as a political act". In it he was talking about how most of Europe works a modified schedule so vastly different from ours, some countries the work day is 5 hours long and some the work week is 4 days, this leaves them time for art and fellowship. Yet the production level they output is remarkably close to that of the United States, because they are more productive in the shorter work period by way of coming in happy every day, having enjoyed time with family and friends in greater life to work balance. I realized as a I was staring at an unfinished project that I thought I had started 10 years ago, that it had actually been 22 years since I first crafted this guitar neck and inlaid my name in Mother of Pearl and Gabon Ebony wood. Sure a lot had happened in that 22 years, university, diplomas, marriage, raising baby, buying houses, selling houses, moving, starting over etc. But why did the art have to fall by the wayside?

Working on the fishcaster, a custom telecaster project I started 22 years ago

I don't know if I have a good answer for where the art went, But this week I dusted off my old box of inlay tools, threaded a new blade in the pearl saw and got back to the work on the Fishcaster, my custom made telecaster guitar that I started as a kid and now intend to finish as a slightly chubbier, somewhat wiser kid. I got some bookmatched pieces of oldgrowth Oregon Myrtlewood (Umbellularia californica) for the top of the Oregon Ash body, (Fraxinus latifolia) the neck is Oregon grown Red Alder (Alnus rubra) and Rosewood (Machaerium scleroxylon), I have an idea for some fern leaf inlays to work in as well. This is the year I bring Art back into my life in one of the forms I enjoy it most, music.

I know you can never really claim to be an artist, that moniker has to be bestowed upon one by others, but you can choose an art form to work with and my preferred outlet for art has always been inlaying mother of pearl and abalone shell into wood. I think in another life I probably would have been happy as a Luthier. Yes this is a flower blog, but as I've said many times previous it's also my garden journal, and notes to myself sometimes, a weather observation portal,  as well as political commentary and social justice zine. I know I should have a glitzy website with just photo's of the flowers and no stories about about how I moonlight as a guitar maker. But this is my thing and if you want to see flowers you simply have to put up with the fact that I have a voice and whatever little message I want to get out I get to get out here. But for those that want to see what's blooming here is what a walk around the garden yielded:

Chinodoxa, Muscari, Scilla and Ipheion all lending shades of blue or perwinkle to the winter display.

Muscari psuedomuscari in the snow

Seed heads of cardoon with the farmhouse in the background.

The Chimonanthus is still going despite the late February chill.

Narcissus hispanicus ssp. bujei This is a rare one from Iberian Andalusia, of course it looks like so many of the big early flowering golden Narcissus to the those who don't notice the subtle. It's a fantastic increaser,  short stems and early and strong bloomer and for some head scratching  reason hardly sells the last few years I have offered it.

It's 29 degrees outside but the sun is shining strongly. 4" of snow cover's pretty much everything. It sounds like we are in for that clear, cold Feburary week that is almost always a given. I will point out that in past years, it hasn't coincided with a blanket of snow and it's usually the week I use to get much of the pruning done around the gardens.

Cheers to making more art in this lifetime!

Mark

P.S. if you haven't seen or read "Travel as a Political Act" do yourself and the world a favor and look it up.