gardening – joy murray art~stories~life

Stuck

July 20, 2021Posted in degenerative disease, disability, gardening3 Comments

I’ve mostly adjusted to life using wheelchairs. I love them — my power chair and manual chair. I can go many places but not everywhere I want to. The power chair can handle a lot of different surfaces, but does best on flat paved ground. Of course, it does well on floors and indoor surfaces.

If it hasn’t rained too much, I can get around on grass, so I can get out and see my garden.

It’s been raining often lately, but it’s still quite warm. I’m seeing mushrooms pop up and they delight me. I want to take photos of them, but often they are in places I can’t get to.

A neighbor’s garden got an extra bit of zen from mushrooms (I was able to get close because this is close to the driveway)

A few days ago, I saw huge yellow fungus that had grown up overnight under the oak trees across the street. The trees are surrounded by an island of mulch. I went to see if I could get close enough to get pictures. There were about six big yellow blobby mushrooms. I tested my wheelchair on the edge of the mulched area, and it seemed to be able to move okay.

I flew across the mulch and got a few photos of two, then turned to get another.

I don’t know what kind of mushroom this is — a brain mushroom?

Then I wanted to go photograph the others and tried to move the chair. And it didn’t move. The wheels dug into the mulch, which was damp from the rains. I tried different speeds and pushed my weight around at different angles, but the wheels just spun.

I was stuck.

I felt like such an idiot. I also felt an acute sadness at not being able to follow my whim and capture pictures of these wonderous bits of nature.

I phoned my son and he was home. (I have a list of helpers I can call and he’s first on the list.) He came in about 10 minutes. It seemed a long time to me because my sense of stupidity and loss seeped into my entire being. I started to cry a little bit.

When my son arrived, he disengaged the motor of the chair, and pushed and pulled it out of the hole I’d dug myself into. He took time to marvel at the mushrooms. A young woman jogged by, but stopped to see if we needed help. She asked if the garden across the street was mine. It is. She’d seen me sitting on the porch.

“I always love walking by it. It makes me happy.”

It makes me happy, too.

My son walked with me across the street and made sure I was safely in the house. He didn’t chastise me for my foolish pursuit of images.

I sat out on my porch for awhile, surrounded by plants I have full access to. I’ve photographed them hundreds of times. Every year I still get a garden. The whole world isn’t accessible to me, but I have a good space.

This is disability pride month. I’ve seen people with disabilities online showing their amazing lives and ways of getting around. I’ve see people with disabilities let nothing get in their way. But I know they struggle, like me, with limits and barriers that no amount of pride or strength will break down. It’s not bad. It just is.

Within my limits, I know I have a lot of riches. I doubt if I were able bodied, I would have developed the eye for detail that made me notice the mushrooms. I couldn’t take the time to nurture my porch garden. The reason I love and respect plants so much is that they are rooted, immobile, but they grow, bloom, fight and flourish from their one small place in the world.

I thought about my list of people who will come help me when I get in trouble, need rides, get stuck. When I feel the limits of my life are unbearable, this circle of friends (I include my kids in the circle) come to put wheels on my troubles and we move forward together.

Friends are the best assistive devices. Friends are accessible. There is always an accessible bridge between our hearts.

I bought this celosia the day after I got stuck — something more to see up close while the mushrooms continue their lives at a distance

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Moonflower Morning

October 13, 2018October 13, 2018Posted in gardening, UncategorizedTagged autumn, FallLeave a comment

Fall fell all at once this week. One day the high was 90 degrees, the next the high was 64. I expected a more gradual drop, but I love the cooler weather and the impending turning colors of leaves. Here, we have a lot of oaks, so the dominant color of fall is this lovely golden light filtered through yellow and brown leaves.

But these last few days have been cloudy and my moonflowers aren’t following their usual bloom schedule. The first cool cloudy morning, they were open, big as you please.

20181012_095611 — This is a bit blurred, but it was a delight to see the moonflower and dahlia blooming at the same time.

In these fall days, leaves are dying back. Some leaves give you more color for a minute, but some just go from green to brown and you become deeply aware of mortality. I don’t try to cut back the diminishing leaves too much. That’s part of the landscape, even of a porch garden. Plants bloom, give me pleasure, then fade away.

