beforeourveryeyes.com

April 1 will be the year anniversary of selling our home and hitting the road for parts unknown. Pulling our vintage canned ham trailer “bluebird”  we traveled up and down the west coast from Joshua Tree to the Pacific North West, spending time in Mount Shasta along the way. Following a mutual longing, we found our new home in the high desert of the Mojave.

As we traveled I drew and illustrated my impressions of song birds that we encountered and became interested in the sounds that they make as a way of identifying them.

I think of birds as our connection to the sky and the cosmos. I experience their songs as a language of vibrations that we can only approximate with “sound words” which in themselves create a language.

I am in the process of creating a book of these song birds and their sound words. It is called “Tweedle deedle Eek!” and it is close to being born. More on it’s arrival soon.

one time one place

along the gravelly banks

of a swift moving stream

an arroyo toad awakens

in his burrow

from a deep winter sleep

to the music of water

gathering momentum

rushing over pebbles, boulders and rocks

as steel head swims by

in a flash of rainbow

on her way to the sea

Working with the educational program Once Upon a Watershed at the Oak Grove School in Ojai, California, I have created a picture book for children of all ages. Paintings depicting species of birds, trees and other flora and fauna from our Ojai watershed illustrate a 32 page, soft cover, 8 1/2″ x 8 1/2″, full color book. Once Upon a Watershed is an art book, a visual poem and a teaching tool created with hope of raising awareness of the diversity of species that share our watershed and rely on open space for their survival.
For more information and to purchase go to Once Upon a Watershed.

Ground squirrels are part of the circle of life that lives in the meadows of our watershed. They live in burrows underground where the millipedes and earthworms mix the soil helping the grasses to grow. Ground squirrels eat the grasses and the rattlesnakes, eagles, raccoons, foxes, badgers, and weasels eat the ground squirrels.  Ground squirrels run and frolic in the meadow and are happy to be.