This post is for bragging on my family. My Dad has, once again, done Herculean efforts collecting and processing sap to make maple syrup. To celebrate the best batch so far, my Mom had the idea to upscale the labels. I used my sister’s awesome watercolor painting, and my digital talents, to make a label design that my Mom can print and cut to apply to Dad’s maple syrup bottles. Team work!

… in orange juice. Here is another lingering elderberry syrup image in my OJ. Most of the time, the dollop of syrup swirls in mysterious ways and sinks, but sometimes I get an image that stays long enough for a picture. Mind blown.

Yup, I still have holiday lights up. Sort of. I just really, really like the solitary deer against the backdrop of the woods. That the lights give it an ethereal look makes me happy. I had every intention of unplugging it and storing it out of sight, but then I see it at dusk. It might stay up all year.

Yes, I spend too much time on Pinterest. I saw harvest sculptures that looked like elaborate dresses on mannequins, but made of wheat or grasses. I don’t have wheat, but after cutting down my over grown artemisia, I had something with beautiful texture and color, and had it in abundance. I also had a “mannequin”, or more specifically, a woman’s shape made out of chickenwire from last Halloween’s ghosts. So I tucked the artemisia stems into the poultry wire to form the skirt, then trimmed some of the post oak trees and used the branches to build the bodice and leaves to accent the waist.

This is going to be an evolving sculpture; as I trim trees or tend greenery, the choice bits will get added to my green lady. I’m thinking I can keep augmenting her dress through the winter.