20181012_095641 — Moonflower among the fading dahlia leaves

I cut and watched a waning elephant ear leaf fade over a few days. The yellows and browns seemed so vivid, I enjoyed watching the curling edges brown and the complex swirl of the leaf structure.

Fall is a welcome relief from the heat of summer. A beautiful and melancholy season. I stroll around the neighborhood and see gardens transforming. People are decorating for Halloween and I see everything from ghoulish bones and monsters to funny pumpkins.

I think of the people I know and love who have died, and I long for another kind of ritual, more like the Day of Dead, celebrating those we have loved and lost and want to keep close through stories, food and visitations to their resting places. Cleaning a grave, remembering that we are mortal, that we don’t have all the answers, that our lives passing like an undecipherable dream.

I saw a dead robin as I was strolling around and it opened up a stream of grief, I started thinking of lost friends, sad songs, and then actually started crying. It was so strange. I wondered if a depression was coming on. Is the change of light going to be especially hard this year? I have so enjoyed this sunny summer. I can’t believe it’s over. Though many sad and troubling things happen in summer, it seems I reflect more on them in fall.

I wrote a poem about 5 years ago about what leaves tell us about life.

Leaf Story

Under the gray sky

We walk upon a carpet

Of ruby and gold leaves

Enchanted to find

The ground so much

Brighter than the sky

We say this is the time of loss

The leaves blazing a

Last gasp of color

Before they die

Dust to dust

But the leaves crackle out

Another side of the story

As they make their yearly journey

Back to simplified elements

Flowing in the winter rains

Back to their roots

Where the tree absorbs them

Where they make their slow way up

To begin life on a limb

Again

And again

A friend took me to a local nursery for discount plants — the ones that didn’t get watered and are drooping and browning. We grabbed up all the ones with live buds and brought them home to give them some TLC. I should have mums blooming in another week. Another friend brought me some new plants, new color.

20181012_174608 — Ornamental peppers – probably will miss the heat but they hold on to their jewel like colors

20181012_174558 — Coleus good for summer and fall

20181010_175733 — Angelonia looks like a little orchid — one of the sale plants enjoying the care it’s getting

20181012_174514 — Egyptian Star flower and angelonia

I’m learning this year that there are flowers that prefer shorter days and long cool nights. They are coming to life as others are dying back. It’s normal to feel the sadness of this old world more keenly as summer ends.

A robin doesn’t worry about its mortality, it flies, it maybe reproduces, it lives, it dies. As do all things. Even the oaks, hundreds of years old, who will give me filtered golden light in the coming month. They will one day fall, making room for some acorn to thrive.

Everything, perhaps, is as it should be.

IMG_20180821_0001 — Moonflower, watercolor and ink on paper

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Thanks for reading my post. If you like it, share it. If you find a typo, please let me know and I’ll send you a thank-you postcard.

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If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a donor on Patreon, a monthly donation platform that helps me pay for internet service, art supplies and living expenses. A little bit each month goes a long way. If I get enough supporters, I can make this blog ad-free! Here’s a link to my Patreon page:

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Dahlia and Moonflower

October 8, 2018Posted in gardening, Photography, UncategorizedTagged dahlia, Moonflower3 Comments

The days are getting shorter but some flowers like that. Moonflowers, of course, and dahlias, asters, mums. Last night a moonflower opened right next to a dahlia bloom and I was able to get a good photograph of it.

I like that the heart shaped moonflower leaf came out, as well as the dew on the purple dahlia.

I put this print in my Redbubble shop. It’s available as cards, a canvas bag and a few cases for phones.

