I have had to drop out of Enchanted Folk a wee bit because I grow my own food (or at least a whole lot of it). May is the month of planting.  

I'm sure my fellow Enchanted Folk members can sympathize especially since most of us here believe in healthy stewardship of the earth.

The other reason I do this is because: 

During my childhood I had severe asthma (i.e. bedridden). I ate lots of sugar & "quick" food, frozen, canned, packaged. Then in highschool I was living at a farm where we grew all of our own food, milked cows, raised our own meat & kept bees. My asthma went away. Then I moved into a city where I lived on a vegetarian diet (my asthma came back, but it wasn't as severe as it was in my childhood). I didn't understand why it came back. Then in recent years, I decided to go on an "organic foods only" diet, i.e. no food that was laced with pesticides. My asthma disappeared.

If you suffer from asthma, please give this a try. For my part, I am convinced that pesticides are a big contributor to asthma (as well as also being estrogenic & poisoning our environment, water supplies, fellow living creatures). Most doctors will still tell you that asthma is the result of pollutants in the air and an overactive immune system. Although they might contribute, in my case it was clearly factory farmed food that was making me sick.

Recommended book: "Fatal Harvest".

I hope you are all enjoying Spring & I hope to be on here again soon.

Okay, back to gardening!

WEBSITES AND LINKS

I have a website at www.LiseWinne.com

Our band has a myspace here. I also started my own music myspace a couple of years later here.

My great aunt, Ethel Cook Eliot, wrote a number of books about faeries such as "The Wind Boy" and "Little House in Fairy Wood." If anyone is interested in collecting more faerie stories follow this link.

The daffodils are in their glory here. Hope everyone is having a magical Spring.

It is sweet Be's Birthday & I am very happy to be part of her family of friends.  

:-)

Yay for our Be!

I started a few new pieces since setting up my exhausting art show.

Here is what I've been up to art-wise in the last month or so (or at least stuff I've scanned): 

THE UNICORN AND THE EGG:

CELESTIAL EGG:

BUNNY WITH BIG RED EGG:

As the artist, my favorite right now is "Celestial Egg". It just speaks to me... seems to make me smile still. But I realize that not everyone feels that way (especially since "Bunny with Big Red Egg" has been selling the most out of all of my newest designs).

I am mostly in brick & mortar stores still. I know I have to get on the band wagon since so much art & retail has gone web-based. I'd rather create than spend lots of time setting up a web-based store. But I realize it has to be done.

Weird thing is, I almost never buy stuff off of the web except supplies... tools & such (many of which I already have experience from buying first at a brick and mortar store). I almost still can't believe people buy art off of the web. But I will be joining the ranks at some point. 

Yesterday I watched a lawyer for Allstate try to take the position that an illegally parked very heavy moving truck that had destroyed a homeowner's sewer pipe was not at all liable for damages because the movement of the truck compacted dirt when it went over the sewer pipe. Causes resulting from compacted dirt were not covered by the insurance policy under article 5: the word "pressure" was used in tandem with other words like "earthquake" and "lava".

Even more astonishing is that the judge in the case had to think about whether the insurance company was in the right!

This is tantamount to saying that any trespassing, illegally parked, hauling heavy vehicle is in the right & on the side of the law when it comes to destroying someone else's property!

Incredible.

I looked at that lawyer. She makes a lot of money from that company and she seems very proud of the fact that she's one of those lawyers against homeowners, specifically homeowners who might be in that murky, unlucky position of the "earth movement clause." I thought she must be insane. What if an airplane landed in her backyard and shook the ground so much that her sewer pipes, gas lines and water lines broke and then her house foundation crumbled and her house collapsed. She would just be fine and smiling and glad about all the hard work she has done trying to deny coverage for this kind of thing?

One thinks of court as rational, but I left it yesterday thinking it was an insane asylum.

And then I came home to art, beauty and a reverence for brotherhood, goodwill, peace and justice. While she has go to work every day to battle for immoral and unjust positions and causes, to sell her soul so extremely to make money, I do not and felt an incredible sense of lightness. I am on the right path.

I have been invited to show at The Lower Adirondack Regional Art Center in upstate NY. This is a juried show with 5 artists called Once Again.

The theme of my particular part of the show is "Art Inspired by a Renaissance Faire Banquet." I am pleased that I was chosen as most art center galleries go for more trendy contemporary art than mine.

In addition to working like mad for the show, we are mixing in the recording studio. I also create 24 new greeting card designs every other month (which means a new painting or graphic every other day... insane) and I fit in a gig (& practicing for it) in there somewhere too! It's all been overwhelming, meaning that I work from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep.

As for winter, I never remember it being so difficult. There have been days where shoveling snow took an entire day. What a way to spend your life just to be able to get out. And we pay taxes here for road plowing where they come through & push the snow that you've cleared, meaning re-shovelling everything all over again (& sometimes many times over again!). Every night I dream about bright sunshine, flowers, robins, green plants & awake to a moonscape of pockmarked crusty condensed snow that is still 3 feet deep with not a sign of earth or Spring. The house cracks and bangs every night from the severity of the cold. My spirit so longs for sun and warmth right now. Perhaps I should move? I ask myself this every March and April it seems.