Japanese Maple

I'm very tired of drawing plants.

Today has a strange, discombobulated feel to it. We ended up home at loose ends, and the sky has gone from bright to cloudy. I love Autumn and the special energy that happens in the air at this time of year.

This afternoon, despite the plant-weariness, I decided to try the maple leaves. They weren't very fun, but strangely fulfilling. It reminded me of an early art class where the instructor was trying to get us to draw what we saw rather than what we thought we saw. We were disallowed from looking at the paper and told to let our eye travel along the edge of what we were drawing - slowly - so that our pencil could reflect every change, and keep up.

This only happened a little bit here. It's easy to let our minds make patterns. They really want to. It did come somewhere close to what I imagine meditation might feel like though. There's a point where the chatter stops and it feels nice.

Then the chickadee came down and announced that it wanted sunflower seeds so I gave him some. He and his little friend popped right over and ate them.

My husband came out and I told him what happened with the birds, saying, "I didn't realize they could think things through like that. Their little brains seem too small."

And my husband said, "They are. They can only do simple math."