Edgar Allan Poe, A Black Cat and Thunderstorms

   For the past few days, we have been getting daily rains complete with thunder, lightning and wind.  The storms are soothing as I know the gardens are being well-watered.  It is during these storms that cat and I sit snuggled together enjoying each other's company.  As Prince of the Bayou, Mr. Bat demands that I hold him tightly on days like this.  He still has throwback anxiety from when some hateful person flung him from a car window during such a storm years ago.  The thunder and lightning do not bother him but the raindrops on the rooftop do.  So, my work day ends and I gladly cuddle the Prince.  What better way to spend a storm than with cat cuddles!

  Yesterday, the snuggles put me in a chair that gave me a direct view of the french doors and their colorful glass panes,  It was not long before the sun peeped out enough to give those panes a delightful glow!  To the left, Edgar Allan Poe watched over us as the lamp softly glowed beneath him.  This vision brought comfort as I thought just how much I like the way the room is decorated.  While not to many people's taste, it suits mine perfectly.  The room is filled with quaint objects such as antique lamps, furniture and clocks...lots and lots of clocks!  Then there are the quirky "finds" from thrift stores, roadsides and friends.  Nothing in this entire room meets the "expected" living room aesthetic...from the almost black walls to the red velvet loveseat and purple chairs.  It is just eccentric and eclectic enough to meet my standards...and Bat, the cat's.  He and I find comfort here among the oddities.

The Tranquility Door

   On a whim, I bought some simple, colored cellophane and "stained" the window panes in the front doors.  The large, old french doors each have 15 panes of glass and each of those is slightly different size.  (This is often the case with antique doors as they were usually handmade.)  The "staining" first came into play with one of the Clue Hunts on the Bayou.  The french doors and similar greenhouse doors all received a pattern of colors.  Well, I liked the look so much that I kept it and as the cellophane faded with the sunlight, I simply added more colors until Darling Daughter bought me some actual glass clings. What a difference!  

  Well, the other day, someone mentioned that I should take the stuff down.  "It takes away the view."  No, the view is still there, I just added a bit more interest to the room.  If you wish to see the pier, go outside.  I live here, my fake, stained glass windows make me happy so they stay.  It is simple as that.

  I mentioned this encounter on social media and immediately got responses that echoed my feelings.  It was the consensus that stained glass windows bring calm and tranquility.  To be honest, I did a bit of research and it seems that we are not alone in this feeling.  Several noted resources state that this is one of the reasons that the windows were so popular in ancient churches.  The windows illuminated the inside of the building with ever changing patterns of  color.  The eyes could wander with the colors and patterns and become relaxed so that spirituality was profound.  A feeling of serenity enveloped those who entered.  They immediately "felt" peace which must have meant that God was within the building. 

  I have often thought that I should probably remove the colored cellophane and window clings simply to move on to something else.  Now, I am not so sure.  Perhaps more folks need to be doing this to their homes and businesses.  The world could sure use some tranquility about now.  Peace could go a long ways with our worried minds.  

A Bit of Fakery

  Basically, the only contact I have with the Grandlittles currently is on social media.  It is there that I can see photographs of them and keep up with their current doings.  That is the major down side of having them live halfway around the world.  This is also where I post photographs of happenings on the Bayou for them to at least see how their dog, Mr. PJ is doing.  The old dog has settled in to bayou life rather well except he misses his family terribly.  They were his whole life and now that is gone so adjustments had to be made.  Poor old pup.  It breaks my heart at times.

  Anyway, who knew that one of those photographs would garner such interest.  Not because of the old dog (even though he was the star) but because of the background.  Mr. PJ had decided to take a nap in front of the french doors on one particularly dreary day.  In the photo, the doors take the stage and received a lot of nice comments.  I am supposing most folks think the window panes are true stained glass even though I tried to explain that they were merely a prop for the recent clue hunt.  For the Annual Clue Hunt on the Bayou, Son and I come up with all sorts of weird ideas and clues.  We build some props...we alter some props.  The doors were an altered piece.  These are ordinary french doors on which glass panes have been "stained" in a certain order.  This order combined with another prop led the participating teams to a combination.   

  While the doors look pretty, there was very little work involved in achieving the effect.  A $1 roll of colored cellophane, a pair of scissors and a spritz bottle of water was all that was involved.  The cellophane was cut to fit a pane, the pane was spritzed with water and the cellophane was stuck in place.  Amazingly, the pieces stayed.  In fact, the first few were applied way back in July.  They are still in place.  No glue.  No special tools.  No perfected technique. Cellophane, scissors and water...that's it.  

  Folks were in agreement that I should leave the panels in place and I have to admit that I hated to part with my "stained glass" doors.  So...the panels will stay until the colors fade and perhaps, then, I shall spend another dollar to renew the look.  The doors do fit right in with the quirkiness of Bayou life!  (Plus, old Mr. PJ seems to like them!)  

Grasshoppers, Hot Peppers and Church Windows

  My hikes about the property serve up some pretty interesting finds at times.  I never know if a critter will be lurking in the palmettos, a new plant will surprise me with a bloom or if the rains will give me another treasure from long ago.  This afternoon was much the same.  Surprises abounded with each turn of the hike.  Grasshoppers, hot peppers and church windows do not have much in common except here on the Bayou.  The common factor?  They (or portions of them) are all found in the back yard.  

  First and foremost, were the grasshoppers.  The Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers are all about business this time of year.  They have just about given up munching the garden and have changed goals to mating and egg-laying.  Hundreds upon hundreds of the adult grasshoppers are out and about the hillside.  Each female has dozens of suitors and eventually will lay about a bazillion eggs.  Early spring finds me doing the familiar "Grasshopper Stomp" (the local dance of gardeners) and each summer finds me doing the "Twist and Turn" as I grind the critters to a pulp.  These critters are aggravating as they literally have enough babies to cover the hillside each spring.  The ground looks like it is covered with a black carpet...a black, wiggly carpet.  So, that said, I try to get rid of as many as possible when they are in the adult phase.

  While smacking grasshoppers, I discovered that my forgotten jalapeno peppers were making more peppers than I can possibly use. They are loaded!  I say forgotten because I truly have not cared for the plants since sticking them in the back garden.  Word of advice...never sow an entire packet of hot pepper seeds unless you truly plan on making hot sauce.  These things never die, never quit making peppers and will be loaded with dozens of peppers at any given time.  I suppose canning hot peppers will be on the agenda soon.

  The discovery of hot peppers led me to realize that the garden was also weedy.  Handfuls of weeds were yanked and tossed the wayside.  While tossing one particularly large wad of weeds out of the garden, a glint of blue caught my eye.  The recent downpours had washed the ground to be clean, white sand.  (This sand was washed in on a hurricanes tidal surge.)  The blue was striking against the white sand so I needed to investigate.  Yep, blue glass.  Blue stained glass that had come in with that beach sand.  When Hurricane Katrina demolished everything across the Bay, it swept it all over to our side.  A good bit of the debris wound up on our property.  As near as I can tell, the shards of stained glass came from windows of churches that were demolished in Biloxi. I gathered a dozen or so pieces of glass from the sand this afternoon.  For the most part, these were blues, greens and purples. Over the past twelve years now (since the storm), I have been collecting the shards of colored glass.  Buckets full of the colorful pieces are stored in hopes that some beautiful craft project will become of them.  It seems to be almost a sacrilege to dispose of them.  Surely some use can be made from the once thing of beauty.  I just have to get creative here.

  So my hike turned into quite the intriguing venture.  Now I have to squish grasshoppers, can hot peppers and be creative enough to recycle some beautiful glass into a treasured piece. It can be done...it can be done.

Still Finding

  Hurricane Katrina hit the Coast over ten years ago but I am still finding stuff that washed in with the surge.  Our property (along with all other waterfront pieces) accumulated mountains of debris.  Everything from parts of houses to parts of semi trucks littered the place.  At some points in the yard, the debris was more than twelve feet deep.  Furniture, boats, shoes (lots and lots of shoes!) doors, refrigerators, curtains, knickknacks were all mixed in with boards, trees, marsh grass and dead critters.  There was no accounting for what you might find while out traipsing the mountain of debris.  Some was useful. some was disgusting, all was heart-wrenching.  With no available markets open for daily necessities, I would send Son out on a scavenging trip.  "I need detergent,  a bucket and perhaps something to make a clothesline."  or "Go out and find a couple of chairs and a table.  We have more folks coming down the lane hunting for a hot meal." (We fed dozens of hungry folks.  Thank goodness our grill was salvageable.  With no power, folks had no way of cooking for months.)  No matter what the request was, we usually could find needed items by scrounging about the place.  To sum it up, when one out-of-state cousin asked what it was like living after the storm, I had a ready reply.  "It is a lot like camping out....in the largest dump in the world."  It was.

