Graphotypy

14/01: Ugly doll cake

14/01: Lizzie's own "Pin the eye on the ugly doll"

12/01: Lizzie painting a "pin the eyeball on the uglydoll"

12/01: Our current painting in progress

12/01: Monsters in bed

12/01: Mouse Trails –

Well, It’s been a warm start to the year. A snowy December has given way to the rain and warm winds of a January thaw. The massive snow banks are melting away confronted by sun and temperature reaching the fifties. Throughout the lawn, and in the surrounding fields there is just a transparent icy remnant of what used to be. On the edges of the woods you now see mouse tunnels – the exposed passageways of the field mice that are the material memories of mouse activities that have taken place far below the snows of December. They weave in and out, around sumacs and through the blanched winter grasses searching out stores of seeds, passageways hidden away from the hawks and owls above. The tunnels are exposed now, they meander back and forth, meet up with each other and veer away again.

I walk along my own path – where my first footfalls through heavy snows multiplied. Now there is broad swath of muddy green from the back door, to the barn, from the barn to the hen house and then to the woodpile, from the wood pile to the porch again and around the house, where it meets up with the front walk, and the road.

When I was a boy I walked through the snowy fields on a warm early spring day. There, in the snow, were little holes, drilled down through the hard crust, I peered down the hole to find the small round form of a honey bee. Fooled by the early warmth it had ventured out, only making it so far before giving in to the cold, and then its little black body was heated by the sun, and melted its way into the snow. I made my way to the hedgerow, where the bee hives were stacked and covered for the season, and found more and more little holes. Each with a little bee at the bottom lured out by the hopes of false spring.

Today we pry the girls away from there toys in front of the fire, dress them in there coats and boots and push them out the door to walk along the paths, to the woods with the river flooded with snow melt, to soak in the sun before January returns to remind us of what season it really is.