Some people collect shells when they go to the beach...I collect sand. I noticed years ago that sand wasn't just sand; in Tulum Mexico the sand is like sugar, granular and white. While in Kitty Hawk North Carolina, it is chunky, less like sand and more like shell fragments. On the other end of the outer banks in Jockey's Ridge, the sand looks like it came out of a huge sand box, uniform in shape and yellow, (Jockey's Ridge has sand dunes 16 stories high!). In San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua, the sand is black due to the large amount of volcanic material mixed in with the sand. Recently I received a postcard from a pen friend who had been to the Sahara Desert, she incorporated some of the redish orange sand into the art on the post card. It was very interestingly done and it gave me an idea...

  Why don't I put some of my sand collection to good use and send some of it to my pen friends. So I am going to do just that. I am at the moment in Wilmington, North Carlina, my husband has a business meeting and I decided to tag along so that I could collect some sand from Wrightsville Beach. I think I will start by sharing the sand from this trip. It will be fun to work out a way to send the sand on a post card, since it would be too easy to send it in an envelope. If you aren't on my mailing list and would like to receive one of my sandy post cards, please e-mail me your snail mail addy and when I get them done I will send you one!

 
 

Snow Day at Heart's Ease Cottage

 We live a fair distance from the Mason Dixon line, at the bottom edge of North Carolina, near the South Carolina border. Since we live in the South, our weather in the winter isn't very interesting... dreary, cloudy, damp days in the 30's and 40's for the most part. If we get snow we almost always get it in mid January. I looked at my photos of past snow days where the accumulation was more than 4 inches and 3 out of 4 were on Jan. 11. The other snow day was January 10. Strange but true...Maybe there is some atmospheric condition that occurs then, who knows, but in future years I will be prepared with hot cocoa and extra socks on January 10, just in case!

  This year my husband and I were taking a drive when we noticed that the brine trucks were out spraying the roads. It seemed odd since the sun was out and the day warm, but we figured there must be a call for sleet or something in the next day or so. We checked weather.com when we got home and saw that there was a storm coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. Oh goody!! No wonder the trucks were out, if we are going to get snow it always comes from a storm heading up to us from the deep South. Usually those storms dump a fair amount of snow so I was hopeful that it would do more than spit a few flakes, promise snow and then blow over.

  I was like a kid hoping for a day off from school due to snow. I could hardly sleep. When I woke up in the morning I detected that special glow the morning light takes on when there is snow outside. My husband was already up sitting at the glass doors watching it snow...I must not be the only kid in the house.... It was lovely, the ground was blanketed with a thick layer that covered the grass and it was building by the minute as the heavy fat flakes hit the ground. I wolfed down a bagel and drank half a cup of coffee while I fitted myself out to "play" in the snow. I trunched through the pristine carpet of snow, stood in the yard listening to the barely audible hiss of falling flakes and reveled in the gift of a snow day.

  Recently, my heart has been so heavy at the loss of my dad, and the fear for my husbands health often wears at my resolve not to worry. But not today! The utter brilliance of my snow clad garden out shown even the darkest of my sadness and fears. It was a balm to my aching heart and a chance for me to forget that I am a grown woman and play like a child.
  After some time of just standing there absorbing the essence of the snow fall, I noticed that the birds were sitting on my clothesline forlornly looking at the snow covered ground. So I went to fill the various bird feeder in the yard and cast a fruit and nut mix out under the hollys for the Cardinals and Jays. It didn't take my feathered friends long to flock to the food I put out for them. I decided to go inside and get my camera for a photo op with the birds. It proved more difficult than I expected to get the birds to cooperate. I guess they were a little more cautious since they couldn't hear the cat with the muffling affect of the snow, so if they saw any movement they all took flight. After missing a really good shot of a Carolina Wren perched on a watering can heaped with snow, I decided I needed a new method... so I drug my wicker chair from the front porch out into the yard, got a white tablecloth and made a makeshift bird blind. I sat all afternoon shooting away hidden under the tablecloth with just the camea lens sticking out, as the snow mounded up on my head and lens shield of my camera. My feet were frozen and my eye kept fogging up my viewfinder, but I got some nice shots of the birds and snow covered yard and forgot my troubles for an afternoon.
  As I went through the photos I decided that the best way to represent the day was to make a set of postcards. If you would like me to send you one leave your address in the comment block or e-mail me at elle.mental@yahoo.com