Or just to look at and enjoy here.

~~~

Thanks for reading my post. If you like it share it. If you find a typo, please let me know and I’ll send you a thank-you postcard.

You can get prints and cards of some of my work on Redbubble. They also print my work on lots of other items, including phone skins, tote bags, shirts and journals:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray?asc=u

If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a donor on Patreon, a monthly donation platform that helps pay for internet service, art supplies and living expenses. A little bit each month goes a long way. If I get enough supporters, I can make this blog ad-free! Here’s a link to my Patreon page:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

If you prefer to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal.com Please email me at joyzmailbox@gmail.com if you’d like details.

Less Facebook, More Time in the Garden

October 6, 2018October 6, 2018Posted in gardening, handicap, quiting facebook, Uncategorized10 Comments

20180928_085654 — A dahlia bud starts like this

This week I took Facebook off my phone (though I still get alerts for some reason.) I haven’t yet decided on whether or not to remove messenger. I don’t mind people getting in touch with me through it. It functions more like email.

20181006_102027 — And it blooms like this. You can see my sandal and footplate from my wheelchair.

I found myself looking at my phone a lot for awhile, then remembering, there’s no stream of information. Nothing to follow. I read my email, maybe a blog, but then it’s back to reality, baby.

20181005_173743 — I brought a lot to life, even though my own health degenerated. Every day, this summer, I watered my front porch garden from my wheelchair and it just bloomed and bloomed.

A few days later, I took it off my kindle. Now I don’t check facebook before I start to read. I just start whatever book I’m reading and become engaged in a long insightful story. Or, I pick up an actual paper book, and let myself get lost in another person’s story, or the story of natural history, or the way our brains work.

20181002_145514 — I went with a friend to see the giant Art Outside installations of Brook’s Museum of Art

20181002_150735 — Installed on an abandoned building on E H Crump Bvd

20181003_162019 — The original painting at the Brooks has always been a favorite of mine — William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Au pied de la falaise (At the Foot of the Cliff), 1886

Now the only place I can check facebook is by sitting down at my desk and deliberately looking at it, checking on a few people. I read a post that seemed pretty benign, a joke, but turned into a lot of argumentative comments, and I turned the damned thing off. Still, I felt residual anxiety about needing to inform the people I disagreed with. As if that would make a difference. They aren’t going to make a difference in the way I think. Not in the small, hostile comment format.

20181003_161455 — Another exhibit at the Brooks — Wednesday is free day

It’s an addiction, facebook. I have an addictive personality, in many ways. I also tend to fester over things that make me anxious, things I hear about from others. I feel my own powerlessness over it all. And yet, I keep on looking into that small screen of the world, and thinking I can somehow make a difference. Or maybe it’s a kind of thrill seeking.

How will she 3 — How will she bear the weight of her hair? by Joy Murray 2017

My goal with my own facebook page was to share my art, share others’ art, and add a little bit of beauty to other people’s day. I shared serious matters, too. I found a community of people dealing with long term disabilities like me. But it all got overwhelming in this past year. Maybe the whole world was going to hell in a handbasket. All that anguish, it colored my life.

print photo — The Fragile Nature of Delight by Joy Murray

Then I realized I can do all I want to do online with just my blog, and by reading other people’s blogs. Blogs are more thoughtful, I think. We take a little more time, it’s more lie an essay. It’s a long deep breath, not a short sharp gasp.

still she rises — Still She Rises by Joy Murray 2016

There were so many times this week that I thought, I should put that on facebook. I’ve become used to looking at the world in terms of whether it will make a good facbook picture/post. The first few days, it really was like withdrawal. What will I do with all my photos?

hibiscus and glory — Hibiscus, Morning Glory, and City Street

Well, I found I could edit my photos a little bit. And then if I want I can share them here, with you. Friends who support and make time for me. Comments can be made here. Communication can happen. There are no algorithms to worry about.

I’m happy if people share my blogs on facebook or twitter or reblog them. But my job is to deepen and improve my art. That’s what I can do to make the world a better place. Open my eyes to it all, paint and write.

And share.

Thanks to all the new subscribers and Patreon supporters. I hope we all take a deep breath, hold on to our sanity, and take some time to see what it blooming all around us.

20161115_152231 — I saw Delight by Joy Murray

~~~

Thanks for reading my post. If you like it share it. If you find a typo, please let me know and I’ll send you a thank-you postcard.

You can get prints and cards of some of my work on Redbubble. They also print my work on lots of other items, including phone skins, tote bags, shirts and journals:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray?asc=u

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

If you prefer to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal.com Please email me at joyzmailbox@gmail.com if you’d like details.

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