  Still today, I find things that the storm surge deposited in the yard.  In the far back corner of the property...down behind the canebrake, I made yet another discovery.  The recent deluge of rain, uncovered glass.  Not just any glass but more shards of stained glass that I assume came from churches demolished by the hurricane. I have boxes of like shards in all colors of the rainbow.  Why did I keep them?  I guess because I needed that rainbow.  I needed something bright and pretty. I needed that "light at the end of the tunnel".  I needed that sign that things were going to be ok.  Now the box of glass has become just another bunch of art supplies. The blue one today will join the others and will become something of beauty...from destruction comes a thing of beauty....hmmm, interesting thought.

  This particular area of the yard also received about six feet of beach sand from miles away.  There is no telling what is still buried beneath all of that sand.  Some months after the storm, I found what I thought was a "pretty board".  Still in the salvaging mode, Mark helped me to dig (and dig and dig) until we uncovered a beautiful hall table.  It had been completely buried except for about four inches of one leg.  The table now sits upstairs along with a lovely rosewood bed and an oak table with two matching chairs....all finds from the debris piles.  Darling Daughter laid claim to an entire rosewood dining set that we found and refurbished.  But it was that shard of glass that brought this flood of memories.

  Now...we sit watching the weather forecast that claims another storm may come our way eventually.  Since this one is still far, far out in the Atlantic, I can only hope that it weakens and turns north.  Folks down here do not need a storm on the heels of the massive flooding that our neighbors in Louisiana just received.  They need time to dry out and regroup.  They need time to rebuild and reclaim their lives.  My heart goes out to them.  The good folks of Louisiana need our prayers and any help that can be offered.  

  As I clutched yet piece of Katrina debris eleven years after the fact and with a storm out on the far horizon, I ponder what is to come.  Funny how one little piece of blue glass can trigger thoughts.

Unsatisfactory Results

After Katrina, as I was cleaning debris from our yard, I found stained glass shards everywhere. White beach sand had washed all the way across the Bay to be deposited on our hill. Early every morning, the rising sun would set this sand on "fire" with the lovely colors of the stained glass shards that were scattered about. It was like a rainbow that had shattered and rained down to settle in the sand. I decided that this was some sort of "Divine Sign" and that I should do something with the glass! (This had nothing to do with me being a compulsive saver of things that may one day be an art project.) I had no idea what since I had never worked with glass before..I just had to do something! With every walk about the yard, I gathered glass. Glass of all colors and shapes were piled in boxes, bowls, buckets..whatever was handy. I was hooked..I had to experiment with glass work!

Sometimes things just do not work out the way you have them planned inside your head. Being an artist, I have visions of how an art piece should look..or at least how I wish it would look. These visions and the final piece do not always resemble each other at all. This is the case of the latest piece that I attempted. As a gourd artist, I thought I would use the glass shards as inlay in a gourd (to be used with a candle). This was harder than I thought. Always before, I would only cut deep enough into the gourd to allow for stone inlays to be secure..here, since I wanted the light to shine through the glass, I needed to cut all the way through the gourd. No problem here..gourds are relatively easy to cut! I used the glass just as I had found it..just as broken pieces, drew

around them and cut the holes. Looking good! My problem arose when I

was inserting the pieces..they did not want to stay put! I tried the glue gun..no go. It was too awkward and messy. I tried carpenters' glue..too runny. I tried epoxy..hmm..almost stuck my fingers to the gourd! Then I tried "Liquid Leading"..this held them in but was quite lumpy. Not the look I was going for. So I painted the whole gourd black to hide the leading and in the process lost the "gourd" look. Anyway..the finished product is definitely not what was in my mind's eye. This is ok though..I will just try again. I have a never ending supply of gourds growing in the yard and buckets full of glass. Something might work!! If at first you don't succeed..try..try again! Perhaps persistence will pay off eventually! And oh, just so you will know..I have a battery operated light in this one..I don't want to burn down the house!