Postcard #2 from my Snowday postcard set











   

Unexpected Event

My day today was going to be full of mid-week housekeeping tasks, grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, garden chores. But instead I took a hard fall in the shower. Our bathtub is a 1920's vintage corner tub, porcelain over cast iron... normally I love this tub, it is deep and smooth and holds a lot of hot water for a good soak. But today, I slipped and came down hard on my tailbone; fiberglass would have made for a much softer landing.... I wrenched my back and neck and my tailbone is screaming at me, but thank God I didn't hit my head or break something! I am however, not feeling up to cleaning and such, since my head is throbbing and I feel dizzy. So instead, I am going to catch up on my letter writing and spend some time working on my blog.

I have been working on a postcard for my July mail out. Since this is blueberry season, and my bushes a hanging heavy with plump juicy berries, I went out and took some photos. One of them I have turned into an artwork for a post card, I also designed an artistamp using a painting I did in one of my art journals. I am almost ready to get the whole business printed and mailed out, I just have to get to the printer and get it set up (still in boxes in non-essential living areas of the house...) but I will post a pic of the artistamp as sneek preview. If you want to be on my July mailart mail out list, just leave your addy in the comment block or e-mail it to me at elle.mental@yahoo.com and I'll send you one. See you in the mail!

New Toucan Mail Art

We have a nesting pair of toucans in the tree behind our cabina. They have a nest in a hole in the trunk of a Mango tree. They are so beautiful; it is hard to believe how rich their colors are. Toucans are very skittish around people so getting photos of them is difficult. You have to stay out of sight and hope that they don't hear you.

I made this faux mail art post card in celebration of the nesting Toucans. The photo is of the male toucan , who was at the time of the photo sitting in one of the huge mango trees down the lane from their nest. I hope that we get to see the fledglings emerge before we have to move back to the US. What a treat that would be!

Addition on April 8, 2010

A few days have passed since I posted the above. Since then I have taken to setting up the video camera in the pasture where the Toucans live. I have left the video camera running for hours at a time and then taken the camera back to the house to watch and fast forward to activity to and from the nest. It has been very educational. After being educated in the habits of nesting toucans, I felt like I might have more luck at actually capturing them with my still camera. So off I went to the large mango tree where the toucans are nesting, equipped with the video camera on a tripod and my still camera around my neck. I knew that my approach would spook the sitting toucan and that she would fly off a short distance as a diversion. So I didn't try to sneak in. I just walked into the area and started setting up the video camera. As expected, the toucan popped out of the hole and flew away. Once the video was set up I went and consealed myself in a large planting of Bird of Paradise, thinking that when she flew back to her nest she would fly over and not see me, as I was covered by the tall leaves of the planting. It was mid-day and the sun was strong. The sunburn I had gotten from an extended walk the day before was stinging as sweat trickled down my back. Time went on and on, but no toucan flew overhead. I decided after awhile to change to a more shaded location. So I moved to the line of Mandarine trees that were directly behind the cabina. I hoped that the tree trunks would mask my location from the bird as she came back to tend the nest. Time drug by, those annoying little ants that bite and hurt like crazy had made lunch from my ankles, and still there was no toucan activity at the nest. I was beginning to worry about the unattended nest. I decided that I should leave the area and just be satisfied with the video, when I glanced around at something moving in the tree overhead. I met the stare of the male toucan who was sitting in the tree right above me.... I felt silly. Here I had been standing in the flower bed adding sun to my already crispy nose, and then providing fodder for the little ants from hell, all the while the toucan was concealed in the branches above me watching the show. So I took the opportunity to get some very nice close-up shots of him, packed up my gear and went home.

