Monarchs & Poppies

Went on a little excursion to the hills, then the sea, and then back to the hills. Everything is so green, and the oaks are drenched in flowing green-gray moss, the fields sporting clusters of blooming wild flowers -- purples, yellows, oranges, and blues. It's beautiful, and driving through the coastal hills feels like being in a faraway land. Magickal and mystical with only the sound of the bees in the trees

Mist/Fog/Marine layer oozing over the hills near Hwy. 101 N. of SLO

to break the quiet. In the evenings and early morning, the mist from the sea envelopes the rolling hills, and it all becomes even more still. It really is quite the special place. We stopped at the monarch butterfly grove on our travels, to see the last of the season's monarchs before they fly away again until next November. There were a few still left fluttering about.

California Poppy at Monarch Grove, Pismo, CA

I couldn't get close enough to a monarch to get his/her picture, so I took pictures of the poppies instead. They're everywhere in the grove, and just off in the distance, the dunes and the sea. Sitting in the grove, the sounds of wind through the eucalyptus combined with the roaring ocean, create this meditative hum that kind of vibrates the entire body. It's so nice in the grove. If I were a butterfly, I'd never leave.

I'm champing at the bit to get back to work, but so much is going on. The household dynamics are changing again (as if they ever stopped) and I'm feeling pressured to leave my things out of sight. For some reason, my focusing on my work -- the perfuming, soaping, writing -- is cause for anxiety for everyone else. It's as if they are all jealous that I have something tangible and interesting to distract me from the mundane everyday existence they prefer to complain about. I may be imagining it. Anyway, I do have to get those tea soaps done and out of here so I can focus on other works this year -- like more perfumes! I'm restocking raw materials almost daily (where to put it all?????) and I'm experimenting on a very, very small scale, by drops and dips between dishes and laundry. I feel more and more in the way the deeper I get into my work. Like I have to constantly stop what I'm doing to cook or mop or dust, just to prove my worth the household. It's demeaning. The real reason I need an off-site studio perhaps? Probably. Maybe I'm just bitter I can't do this all the time, day in and day out, no dishes, no laundry, no bed making, no television, no babysitting, no shopping or chauffeuring or post officing. Ah, to dream.