Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Growing
21 March 2020
Make art about growing, about growth, especially growing through difficult circumstances.
Posts tagged ‘garden’
Daily Prompt Love <3 Seeking Solace
26 July 2017
The world is in so much pain right now, so much anger, so much fear. If I am not mindful, that collective despair will weigh down on my back, settle ’round my shoulders like a yoke, until it chokes me, and I am become part of the problem, rather than doing what I think I should–choosing light, choosing peace, choosing Love–doing all that I can to be a force for compassion and Love in this world. So I have to make sure that I care for myself, body and spirit. I personally seek solace in the natural world, in my garden.
It reminds me, daily, that we are made not from our successes, but from the narrative of learning embodied in failure, every lush, red tomato now the product of years on my knees, learning, lessons gifted by seeds that did not germinate, rain that did not fall, soil that wasn’t ready, woodlings that wandered in and ate the fruit, reminders of my rent being due, for sharing this space.
Reward, and humility, in equal share, mistakes and losses, the cost of carelessness, the reminder that I own no space alone in my time on this planet, reside always in the garden. But even more, for me, in that small space, dwells possibility. Even in the darkest winter months, I imagine what will come, with spring. I find solace in the garden’s persistent gift, the imagining of an unimaginable future.
Make art about where you find solace.
Daily Prompt Love Catch-Up <3 Carnivals, Weeds, and a Fistful of Stars
10 June 2017
Accompanied my daughter and son-in-law today for that GrandPerson’s first trip to a fair.
Make art inspired by a fair, or carnival.
11 June 2017
Traveling on back roads today, my favorite way to get anywhere.
Make art about back roads, country lanes, two-lane blacktops cutting through nothing but countryside.
12 June 2017
Grading and gardening day.
Make art about pulling weeds, about weeding things out.
13 June 2017
Dreamt someone I love brought me a gift.
Make art about a fistful of stars.
Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Family, Ground, and Grief
8 April 2017
First Birthday party today for my grandson!
Make art about the miracles of family.
9 April 2017
Tilling in the summer garden today.
Make art about breaking ground.
10 April 2017
A friend of mine lost ten family members in the recent tragic events in Syria.
Make art about extreme loss, or extreme grief.
Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Leaves, & Autumn, & Just Going From Here
10/1/2016
Walking in these West Virginia mountains 🙂
“The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil in your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.” ~Thoreau
Make art about ‘garden enough.’
10/2/2016
Driving back from WV, I stopped for gas, and Road Angel Louise tells me her story of trying to recover from the recent flooding, what it’s like to lose so much. “Just go from here, I reckon,” she said.
Make art about rebounding from tragedy, about how we ‘just go from here.’
10/3/2016
Dreamt someone I love brought me apples, Honey Crisp and Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Winesap, even a couple of Arkansas Black. He sliced one with his sharp knife, and smiling, said, Here you go, Missy. A taste of what’s to come.
Make art about the taste of autumn. Or about what’s to come.
Daily Prompt Love! <3 Cooking and What Woke You :-)
11 August 2016
Spent all day canning and preserving food. Always takes me back into the company of all those over time who did this before me, especially the women who taught me, as a child, to can and put up food for the winter.
Make art about food as heritage.
12 August 2016
Was abruptly awakened by a crow at the window, informing me—loudly–that the suet cages needed filling 🙂
Make art about being awakened suddenly.
Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Sometimes the Prompt Is All About What You Believe
6 August 2016
Time with my daughter, son-in-law, and that miraculous GrandPerson. Looking into my grandson’s eyes, I can see eternity ❤
Make art about what you see in a child’s eyes.
7 August 2016
Love coming home to find tomatoes ripening to red, okra reaching fingers to the sky, even those last cucumbers still making their climb up the trellis 🙂
Deep within each one of us lies a garden.~Julie Moir Messervy
Make art about the garden that lies within you.
8 August 2016
Had the chance today to spend time with my sister and a beautiful cousin I haven’t seen in years. So good for my heart!
Make art about extended family.
9 August 2016
Thinking on this today.
Make art about the power of belief.
A Dream, A Meditation, and A Prompt: Ecosystems
I dreamt my husband and mama, both gone now for years, having walked on to the next life, were helping me in the garden, setting up two new raised beds, working the dark rich soil with rakes and with our hands. I was planting turnips, the seeds so small, so many shades of purple, lavender, violet, plum, deep purply rose. “Plant cabbage with them,” Mama said, “Good companions.” John nodded, “Or spinach, or peas.” He grinned. “They like each other.”
I woke up thinking about companion planting, about ecosystems.
Ecology is all about interconnection and eternal change, creating patterns, connection, cause and effect, that shape every organism and phenomenon. Our own minds work this way, but, I wonder, Can we step back and recognize that? Can we extend that eco-understanding beyond our needs, thinking like an ecosystem”? Recognizing, developing, and honoring our “eco-mind”?
Wouldn’t an eco-mind also able to see that the survival of our own species, our own existence, our own desire to thrive, is connected to our consciously creating the context needed for that thriving, and that it is inextrcably tied to the well-being, the continuation, of other species and the health of our wider ecology.
Can we learn to see that we don’t exist above or beyond the ecosystem? That those turnip seeds, in their tiny purple majesty, are as essential as the bees that come to the comfrey, the deer who watch from the shaded wood, the cardinal that sings from the Guardian Oak, the groundhog who thinks I don’t see her in the tall grass at the edge of the yard, to the spider silent in the rain-silvered web at the side of the garage, are as essential to our own survival as they are to ours?
Make art about interconnections, about ecosystems
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Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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