Later, after viewing the video I came to understand that the toucans had not left the nest unattended. Both toucans can fit into the hollow inside the tree, I just caused the male to come out to distract me, which he is obviously very good at...all the time he was watching me in the tree above me, she was sitting patiently on the eggs waiting for hubby to return so she could get a break from the nest. Obviously my toucan education is on going.

A Lifetime Love of Letters

    The art of letter writing has been all but lost to us with the advent of e-mail. The daily anticipation of  correspondence waiting for us in the mailbox has been supplanted by the instant gratification of the e-mail box.  Nothing can compare though, with the joy of opening the mailbox and seeing your name handwritten on the front of and envelope. A letter isn't just a piece of paper conveying thoughts and information, it is evidence that someone took time out of a busy day to think of you and connect with you in a tangible way.
    Letters can be held in the hands, read and re-read, saved for years and read again. They are time capsules that hold your personal history safely in their pages. It is conversation at its best, each person gets to have their say, uninterupted. Words can be thought out, editted, and read for clarity before others hear them. The process of letter writing helps to hone the skills of meaningful communication.
   I have had a life long love of letters. Being an Army brat, frequently having to say good-bye to friends and move away, letters helped to ease the loss. I could stay connected with those I left behind. Writing helped me to push back the sense of isolation and receiving a return letter helped me bear the lonliness of being the new kid in town.

    Some of my letters have traveled with me all over the world. The pages may have aged and yellowed around the edges, but every time I open one of them, I can still hear the voice of the author. The words speak to my heart as clearly today as the day they were first opened. Some of the letters represent voices that may no longer speak to me in person, family members who have passed away and friends that I have lost contact with. By opening their missives I can remember them as they were, untouched by age, loss or death.

    I wasn't really aware of how much I depended upon mail until last year. I moved from my homestead of 20 years to a farm at the edge of the rainforest in Costa Rica. Here my address is 600 meters North of the Plaza, Sabalito, Guanacaste, Costa Rica. With an address like that, I'm not too likely to have mail find me, even if there were a mail box for it to be delivered to! The closest P.O.Boxes are located at the back of a motorcylce sales and repair shop, 12 bumpy, curvey, kilometers away in Tileran. We actually have P.O.Box #7,  but for the last 10 months, nothing has been delivered there. It has either been returned undeliverable to the sender, or disappeared without a trace. So, with much reluctance I have resigned myself to e-mail communication.

    E-mail allows for impersonal, one sentence notes, where u replaces you and 2 replaces to, or even worse the forward, of a forward, of a forward. I can't touch the surface an e-mail, smell the faint scent of the cologne the writer was wearing, or relish the small artworks called stamps, that grace the upper right hand corner of the envelope. I miss the comfort of words on paper that I can carry with me from place to place, tied with a ribbon, to remind me of the people I am seperated from by miles and time. I am always happy to have an e-mail, don't get me wrong, some news is better than no news, but it just doesn't feel the same. 

    One bastion of hope for the future of letter writing is mail art. Within the mail art community are many people from diverse backgrounds and cultures who have taken hold of a common thread, the writing, decorating and sending of mail. The unselfish act of sending mail to total strangers opens up a wide world of possibilities for connecting with people and in some cases making lifelong friends. The mail artist will respond to a mail art call posted on the web, or just send a handmade postcard to a random address, with no expectation of a return letter. It is an act of benevolence, a gift, a random act of kindness, and more often than not, is rewarded by a return letter or card. As mail artists all over the world know; you have to send mail to get mail, so why don't you start today? Send a real letter to someone you haven't seen in awhile, or look up mail art calls on the web and choose one to respond to. Wade in, reach out, and enjoy finding little gems with your name handwritten on the envelope mixed in with the bills and junk mail in your mailbox!