Breath

To calm down a bit, I am meditating. Meditating is also a moment of reflection. It is being in the moment. I do this whenever I feel the impulse and it is quiet around me. It keeps you calm and still. The panic and agitation I am feeling sometimes nowadays, glides away. I follow my breath, in and out the lungs, in and out the mouth, and a calmness arises in my self.

When I was doing so, it occurred to me that the corona virus is a lung disease, it takes the breath away. It is all about breathing. We, the world has lost our breath Nature has lost his breath. Mankind has lost her breath! We will all lose our breath if we continue to go on as we did.

The stand still is the moment between two breaths, the moment between inhale and exhale, or between exhale and inhale. The virus crisis forces us to come to a stand still and think about what we are doing to this world, to nature and to our self.

During a meditation, I found a symbol in my lungs. a triangle of energy between both lungs and the outside world. When energy flows from lung to lung and into the air around us it becomes balanced.

We have to clean the world air, because air cycles through us all. I breath what you breath. I breath what animals breaths and only if we are separated from each other we will stay a life.

The ability from the world to clean the air we all breathe, will have to return. We all are in need of clean air. Alice

More colorful drawings

Making inktober doodles is a nice way to enjoying drawing and painting again. So yesterday after making my daily doodle it was time to work with some color markers, like Ecoline brush pens and colored pencils. It requires another way of working, for the inking and coloring are two different things to do and requires more time.

Toadstool, colored drawing

I made a test drawing with fineliner and used my colored pencils on normal white paper. The coloring is very soft and falls away in the scanner. But it is nice and dry working. The blue of the background is hardly visible. Maybe I have to experiment with other paper to get more color depth in the drawing.

My Toadstool is also a bit cranky, so I am not totally satisfied with this drawing. Alice

Summertime

The lavender blooms and on the little flower buds I see a nice butterfly. It is summertime in my garden and I am enjoying the colors and the fragrance of the flowers.

There is not yet much to do in the forest garden, because there is still no fruit tree planted. A lot of the enthusiastic people we met at the workshops is doing something else. But we are still on track although it will take a lot of time before the forest garden is realized. Meanwhile we organize some activities to keep the folk happy. The plan is almost finished and in the autumn the great works will start. At least we hope so. The flower meadow is now in bloom, the bees will be happy. Alice

Spring

The sun is shining today and all bulbs in the garden are flowering. It is a festival of colors and green. The birds are still feeding on my bird-feeder, but i have seen a tit with fluffy stuff in her beak. It is time to make the garden spring proof. All old stuff has to be cut away to expose the new greens and bulbs.  I hope you enjoy the spring as much as I do. Alice

Tranquility

Winter is here and it is a quiet time. I am not in a mood to write much.

The food forest project is still on its way. We have now several schemes for the project. There is a scheme in which most of the trees of the park are replaced with fruit and nut-trees, there is a scheme in which fruittrees are implemented in the existing park and there is a scheme with zones in which some place will be wild and others cultivated. Soon we will discuss these plans with the group and make a decision. Meanwhile the whole operation is shifted to a later date. Groundwork is due to the autumn and the harvesting and replacing of trees still later. It is frustrating not to begin yet, but it also gives us time to make a good plan. (photo: my son)

Alice

Art Journal – Mushrooms

Autumn is the time of year in which we see many Mushrooms and Toadstools in parks and forest. It gave me some inspiration to draw a few of these magic beings myself and make some entries in my Art Journal. I made some fantasy drawings with my new fineliners and glued them on green paper with some thick glue. I hope you like my mushroom drawings. Alice

Summertime is over

The first week of september is also the last week of summer. It is still beautiful weather and very warm but the nights are becoming longer. And things are happening again. So I went this week to a workshop about permaculture. A group of people in my neighborhood will try to transform a small green space in the neighborhood to a food forest. I visited the introduction evening. We learned something about permaculture and discussed the theme. The group will be guided by 3 specialists. They will take the group by he hand and form the green space together to a viable food forest. I was surprised how many people were attending this first workshop. i hope they will continue with the project for it will be a lot of work. Alice

Forest gardens

Forest gardens are a mix of wild forests and natural gardens. It is sometimes a forest with fruit and vegetable plants in it or it is sometimes a garden that is growing wild. It all centers about Permaculture. I am involved in a project that will renovate an existing park to a forest garden. I am very enthusiastic and excited about the project. I can’t tell more, because we are still in an early phase of the project. I am now reading all about forest gardening and permaculture. Alice

Ladybug

There are many species of ladybugs. Now the winter finally has gone a few species are showing in the garden. This Asian Ladybug (Harmonia axyridis) was hiding in my flowers. I think she is eating pollen for her head is almost covered with the yellow stuff. This species of ladybugs is very variable in color and dots, but sometimes recognizable on the indentation on the elytrons. Alice

Black and white

I think I am not the coloring type. I like to keep my drawings in black and white. I am a bit insecure about this, should I color my drawings a bit more or keep them as they are. I haven’t showed all te pages of my mini art-journal, just for this reason.

The drawing of the cat and the bird is also in black and white, but I made a clipping of the drawing an glued it to a coloring background. I added also some stickers with flowers, but I think that was not a great idea.

The neighbor cat (she is actually black) and its prey are central in my page. The cat is very well done and has some feathers in his mouth. She looks happy with her action. The black bird hasn’t survived the cats action. I had to bury the bird in the garden.

Alice