Garden Spirits

I suppose I've made a short of shrine in the back yard by placing the folate head garden sculpture I purchased last September underneath the Child Fort / arbor.   At the time, I was thinking that I might somehow attach it to a stone pillar and set it back in the laurels or other part of the shrubbery, but I think I'll see how well the grape vines grow around it next Summer.  

Who this shrine is to remains to be seen.  I'm hesitant to say "The Green Man," because of all of the Victorian back-projection of a literary figure onto mediaeval baptismal font carvings.  Perhaps attaching pink triangle earrings, or finding pink triangular tiles as a backing would give a contemporary gay flavor that would help invoke the gay male divine.  If I were feeling particularly daring or motivated enough, I might try to find some reproduction of an ancient Fascinus from Pompeii to hang near by (John promptly loses time reviewing Etsy sites...).

When I took down the Writing Pavilion for the Winter, I discovered several packets of spider's eggs (and a few attending arachnid mothers).  I used a dried stem of a poppy to deposit the silken wraps of eggs in the narrow space behind the heavy stone god's head, which felt like something out of a story.  Maybe after hordes of spiders have emerged in the spring it will have more of the numinous about it.  

If only there were a stronger feeling that the folate head were a mask that the growing things in our yard are borrowing, but right now it feels like a concrete idol.  In contrast, the Sphinx in the garden feels more like something with a secret, even if it's only knowledge about finding shade from the goldenrod.  

Now all I need is a 3ft x 4ft x 5ft slab of obsidian or basalt or hematite and I'll be able to have midnight rituals... or... something... although, now that I think about it more, it would probably be just me brooding in the candle light and shooing the cats off of it while secretly imagining a bacchanal before reprising Dot's song, "...if I were a folly girl."

Oh well. 

Old Photos: The Fire Egg Shrine

 Several years ago, I used an X-acto knife to cut a hole in an egg.  I filled the shell with isopropyl alcohol.  (Careful, kids, this device is almost 90% pure divorcium.)

 Mark insisted that I not set the house on fire or display this for The Child, so it was in the back part of the yard.  Then I lit it.  Of course I had a camera, so I spent the next two hours (while the summer sun set) photographing it.

 I call this shot the "Virgin Mary" shot.

Sphinx with Daffodils

It's the Sphinx!

With daffodils.  She's been crouching among them for about two weeks, and I figured if I wanted a good shot with her, I'd better hurry before the flowers wilt.

I lucked into this shot; usually when I photograph her, the Sphinx looks flat -- it was a cloudy day, and the diffuse light probably helped the camera to focus and also softened her features.  I took quite a few shots, trying to re-capture the right combination of camera angle and distance, and this is the photo I like the best.

In a month or so, she'll have a cave of sorts made up of... er, I forget the name of the bushes Mark planted.

Writing with the Sphinx

The last two days, the morning sunlight has shone on our garden sphinx, turning her stoney countenance rosey. When it happened yesterday, I looked up from writing and it seemed as if a person in an Egyptian headdress crouched amidst the squill and Portuguese laurels.

I almost went out in my bathrobe with a camera. But then I decided that I would consine the vision to memory. I have pictures of the sphinx already, and they never quite turn out the way I see them in my mind's eye. Besides, sometimes Mark accuses me of living behind a camera.

And, if I was photographing the sphinx, I wouldn't be writing, which was the reason I was stumbling about before dawn in the first place.

This morning the rising sun performed its magic again. This time I noticed the cherry blossoms scattered on the lawn. I almost photographed her again. But as the shone moved and highlighted different features, I looked up at her between working on the current short story. Which was stubbornly being difficult.

The characters did something unexpected and threw my outline out, which meant I had to stop writing and try to follow where they were going. I've gotten into a bad habit of editing in my head while I write, which slows down the transcription process. And when the characters take an unexpected turn, it slows the word count further. I know several folks who just write whatever comes out and then go back and edit and revise later; supposedly this is faster than dealing with the word buffer in my head.

And now the Day Jobbe calls...