yesterday may have been the perfect day. wandering through the market with dear friends. beautiful mid-afternoon meal on the patio at chez piggy surrounded by grapevines and chickadees. shopping with almost 11 year old twin girls and their beautiful mother. and laughing so completely that the thought of it makes the giggles start again 16 hours later. a spontaneous collaborative photo-shoot beneath the morrisons restaurant sign with brent as art director. wandering through kingston streets, seeing the most brilliant colorful indian wedding emerge from st. george's. and home to sit by the lake picking sea glass, wading in the lake, feeding frites to the ducks while they wandered among us, watching the boats, talking and of course laughing. brent and i have been friends since the earliest days of art school. and his daughters weren't quite sure why i found him as funny as i do, why he could make me laugh so hard. shared jokes that have aged and fermented for 25 years get funnier and funnier. so despite my almost canceling our wonderful day together.....oh yes, i was feeling stressed and felt i couldn't take time away from the studio beyond a quick lunch together.....but as soon as they floated into the yard, the girls found cats and tire swings, brent made me jump up and down laughing, lorinda handed me a bag of the most lovely cosmetics and creams, we wandered through the studio.....i knew i wanted to have a long day of this loveliness and the work in the studio could wait.
i posted some of the market photos at foblographie i'm sure i'll be posting more little groupings from this lovely day.

this past week has been hot. deliciously steamy. hot with the thin film of sweat that stays on your skin. hot so your movements are slower and a cold drink is always within reach. i've been working on the porch and periodically wandering down to the lake. life certainly slows down in the heat. lately we have been taking advantage of our local video store that has the best selection i have ever encountered. we are also fortunate that $5 rents us a pile of dvds for 8 nights. and they are always liberal with what they consider late. we've been spending our summer nights watching the series 'lost'. perfect for a couple of hours of down time on a hot summer evening. right now we're on the porch swing....tom with his book and me with my blog. but soon we'll go in and continue with our little summer marathon.

we live in a large town, not a large city. but a large town. we have a university. we have a military base and a military university. we have a community college. and several prisons. we have teaching hospitals and a thriving tourist industry. and we have a wind farm. massive wind turbines that change with the light. i call them 'the angels'. they stand just across the lake from us on wolfe island, looking out over the lake at us, at times glowing with their mammoth wings moving in the wind. they harness the energy that the wind generates off the lake and filters that to our power grid. a sustainable power source. i am pleased that we can offer clean and sustainable alternatives. and i'm equally glad that i'm not living directly beneath them. it was difficult for me to watch during the construction phase, as the pristine vista of lake and island that feels like part of my home, was changed forever. there are 86 turbines, each of them 400 feet high, which is a dramatic change.
however, now that we have lived with them for over a year, they have re-created the vista and have become the view i now embrace. finding a way to function in a sustainable way comes in all shapes and sizes and is a lengthy process. so, we try in our home to make changes that make a difference. we are minimizing disposable paper products in our home. we use cloth napkins. and cotton cloths for cleaning in the kitchen. and lots of tea towels. i started making tom hankies a couple of years ago and he always has one in his pocket. i make them to be fun and functional. stylish and re-usable. we are all able to make our own homes function with just a little less waste. it gets simpler and simpler. and that, i suppose is my point. living simply.