Bex Hall

Exploring Creativity

Bex Hall > creative life

creative life

Blooming can take time

In nature and in ourselves

The longest I’ve ever lived in the same house is this one. My childhood homes were many between my mother and my grandparents. I lived in between from infancy to 18, in between the times when my mom was able to care for me and the times my grandparents would provide. I never stayed in the same place for any length of time.

In the early 70s my granddad bought a house in one town and had it transported to ours and placed on top of a first-story foundation they built made of blocks. They had cut the home site out of the side of a hill with the majority of trees cleared, except for a select few fully mature tulip poplars.

Granddad hated what he called “dirty” trees, but Grandmother and I delighted in the yellow and orange tulip-shaped clusters of color that dotted the green-filled branches. The petals would eventually expire and litter the ground in the spring. Then, in autumn, the brown, ski-shaped samaras soiled what remained of the green lawn. Granddad saw the natural cycle of these trees as a nuisance, but I saw the process through the lens of wonder.

While I was enjoying the tulip poplar trees of my youth in St. Albans, WV, nearly 200 miles away, one had sprouted in the backyard of a family in Georgetown, KY. The mother of the family placed rocks around the sapling to protect it. Her son witnessed the tree grow tall, and when he returned to visit after moving from home, they would notice the yellow and orange tulip shaped clusters of color as they sat in its shade.

The first year my husband and I lived here, he went to his mother’s house for a visit and dug up two sapling sprouts from her favorite tree, and then planted them in our backyard. We watched them grow tall and full and wondered for a few years why there were no blooms until we learned it can take up to 15 years before a tulip poplar will produce flowers.

Then yesterday morning, from my back porch, I watched the sun’s beams poke through the woods and land on one of the tulip poplar trees, and there they were—yellow and orange-shaped clusters of color glowing in the expanse of green-filled branches. Fifteen years after being planted. Fifteen years here. The longest I’ve ever lived in the same place.

I feel a kinship with these trees. Maybe I needed to be in one spot for 15 years before I could bloom, too.

Pressured, uninspired, overwhelmed

I’m allowed to have off days where I can produce a tangled mess of scribbles. And that’s okay. At least I made *something*. 😊

And then I turned the page in my Artist’s Way themed journal and read the following:

The words and timing a soothing balm. Grace.

Until tomorrow, xoxo

The cats had their fun, now I have mine

Sister cats, Mia and Dot, love to hunt and kill the loose end of a roll of Cottenelle® as it flits above the air vent. Instead of trashing their work, I invited them into the studio to experiment with the remains.

Up on the table, they batted the scraps of tissue around on a canvas panel. I knew the layout satisfied them because they jumped down and exited the room. I think they trusted me to finish the piece.

Either that or they saw me pick up the spray bottle full of water.

I dampened the paper, then squirted a few puffs of watercolor powder from the containers Mia and Dot had chosen earlier. A layer or two of decoupage over everything and we called it done.

While it was drying, Mia walked across and left a faint paw print as her signature. On closer inspection, I found she left several hairs as well.

An artist always leaves something of themselves in their work. 😊

If you change the way you look at things,

the things you look at change.

Seven years have passed since a visit to North Judson, Indiana, yet the images of the trees there are as neatly planted in my memories as they are in the ground.

No signs revealed the history of the area. The cabin rental owner didn’t know. I couldn’t find an explanation why the pine trees grew in such an orderly fashion. 

Probably a long gone paper mill or a defunct Christmas tree farm, I may never know. Whatever the previous purpose, the trees still stand in their dutiful rows.

But that’s the thing — you don’t see the rows unless you stand at a certain angle. From the cabin’s front porch, the woods look like any other, but move to the road and the trees are single file. Walk within the forest and the randomness isn’t as clear. Look up and see a protective canopy, a circle of shelter, softened with kitten whisker needles.

What’s your perspective today? 😊

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

— Wayne Dyer