Ingrid sits beside my sea painting contemplating her collection of fishnet, driftwood, and shells. My remaining net is cut into a dozen small pieces, veils for future sisters and brothers of Thalassa and Ingrid. The doll studio is a busy place on these wintry days, where woodstove heat rises through the floor vent and snowy landscapes are visible through frosty windows.  Several vintage silk blouses from Goodwill hang as wall art. Granddaughter dresses-to-be and summer skirts wait in bright piles in the bedroom next door. A pattern for a dragon and ideas for marionettes and fairy houses abound.

I read more in Women Who Run with the Wolves about the inner nature of women and I listen to stories. Women speak, and have each other, and always did, and have become more bold and more active. A twelve year old child speaks to the UN on the destruction of the earth’s resources.  I listen to what is not told in the news, buy soaps from Arghand, and plan raised beds of compost planted with unaltered seeds.

Looking back at books I once revered I am more jarred than ever to find that the word “men” stands for men and women and children or ignores us altogether. In the late 1950s when I first read Thomas Merton’s original Seeds of Contemplation, the descriptions of the April colt and the tree and the flowers blew fresh air through my stultified suburban life. Today I am saddened to reread Merton’s views about the natural selves of human beings.  I think back to the biblical story of the first family, and wonder whether that dark picture has hindered human development. I wish a model of a noble first family existed somewhere amongst the creation stories. Certainly, as humans became more “civilized,” instinctive skills were lost along the way. Some of what was invented was better left uninvented. Our wars have damaged the land and the warriors and the children. Bodies and minds are damaged.  Who is there to help? Is it possible for persons with noble minds to become leaders or must they always work from the sidelines?

We do know that we need to be busy with our hands and our hearts in order to mend our minds. Today I will bring to life another sea gnome.

Many red and pink fabrics wait for me here, ribbon printed with gold hearts, old handkerchiefs embroidered with roses, white lawn with baby tulips, solid red cottons, but I shall sew this pale green liripiper today.  The liripipe is “a hood with a tail,” according to Mode in Costume, a fashion appearing at the end of the thirteenth century.

Since the holidays I have completed three versions of the Pink Fig “Miss Kitty” design for young girls. Next I plan to sew several designs by the Burda company including my first try at a balloon skirt.

On Morning Classical Music today perhaps Suzanne Nance will play Hugo Wolf’s “Begegnung,” a setting of Eduard Moricke’s lovely poem. (The “o” in the poet’s last name has an umlaut that WordPress does not recognize.) I am challenged not only as a singer but as a pianist playing this storm music without tiring. Happily, many technical feats impossible for me in the 1960′s are achievable today.

Another task for me on this Valentine’s Day is to start a painting of bleached fall grasses under a brilliant tree next to the Little Sabattus River.

What is Valentine’s Day without celebrational foods? Instead of the traditional cherry cheese pie I will serve fresh raspberries and strawberries with whipped cream in red glass bowls.

Love to every one of you!

We have wild white lilacs and pale purple lilacs that pop up all over our land, some of them as tall as trees, but this white lilac with touches of pink arrived in the mail many years ago as a small bare shoot.

The garden is in. I have seeded peas thickly to eat as greens in salads, the way they grow at Eva’s Garden in South Dartmouth. Sage, rhubarb, bronze fennel, large-leaf thyme, and ginger and chocolate mints from Eva’s thrive in my garden. My tomato seedlings that I grew from seed are very skimpy but maybe they will hustle up now that they are in the ground, surrounded with tall cages.

The black flies are eating me alive.

Later I will plant a big patch of milkweed to attract monarch butterflies farther along in the season. We used to have plenty of milkweed growing on its own with no need to seed.

I learn so much watching the Hornby Island Eagle chat. Lately the chatters are deeply concerned because the eagles are finding very little food and are not very eager to accept thawed salmon head supplements. It is as though they are on starvation rations. The chatters are recyclers and interested in the health of our planet. Some of them reserve parts of their properties just for birds and butterflies and other wildlife. I like that.

Our ruby-throated hummingbird darted amongst the pink columbines and blue veronica yesterday until the thunderstorm struck. We even had a tornado warning. For the first time I tucked away many pieces of porcelain and many dolls into drawers and trunks. Today is partly overcast, cooler, and so very green, with irises coming into bloom.

A Fool is fruit puree folded into whipped cream. What a delight, especially for Mother’s Day.

Lightning and thunder stopped our gardening this afternoon. Now a welcome rain is falling on spectacularly green lawns and moistening the perennials I just moved to new beds. The ajuga, forget-me-nots, pulmonaria, veronica, violets, and daisies will all bloom in shades of blues and whites.

The first of the new tulips are opening orange. They could be the Apricot Beauties. A second grouping shows lemon-yellow buds the shape of candle flames.

This evening will offer an opportunity to start learning the Goldberg Variations.

These are the bits and pieces of this Spring day.

The morning sun lights antique sequins on my Gypsy’s head scarf.  I am remembering the Vermont farm near the Canadian border where a group of doll artists met for a sculpting workshop. There  I modeled this head from clay, taking care to avoid undercuts.  The clay sculpt became the negative space of a plaster of paris mold. Sandy poured the head from porcelain slip at her West Gardiner studio. After a long interval, porcelain class resumes this coming Friday.