Calling Coyotes

The full moon on Monday night reminded of a time when the moon was full in January, 18 years ago.  My sister-in-law was staying in our Greenhouse at the Garden.  I capitalize Garden because the Garden has always been a place of reverence for me.  It is a place of solitude and beauty, flowers among the vegetables in the lower garden, paths and flowers in the upper garden.

 Back to my story.  On this full moon night I walked down the hill, into the tree-lined path to the bowl-shaped area ...the Garden.  My way was lit by silver light from the moon.  Lanna met me and we stood around a small dying bonfire where a few red embers crackled.We spoke softly.  Then she played her flute, a nice melodic tune.  It was magical...the moon, the silver light, the flute music.

And then, a feeling crept over me. I became apprehensive (another word for scaredy cat).  Was someone or something watching us? Stalking us?  I scanned the limestone shelf  that cradled the garden,strained to see through the trees, looking, but hoping not to see anything.  The yellow beam of the flashlight seemed out of place in the silver moonlight.

"Sshhh", I told Lanna.  "you'll call the coyotes."  No sooner had I said it than the woods surrounding the garden was filled with the yipping and howling of coyotes.  Her music had lured them to us.

For years I've thought back on this scene. So this morning I dug through old drawings and I'm posting two different "doodles" of the event.

Cranes

This morning I heard the FAA had given clearance for the Whooping Cranes to fly away from Alabama to Florida, http://www.operationmigration.org/. This is important to me because my twin sister, Merry, follows their path to her state.  In fact, last year she had gone to the town where the whooping cranes land to watch them fly in with the ultralite plane.  However, there was a delay and they were rescheduled.  In the meantime, her husband had a brain tumor and ended up in the hospital, and she missed the landing of the whooping cranes.  Maybe this year.

The only cranes that I see are the Sand Hill Cranes who migrate south in December and January.  They land on the farm fields near me.  They are beautiful birds.  This year Kentucky passed a new hunting law that gave hunters a permit to shoot the Sand Hill Cranes.  I was extremely upset by this.  Are they going to eat these cranes?  NO!  I suppose they will hang them on the walls in their den and have bragging rights.   

This morning after hearing about the Whooping Cranes, I realized that I have incorporated cranes into my art for years.  The image of this is not good as it was taken with a 2.0 digital camera and the whites never did appear white.

This one was painted in 2000.

This was painted in 1999.

I will never understand the mind of a sports hunter, the need to kill for the sake of killing.  I've run several hunters off my farm in the past and will continue to do so.  As a friend said, make sure I don't wear my tan

coat or I may just end up on their den wall, peering back at the hunter with green glass eyes.