Spinning spinning spin twisting pulling stretching rewinding and coiling a thread being formed out of loose airy fibers, hands guiding in smooth calm rythemic motions as they change air loose fibers taking up space and held up by air atoms and change them in to a condensed line leading in to the spool. Such a beautiful transition, from floating fibers to thread, not any chemical change, just fingers pulling and twisting and keeping the right amount of tension. The thread comes to be moved, to be taken as a unit to be woven or to be knit, nothing really changed chemically still unless you change it's color. But lets say you don't. You leave it natural. The only change is where it's been placed, is the construction it is now in.
Thoughts...I think they can be like this. They are the same thoughts, you are just rearranging them so that they are stronger, reaffirming them.

Fiber arts are just beautiful to me. I seem to find something more in them every time I think about them.

So thoughts....where are they going in me today?

Today I am thinking about where I came from. I think I have pride.
It never out right occurred to me that there was any shame. Maybe shame is awkwardness? I take pride none the less that I can shovel shit in a barn, that I have hand milked goats, that I have agricultural knowledge. It is sort of cultural awkwardness to me a lot of the time when I come across people who don't know what I am talking about when I say "a gelding" or "a weather" and I have to explain. Or I find it interesting when I had to explain what a variegated plant was to my friend when we received our Ivy plants and she thoughts mine was diseased. Nope, same plant, this one is just variegated, has different colored leaves.

My mom is a gardener, a big time gardener actually. I learn these things from her. The interest started after my grandfather died. He started getting in to I believe irises before he died, finding all different varieties.
My mom took up his plants afterward. It was a sort of project for her I think, a healing hobby. She started tearing up the front lawn, throwing her energy in to it. She took up the plants to feel connected I think. She made a section of the garden dedicated to him. It grew. It became her. There were butterfly bushes, hibiscus, lavender, yarrow, burning bushes, tulips, lilies, various vines, all sorts of flowers. The front yard was changed for the flower garden, to glorify the plants, to give my mom therapy of long days in the dirt nurturing life and beauty.
In the summer bees are everywhere, floating lazily from flower to flower. Humming birds buzz about poking for the best nectar and butterflies just glide gently from one place to another as though enjoying the sun on their leaves. The garden sustains more life than it originally created. It is a haven. Birds build in it, use the resources for nests, the bugs for their food. Frogs laze in the water of the pond and send out their mating calls. The flower garden is a life born from a death.

Before our front yard was transformed it was grass it had a maple tree and then a small stunted maple. It was the place where my brothers would build dirt ramps and do crazy BMX jumps or where we would build snow forts, where in the mini garden we would pick strawberries or watch our pumpkins grow. It was a place to grow from youth, a yard to run through when playing hide-and-go-seek neighborhood wide.

It's different now but I don't mind at all. It is beautiful. It is my mom's place. It is my dad's place too from the carpentry of the pond house and the once open but now enclosed porch and the arbors he has built. It is a place to work and to rest where there is that combined work and play feeling, where they blend together. You can spend time in the pond house talking at night or reading during the day or just watching the world and listening to the mini-waterfall of the pond house.

It is something I take for granted a bit. It is still the feeling of winter though the birds cheep of spring and the sun shines in welcome. I am not at home and come May I will see the garden awakening when I last saw it asleep under the snow.

I think this year I want to put in my own piece to keep it nice, to continue the homage that keeps so many living things happy, that gives the bees flowers to dote upon and butterflies a beautiful pedestal and humming birds a drink to sip. It is only right that I try and partake in the work that brings me joy and piece, that makes me marvel in the summer of what is in the front yard. It is time to relearn plant names, to appreciate it, to reconnect.
Yeah, this summer will be about learning for me I think, about growth and work.
I'm looking forward to it.

For now, I have class.
Peace.
~Lo