bushwalking and baring the bones in the garden

started the week with a bushwalk along the Popes Glen track to Govetts Leap

the track to Cripps Lookout has just opened!

Popes Glen Creek

Horseshoe Falls from Cripps Lookout

ancient rock formation at Cripps Lookout

Pulpit Rock from Govetts Leap
the next day I started baring the bones of the garden at Dunmovin which has been neglected since 2019 when the previous owner went into a nursing home

cut the Photinia hedge on the driveway back buy a third, a big job that took 4 hours!
the next day Cathy & I went for a bushwalk to Mount Banks

Cathy enjoying the view from the track

Old Man Banksia aka Banksia serrata

Banksia serrata flower

my grin says it all!
the next day I got back to work in the garden, the Buxus & Hebes on the verandah needed sorting

Buxus cut back by a third with a view of the orange flowered Crocosmia a class 4 weed in the Blue Mountains

Roderick’s spirit eyes have been helping, he was so good at pruning hedges!

feels like I am honouring Liesa’s spirit by bringing some order back to her garden

removed all the ivy from under the deck, will plant a Cecil Brunner rose on the white trellis and cut the bamboo back, the good news is it is contained in an old septic tank so it can’t spread

blackberry is also a class 4 weed here so I removed it from the old boat

will add fresh potting mix and plant it out with spring annuals and bulbs

more blackberry behind the garden

the neighbour on the other aside of the back fence had just cut down the blackberry on his side so the timing is good

my ladder & pruning tools in the back shed

so I bought a padlock and in a funny way it makes me feel like this garden and shed and house will be mine one day in the not too faraway!

Limbo aka the space in between Here & There

exploring Do Ho Suh’s sublimely transporting passages at the MCA
photo by Richard Whitfield

Muffin the magic black cat giving me lessons in the Zen of waiting for a month in the city

settlement has been delayed on Dunmovin, the old lady in the nursing home who owned the house died early this month so her estate has to go through probate before I can move in which will take at least 3 to 6 months (or more) to get through the courts

yesterday I hung my 2023 Moon Calendar in the studio here at Hat Hill Road

I don’t have to pack up any time soon so there’s lots of time to ride Free my fabulous electric bicycle

& go bushwalking in these beautiful Blue Mountains

slowly stitching the edge of the long cloth of grief and wonder with red silk

the long cloth is from Japan, indigo dyed, handwoven hemp with the most beautiful hand

Old Man Crow is here with me in spirit, I have been seeing double ever since he died. On New Year’s Eve I realized that this is happening because I am seeing with his spirit eyes as well as my physical eyes so I am learning how to bring these two ways of seeing into focus. I always manifest my metaphors literally, that’s what being an artist is!

getting my mojo working!

Beth Brennan of Still Life Pond sent me these vintage gloves back in 2019, when I started deconstructing them I thought they could become a crow somehow, one day. Beth gave me a gentle nudge in that direction last week with a link to Ann Wood’s ‘Crow Sew-Along‘, inspired I bought her crow pattern

& started gathering all the black leathers, velvets, satins. silk & lace around the place and laid them out on the studio floor

Beth’s mother’s gloves will make the wings for my crow!

have cut out the pattern and underlay for the body & am ready to start stitching it all together when I finish this post! My good friend, the amazing sculptor Bronwyn Berman has been staying 5 minutes walk up the road, looking after the equally amazing sculptor Margarita Sampson’s trio of Siamese cats while she’s seeing Paris, the Venice Biennale and more!
Bronwyn and I have been hanging out, making things at the kitchen table whilst drinking copious cups of tea and catching up on life, the universe and everything. She sparked me along to finish this Blue Moon from Glennis Shibori Girl that I started stitching on the March Equinox!

Filigree of Memory I was stitched and unstitched, then stitched and unstitched repeatedly, over and over from the March Equinox to the September Equinox 2022, this is such a long strange trip … with so many memories of Old Man Crow held in each of those tiny stitches and knots, finishing it with Bronwyn’s encouragement and great sense of humour has got my mojo working again at last! Just finished reading “Earth Grief: The Journey into and Through Ecological Loss” by Stephen Harrod Buhner, a book that everyone who has a heart should read. I am hanging this next body of work which will take me the rest of my life on this quote:
“The process is difficult, time-consuming, and painful. It seems that emotional acceptance can be achieved only as a consequence of fine-grained, almost filigree work with memory.”
and talking of memory look at this filigree work in the Wind Eroded Caves !

