Winter-Killed Vines are Art, Too!

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Winter-killed Vines Are Art, Too.

My neighbor has a lovely rock garden
Which is only visible in winter.
Its moss-covered rocks, how dear!
For most of the year, nasturtiums wind luxuriantly,
Covering the bumps of stone.
Gone now are the leaves and flowers;
Winter has freeze-dried the tangled vines,
Leaving an ugly mat of fiber-stems
(Some are twelve or fifteen feet in length),
No longer green with succulence, but
Made pliable by workings of the weather.

My neighbor is elderly and can’t get about very well.
I want to help her, do her some sort of favor.
And so I offer to pull the nasturtium vines,
A few, a little bit at a time.
(I also have an ulterior motive: I want to try an experiment:
Using crusty, fibrous stems to adorn some of my Nature Art.)

Clambering about amidst the rocks
Was harder work than I thought.
It took many days to gather up the vines.
And then I had a mess inside my house,
As I draped and wound the stems to dry.
Layer upon layer, with newspapers in between.
And cardboards and real boards here and there
In sandwich style.
And on the top of several piles I set my weights:
Lots of thick books; a very heavy kitten-sized rock,
And even my big bags of kitty litter and cat chow.

And now, after a couple weeks of waiting,
They’re dry, the stems are dry!
Matted, some of them;
Twisty, all of them.
So this part of the experiment is done.
But there are other steps ahead.

It will be more work by far to glue the flattened vines,
A section at a time, to backings,
To shape ponder-ful designs.
And to dye their ugly dun in fetching, artish hues.
It would be quicker to simply paint
Some scrawly, burly lines.
But this part, too, (after many days)
Will culminate my art experiment.

There is such potential for me to worship God
As I use my imagination in the creation of art.
He, the Creator of All Things, created me
To envision new ideas and works.
(And the Master of the Universe already knows
How he will work out his own art experiment
Through/for/within me.


copyright 2011 by Marilee Miller Feel free to post links on your site;
but please, no copying without permission.

This post is also shared with L. L. Barkat's "Seedlings in Stone"
On, in, and around Mondays

and Laura Boggess' "The Wellspring"
Playdates with God