Walking slowly at first...

Do you think it was natural causes?


One never knows what will be found in my woods...


One of my goals for 2009 is to get back into better shape and I thought I'd start out by walking every day. One of my favorite blogging artists Leslie Avon Miller has been posting her walk progress in mileage on the sidebar of her blog: textures shapes and colors. I thought it was a neat idea - and one that will challenge me to continue so I am shamelessly copying her idea.

I'm up to (blush) two miles!! Yeah - not much, but I just started a couple days ago, and I got sidetracked. Halfway down my 1/4 mile driveway, I realized I needed to go back for a shovel and clean out the dammed up leaves so that my steep road won't be crisscrossed by flash flooding. After 45 minutes of shoveling gravel and leaves, I 'd had a pretty good workout.

Though NE GA is still in an extreme drought situation, we've had three days of constant rain. The small watering hole in the upper pasture is full and overflowing the red clay banks with red, red water. The horses have clean water in their troughs, but they use this little pond for water sports, splashing and rolling in the muddy water on warm or hot days.

I usually have company on my walks; my goofy dog Frieda, the two Pyrenees, and a few kitty cats. I looked up at what I thought was a squirrel and spied instead a grey tabby fifteen feet up a tree. That's Madeline. She has apparently forgotten the broken leg of last year. Broken in two places, it was a challenge for the vet to pin because of all the small pieces. Maddy came to me from the rent-a-center where I was picking up scaffolding. The guy came out of the warehouse with my locking wheels in one hand and little Maddy in the other - and a sob story about how she was "gonna get squashed" if she stayed around there. So she came home with me and promptly broke her leg. I believe that's called irony. 'nuff said...

It's still winter - and though the trees have begun to blush with buds, the landscape is still rather bleak. But spring is marching out of the woods in the form of little yellow daffodils. These were hunkered down under the logs of a fallen pine that a friend cut up for me. Guess it's time for some spring clean up.

Sometimes it's the air, sometimes it's the smell. Sometimes it's the sound of water, sometimes it's the stillness. It's tapping into the transcendent, and teaching your heart to see it, and making your eyes and hands express it that creates transcendent paintings. - Gil Dellinger