Ode to a Garden Fork

Poem and Illustrations by Jocelyn Curry

 

I first saw you

on a day dim with January light

while the baby napped

and joy was but a memory

pasted and closed within

a shelved album. 

Outdoors the earth was frozen,

closed for the winter,

the sign saying 

Stay Away.

I obeyed, reached instead

for the Smith & Hawken

catalogue, the warm wishing well

for gardeners banished by the cold.

You were on page 23:

Bulldog Garden Fork,

Drop-forged steel,

Filled-Y ash handle

Handmade in England

Lifetime guarantee.

 

 

Your tines

were four-sided spears                                                   

tapered and ready to

pierce and lift at my command,

eager to find stones

left carelessly behind

by the glacier 

that was once my neighborhood.

The smooth, golden wood

of your eager up-stretched handle

was your invitation to toil

hand in hand with me.

Your gleaming image

became nectar and manna in one -

without you I would be as weak as a brittle stalk,

unable to till a single furrow.

I filled out the order form,

wrote the check and sent it off.

 

Time passed as slowly

as lichen grows upon a stone.

At last, in late February

you arrived on my porch

a boxed Bulldog,

my winter savior,

my English Adonis!

I slit the tape,

opened the box,

and lifted you in wonder.

Your handle was not wood,

but molded amber.

Your tines were not metal,

but forged light.

I rushed you to the garden,

where the frost had heaved and crusted

the soil of our Eden.

I pressed my foot onto your steel shoulder,

plunging you into the earth for the first time.

We married at that moment, 

bound by fertile purpose.

 

Many winters have passed since then.

The baby is now 24. 

Your shaft and handle 

are the color of spores,

the wood grain raised and rough. 

The edges of your tines have softened,

worn by basalt stones and cedar roots.

Once, on a wet day in April

when the daffodils strained 

against the rain,

I thought someone had taken you

from our garden.

I searched for you as I would 

for a vanished lover.

But you were there,

leaning against the fir tree,

camouflaged against its craggy bark,

your body resting, but

your purpose unchanged.

Relieved, I grasped you

with my gloved hand

and together we worked the soil.

Poem written in 2005 as an assignment for a college class in poetry.

Artwork done in 2007

All content: copyright Jocelyn Curry 2015. For permission to use content

please contact me via email.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

 

 

Post script: the baby is now 34. The fork is still in daily use:

 

Part II

Conventional maps can do no more than point the way to unpredictable, individual experience, while artworks embody those experiences. Katharine Harmon

Here you will see more expressive, personal maps from The Artful Map, A One-page Nature Journal held at the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center June 20-22, 2014. Not all maps could be included, for which I apologize. Please excuse the gaps, as I try to make the blogging software do things it doesn't like to do!

To see larger versions of these photos, please click on each image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Designing for a full sheet of watercolor paper, Lyn Baldwin pencilled a large territorial map surrounded by titling, color codes, and significant tools used by natural journalists. In the photo below on the left, Lyn has created vignettes containing the ten essential gear items for a field journalist.

 

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is a million fathoms deep.
EMERSON

This quote is especially appropriate for the tranquil location of the National Estuarine Research Reserve, of my July 13-14 workshop in quiet Bay View, Washington. 16 students and I gathered there to spend two days recording on journal pages some of the natural features surrounding us. Perfect summer weather, a fine classroom facility, earnest learners and plenty of delicious food (the Skagit Valley, where the Reserve is located, is Berry Central right now) combined to make a successful weekend.

 

Saturday's warm-up exercises began with a page of drawings. Blind contour drawings of the hips of Rosa rugosa (collected from a mound of them on the property) were followed by left-handed drawings of the same on the same page. Following these, the students then moved right onto fine watercolor paper with a detailed drawing of a rose hip and its clusters of leaves.

 

 

After a brief lunch break, the group walked up the path to a point where we were allowed a landscape overview that included the mound of roses from which came our specimens. The rest of the day was spent developing both the hip painting and the small landscape study that joined it on the page. Lettering skills were practiced, too, with emphasis placed on overall page design.

On Sunday, the assignment for the day's work was given early on: five specific journal items were to be added to the journal on one or two pages. The examples below show the variety of choices: something from the aquarium, a detail drawing of a chosen specimen, a decorated versal letter, a small landscape, and a small map. But prior to starting our artwork for the day, most of us moved through the plentiful array of breakfast foods (shouldn't all serious work days begin with such a repast?) arranged on the buffet table:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To all who participated in this weekend of learning, sharing, and the expanding of perception, I thank you for the chance to spend two days together and I applaud the excellent work you did. Continue to practice, practice. Special thanks go to the Padilla Bay Foundation administrator Kay Reinhardt. Thank you Libby, Anne, Mary, Nancy and Marilyn for your positive support and help in set-up, take-down, and seeing that all of our needs were met.

What could provide better material for a nature journal page than a botanical garden? I created this page on my recent trip to Florida. I have already used it as a teaching sampler for a short class I taught in March because it incorporates elements that contribute to a designed page as opposed to a random page of entries. Both approaches are fine when it comes to journaling.

This page includes: a title, a divided layout with one half being a larger sketch, and the other being a group of smaller sketches, a combination of plants, animal, and structures, and a variety of scales. The drawings and the lettering were all done with the same two items: black ink and watercolor. This assures a textural and color harmony throughout the page.

If you would like to study nature journaling with me and a small group of enthusiastic nature-lovers, please consider coming to the small community of Bay View, Washington, for a July 13 & 14 nature journaling workshop. There are 3 spots left. Please click here for more information.

One of my recent commissions was a wedding memento artwork for the niece of my client. After being provided with plenty of information about the ceremony held on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, I filled an 8"x10" page with handwritten texts and illustrations. This piece will be framed. Followers of my work will recognize the pair of seahorses, designed for my own niece's wedding. Paired seahorses were also a motif in this young woman's wedding. I used a tech drawing pen with India ink, and watercolor on 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper.

A week ago I taught a one-day workshop, Introduction to Nature Journaling for Calligraphers. Sponsored by the Olympia, WA "Nib N'Inks" calligraphy guild, the goal for the day was to focus on seeing, sketching, labeling, and designing nature journal pages. The eleven students were exceptionally focused, producing both warm-up studies in ink, and finished ink and watercolor images on art grade paper. The day went by quickly, allowing little time to photograph, but here are some of the colorful specimen pages, followed by the landscape pages done en plein air (outside).

 

 

 

 

The assignment behind these ink and watercolor images was to draw both items, starting first with pen for the daffodil, then add paint from light to darker values. For the radish, I demonstrated how to loosely paint the color, then lightly add pen lines to generally define the forms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

These four pages above and below ( each 6"x10") particularly illustrate the individual way of seeing that we each experience. Going from drawing a daffodil and a radish to a complex arrangement of deciduous trees and conifers, outside, is a huge leap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The students launched into this with no mention of intimidation. Beginning with rectangles in pencil, they began this exercise by laying down a watercolor wash in one of the rectangles. That dried prior to our outdoor sketching session. Back in the classroom, they drew wet-into-wet, from memory, in another of the rectangles. I love the variety of feeling each little tree portrait carries in this series. Nice work, participants!

(I'm sorry not to be able to label each piece with the artist's name. I know who did a few of these, but not all of them.)