Bronwyn and I climbed up to sit for a bit with the ancient stone

true friends are rare treasures, Bronwyn both encourages & challenges my work as well as making me laugh a lot with her great sense of humour!
This month she became officially Dr Bronwyn Berman or Doctor Bee to me, love this photo !

photo courtesy of Dr Bronwyn Berman

Thanks for everything my friend!

Spring Equinox

To celebrate the Spring Equinox I went for a bushwalk with the mist obscuring and revealing the gateways to the liminal spaces in between, love this glimpse of Horseshoe Falls veiled in cloud.

what a long strange trip

The path of heart is never a straightforward deal!

after a month of attempting to take two variations of high blood pressure medication and feeling totally strange and disorientated I said to the GP the drugs were not my way and asked my Tai Chi teacher for a transformational counselling session. It was a dance, she circled, I side stepped for quite some time til finally I allowed her into the heart of the matter, “what have I lost besides Old Man Crow?” I closed my eyes and felt deeply, searching and realized my third eye was closed, clouded with a saddened burnt sienna red! She helped me spin that cloud in my mind’s eye until it turned into a flame, in the centre of the flame was a diamond so I drew that and stitched it into the long cloth of grief

I started stitching this beautiful length of Japanese hand woven indigo dyed hemp on February 1st, it will take the rest of my days…

& have stitched and unstitched this Memory Keeper made from an indigo moon backed with red silk from Glennis Shibori Girl since the Equinox in March

On Monday with magical timing Susi Bancroft wrote “The ‘mark making of grief’ I would love to see. One mark or small step at a time and one day you will take that line for a walk – walks can be tiny steps to big leaps, side steps and take you in circles and even backwards sometimes…. “
Yesterday I took Free for a ride to the Wind Eroded Caves near Anvil Rock and made my first foray down the track down into the Blue Gum Forest from Perrys Lookdown

Magic Days!

into the blue

mountain magic

ancient stone spiral at Mount Hay

these ancient stones were formed under the sea

mountain magic looking towards Bridal Veil Falls and Govetts Leap

misty morning at Echo Point in Katoomba

Scribbly Gum aka Eucalyptus haemastoma

stone steps leading down to Leura Cascades

Leura Cascades

old bridge at Leura Cascades picnic area

the Grand Canyon walking track goes behind this waterfall

water music

stepping stones

a sign at the crossroads deep in the rainforest

going back up

and up

to Evans Lookout

rainbow at Govetts Leap

Free!

Yesterday was the perfect sunny day to ride Free out along the Burramoko Ridge Trail to see Hanging Rock!

tied up safely to a post to walk up to Baltzer Lookout

view to the right of the trail

close to the edge, the river is a long way down

Grose Valley

View from Baltzer Lookout of Hanging Rock to the left and the Grose Wilderness

Hanging Rock

a bit closer to the edge

Baltzer Lookout

This week I am celebrating being fully retired, all the paperwork that needs to be sorted & signed off on when someone dies is done & dusted. The fabulous tax agent in Katoomba sorted both Rod & my final tax returns + cancelled my ABN as I don’t make enough out of my art to warrant having one, I feel so free! I can go bushwalking every day when the weather is fine & when the mist settles in stay home & make whatever wants to fall out of my hands just for the joy of it!

My high school friend Jolly recommended the Serious Readers Heavy Duty Table Light & it is brilliant, I can get the point of the brush or needle exactly where I want it for the first time this year!

My eyes have deteriorated radically this year so the new light combined with new glasses for seeing distance and new lenses for my reading glasses will keep me happily making and reading for the forseeable!

More Bushwalking!

On the track to Lockleys Pylon

Fortress Rock

Fortress Rock Falls

Fortress Rock Falls a bit closer near the summit

Fortress Rock and Bridal Veil Falls from the summit of Lockleys Pylon

Bridal Veil Falls from the summit of Lockleys Pylon

view of the Grose Valley

wild heathland on the way back

Mo on the way back

with my intrepid bushwalking friend Cathy, we have to come back & do this walk again in spring!

Bushwalking!

After a week of living in the clouds the sun came out for a bushwalk from Popes Glen to Govetts Leap

mosses, lichens and a tiny grass living on a rock

Horseshoe Falls

Grose Valley from Horseshoe Falls

Old Man Crow’s spirit danced with a rainbow in Bridal Veil Falls as I walked along the edge of Govetts Leap

Grose Valley from Govetts Leap