Blue Jay

 Blue Jay / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

(I've been having trouble with the PayPal buttons, so if you want to buy this lovely little bluejay and the button doesn't work, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com!)

THE SUMMER'S HUMMINGBIRDS left on Thursday. I put new nectar out at the start of the week, and I saw hummers at the feeders through Wednesday, and then - none. 

They were my friends and companions here all summer, humming around my head, entertaining me with their antics at the feeder, amazing me with their speed and agility. 

How I miss them! 

Saturday is the one-year anniversary of Peter's death. When the hummingbirds left, it felt like they took summer with them. When he died, it felt like he took everything with him. 

So I am going away, with my friend Carol and her mother, to a clean Air B&B where we stay every year during the show in Crozet. There's no show, but we had the reservation, and so we are going anyways. He would be proud of me. 

***

A Final Thought

 Thank You

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing, 

again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

ito the grass watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden's dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you. 

Thank you. 

- Ross Gay

Blue Jay

 Blue Jay / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

SATURDAY WAS MY MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY, and I have thought about her even more than usual these past few days. 

And in this thinking, I've come to realize how the quality of her love defined her, and set her apart from nearly everyone else I've known in my life. My mother loved fiercely, courageously, and entirely. When she loved - and she did it easily though not indiscriminately - she loved with total abandon, and total lack of restrictions or conditions. 

She did this even though she knew that sooner or later, love would most likely end in pain. Friends would die. People would leave. Pets would pass away. 

Even in the small things, she loved with passion, though she knew that restaurants would disappoint, gardens would wilt and dry, books would end, cars would finally be unfixable. 

Love would turn to sadness or hurt or disappointment, nearly every time - but my mother loved in the face of all that, and never timidly. Never with a thought to protecting herself, or saving her heart from breaking.

I hope every day to love with at least some of the spirit and the generosity that marked my mother's heart, and to remember her with joy and, always, with gratitude. 

***

A Last Thought

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

- Wendell Berry

Mr. Blue

Mr. Blue / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

THE BIRDS DON'T KNOW that there's a pandemic. They pay no heed to social distance. They crowd the feeders, gather in big flocks on the lawn, string themselves side by each by dozens on the telephone wires. 

And if someone tells you that you eat like a bird, they probably mean to say you don't eat much, but they would be so wrong. The birds at my feeders are pigs! And I love them for it. They come back 100 times in an hour. They stuff their beaks full. They toss the seeds they don't like to the ground so they can get at the ones they do like. And they fight the other birds for food, and for the best spots at the troughs. 

It's how we are in our deep, dark souls, isn't it? 

***

For Today

The Pasture

I'm going out to clear the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

I sha'n't be gone long. - You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf

That's standing by the mother. It's so young,

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I sha'n't be gone long. - You come too. 

-Robert Frost