It’s been as they say ‘a hot minute’ since I did some serious cleaning. Particularly on my balcony. Living in the Carolinas and in a condo, it’s not easy to keep the outside space that I have clean. And I confess, though I tried to clean it some last year, I didn’t use it much after that, so it was needing a bit more help.
I found a real need for my balcony the first year of the pandemic lock downs, but I didn’t get around to doing anything about it until the end of the summer. But once I did, I totally enjoyed it and made good use of it. Even through the next summer. Then, like happens so much of the time in life, I got away from it. Except for this one tree that I have.
My tree is an Avocado tree that my dad started from seed. He is very good at this. Several years ago, now, he gifted it to me on one of my parents’ visits. I had it inside for a while until he got big enough that it seemed like he would be better off outside. The tree has name, and it is: Groot. Then a few years after that he gifted me another one because as it turns out they have gender, and you need one of each to get avocados. Supposedly. This second tree was called: George. Anyway, I love the shape of Groot’s leaves. And yes, even though they were both avocado trees the leaves of Groot and George were different. Um, George didn’t make it by the way.
For that matter, Groot has been a freaking miracle. I have inadvertently killed him off at least three times because of cold. Or not enough water, or more likely both. The first time, I just didn’t know. The second time I had tried to protect him from the cold but was unsuccessful, and figured out that part of it was that I hadn’t watered enough during the winter. So last year, I thought he’d be ok tucked into a corner with a cover and plenty of water. Truth is, I think I had become antipathic about my balcony and plants. I didn’t use the balcony at all last summer even after having someone out to remove the wasp nest. Even so, I still mourned the plight of Groot.
I mourned the death of the plant, and my antipathy. I felt so bad that I had ‘let’ this plant die. And then a month or so ago, I looked out at my dirty balcony covered in pollen and pollution from the near by state highway and saw this growth peaking up. Groot had somehow survived and was growing once again. I was thrilled and quite relieved. It’s a plant, right. So, what’s the big deal.
It makes me think of how we’ve reacted or responded to the plight of our planet. For a time, it seemed like we might be able to get behind a kinder, gentler world that cared about the animals and the people and then it seemed to have disappeared. I wondered for a while what had happened to that. Had we just quit caring? And I then I realized two things, we haven’t quit caring, we may have become somewhat antipathic to the situation due to being overwhelmed by the enormity of it, and the environmental movement had been co-opped in the name of capitalism and induced and manufactured demand. And it pisses me off. So, I’m probably going to have to write a post about that soon.
But for the moment we’re talking about cleaning season. In the northern hemisphere it’s ‘spring cleaning’ time. A fun catchy phrase to sell more cleaning products and convince people to buy stuff to ‘freshen up’ their homes. It likely had a more practical meaning at one time. The other evening, I was watching a concert on video and realized, I needed to clean off the balcony because the weather was so nice, I should have been sitting out there sipping a beverage listening to music and reading or writing instead of sitting inside. But. My balcony was really dirty. Really dirty.
I had just taken the previous weekend to do some serious cleaning inside. No. I didn’t get the whole place scrubbed down. Just one room really. I had to be done and it has certainly solved a problem for me.
See, as I started thinking about how I’d like to be making more art and perhaps selling some of it in one form or another, I realized something. I had given a whole room to the music and just this tiny little corner, in the room that has become the office, to my art and the art needs more space than the guitars. I also need more light.
The room that has been the music room for 11 years has great light. And I love that room. I do. I enjoy just sitting in it. But I wasn’t enjoying being at my art desk in my office, so I wasn’t getting any work done. The solution was obvious, but a big job. The music room, much like my balcony, had been somewhat neglected of the last year so there was much cleaning to do in addition to moving things around. It took me two days, to get things shifted around and to find new places for some things. Or at least comfortable temporary places. I’m pleased with the results. And yes, the guitars are still on the wall. I think they will stay there. They are as much a part of me as my art, and I pull inspiration from music to create my art so it’s appropriate that they stay.
I love the room still. Maybe even a little more right now. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in there since the shift. And it’s resulted in a new piece of art that will be going up in the new store soon.
I’ve moved the guitars into the office and even set the amplifier and pedal board up so that I can play. Now, I have an art studio instead of a music room and that’s exactly what it needs to be right now.
And now I even have a clean balcony. As I really enjoy sitting outside and relaxing with a beverage and a book or while writing my posts, I felt it would be worth spending a morning cleaning it up. Making the chairs clean enough to sit on and the table clean so that the sweaty tea glass doesn’t create a muddy puddle. All the dead plants got cleaned out and the deck swept up. The wasps have already moved in. They arrived a month or two ago. I’m not fond of them. I’m allergic to them and they scare the crap out of me. But I refuse to use stuff to kill them anymore. Though it would be really nice if they wouldn’t build their nest right over my door. And since that’s what they do, and I don’t want to kill them, at some point in the next month or so, I’ll probably call someone to come knock down the nest. But for now, I’m sitting on my clean balcony, with the wasps and Groot, while I write this. And thoroughly enjoying it.
I’ll be going back into the art studio in a little bit. I finished the piece I was working on. Or I’m pretty sure I have. I usually let them sit a few days before I make that final determination. I’ve got a few more things in mind to start on so I’ll start sorting through that. And see what comes of it. I’ve got some pictures from the trip to Paris that I think will make interesting pieces and my sister just sent me a fun one that I’m looking at and there are even a few pictures from the Australia trip a few years ago that I’m thinking of using.
And you did read that right. There’s a new art store coming. I’ll be adding it to this site and posting about it quite soon. Until then. Peace.