Apparently I have bachelor buttons in my yard! The seed mixes I scattered last year included some perennials that will bloom for the first time this spring… so I really have no idea what a lot of this green stuff is until the blossoms open. Surprises every week.

Today, Haiku Day
The sun rises, the sun sets.
Who decides this stuff?

I was asked recently whether a stool like the one I just posted takes a long time to make. The answer is no and yes. If I have a piece of wood wide enough for a seat (or have already glued one up) I can go from boards to assembly in a fat half a day. But then the glue has to dry overnight before I can trim and level the stool, and there are 2 colors of milk paint with 1-3 coats each, plus 2-3 coats of oil/wax… so if I start work Monday morning I can have a stool-like object by early afternoon that I still may not be able to take to a market on Saturday.

Not to mention my inner sense of how long things take has more to do with effort than with actual time, so I am constantly fooled—in both directions.

Three-legged stool, green over gold layered milk paint.

A little distelfink for your day. I’ve been playing for awhile with carving designs for fraktur-inspired imagery, and also with options for carving and painting contrasting frames… I’m happy with this one.

Brown-headed cowbird at my window feeder. I didn’t take a picture, so you will just have to trust me.

Trying to describe and remember the eclipse of 2017, I wrote this poem but never published it, and today seems like a good time to take it out.

80 percent totality was apparently enough to fool a barred owl in the neighborhood, who called out once about 3:20 and then went back to sleep.

On top of all those stresses, (County Judge Ruben) Becerra has also had to manage warnings from his highly superstitious mother, who is afraid of the eclipse: “She says, ‘Don’t go outside!’ and I say ‘Mom, I’m the director of emergency management. I have to go outside.’” —WSJ

Weeds or flowers—it’s only nomenclature.
Granted beauty by changeable nature
Best embrace it to the hilt,
Lest it wilt.