First of all, Tallulah ~ Woo ~ and I want to thank everyone for all their well-wishes...she is feeling better today, purring in the middle of my bed with her favorite wet food just a few inches away. Major surgery just seems so much more major when the patient is only 5 pounds! When I pet her, she stretches and curls her little toes, then rolls over as if to say "See my boo-boo? I don't even remember how I got it!"...;^) ~ Woo is definitely on the mend... Leo and Cyrus (both neutered as kittens) are rejoicing at the quiet!
♥
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An Eden Rose...also known as the Pierre de Ronsard Rose (photo from the German garden site Baumschule Horstmann)...
I want one!...Doubt if I find any in this neck of the woods, though, so I will be looking online for growers...
SO beautiful...big cabbagey blooms that start with a little green...I think they are just magnificent! makes me want to do a BIG luscious watercolor of one! (Or many!)
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
My post today isn't really about roses, though.
A sweet commenter mentioned my attention to detail in the work on my little gourd "Fairy House", and it got me to thinking...
I started my blog back to inspire myself, really.
To be able to look and see things I have accomplished, when I don't feel I have accomplished much at all. That, and as a place to tell stories that I think my (grown) children might enjoy, that I've just neglected to mention ~ forgotten in the whole busy-ness of life when they were small ~ or perhaps told one, if something reminded me, and not the others. So many things come to mind, I've found, when one gets a little older...
just saying...;^)
I wanted a place that could be about art, animals, gardening, life ~ a little about family but not enough to encroach on their privacy. A "Happy Place" if you will. I choose the subject matter; drama free.
(I do check Facebook almost daily, but I've found it is so easy to get caught up in the drama of others...though not usually in my closest circle of friends, it's still there.) So, I will usually only post about life's "ups" instead of "downs"...we all have them. This once, though, I wanted to tell about myself and maybe inspire, or encourage someone else.
I used to be SO picky ~ OCD-picky ~ about my artwork (and other things) that if it wasn't perfect...perfect...if one little thing went awry...I would either give up on it; start over (with often the same thing happening again) or just throw it away in disgust.
I never got much art done, needless to say.
Remember that song "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden"...?
In 1999, I got breast cancer. It was bad. Invasive ductal carcinoma; double mastectomies, (a reconstruction disaster), 6 months of agressive chemotherapy.
I wasn't afraid, but I was disappointed...Shoot...I'll never get to open that little shop... (the next year my oldest daughter Mandy opened her own retail shop, and I occasionally helped her ~ that got "shop owner" out of my system really fast!)
Then, to my amazement, I didn't die. God is great, and chemo ~ in this case ~ really did its job.
And you know what else?
I wasn't so picky anymore.
I could create something...paint something, and it didn't have to be perfect...
I found that things ~ anything, not just art ~ didn't
have to be perfect to be
excellent...
and that with many things (like housework), "good
enough" is plenty good enough.
I wish I had learned this lesson a long time ago
(without the cancer).
I still need motivation, though, and I'm finding that in
blogging. If I say I'm going to do something on here, I will do it. (Maybe not
the next day or three, but I
will...)
Thank you for "listening" to all that.
I'm going to go (carefully) snuggle
Woo.
Happy Friday!
♥ ♥ ♥
Anne
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