Although spring officially started in March, here in Vermont it’s only arrived in the past couple of weeks. It’s been a lot of fun to see what’s appearing in our gardens:

I’ve planted another garden to the left of the one in the picture, but it’s not quite finished yet.

When I’m not digging up our entire lawn and planting things, I sometimes turn my attention to art. Here is a project that I just finished: a shadow box!

 
This project was so much fun. I worked on it when my mind was too full of words and I needed a different kind of concentration.

I bought the shadow box years ago, when my daughter was small, and it had been sitting in the attic unused. So, I decided to create “The House of the Worry Dolls.” The dolls are kind enough to hold many of my worries. At least, that’s what it says on the little piece of paper that came with them. If you look carefully, you can see a doll in each of seven rooms. (One of the dolls is in a tiny coffee mug.)

Each room gets its own hanging mobile or lamp. The origami crane at the top of the house came courtesy of my daughter; years ago, when we were homeschooling in a cafe, she made the crane out of a used teabag packet. The thermostat is from our old heating system, the two cats used to be earrings, and I found the orange Matchbox car out in the garden when I was digging up the grass.

And finally, here are some recent photos of my daughter Ashlynne. As you can see, she jumps for joy at the beginning of spring…

She hasn’t forgotten her powerful karate kicks…

 
And she has a style all her own!

Occasionally, she will even sit on a couch in the middle of the street:

Why? Because she’s resting. She’s been working hard. At what, you ask? At carrying the couch several blocks with her friend, of course! A neighbor had put the couch outside to be taken away for free, and Ash and her friend decided to carry it home. When they showed up with it, I told them to just leave it on the porch, and Bob and I would help them carry it up the stairs to Ash’s room. But they were on a roll. They brought the couch all the way upstairs as well.

Girl power!

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg