May Days Flying By

The garden is about done except for weeding and maintenance.  The red door hides the narrow side yard where tools are supposed to be stored, if I don't forget and leave them out.  Behind the fountain at top left, you can see part of my compost area.  

I was watching a Korean Drama, when the main character gave a Nightmare Catcher doll to the love interest to help with her night terrors.  Huh?  Right away, I dashed upstairs and began gathering scraps and miscellanea (because I have a lot of both) and planning my own Nightmare Catchers.  

Since we are still having lots of rainy days and weeding is never done, 

these eccentric characters have become a wonderful antidote 

when I'm unable to work in the garden and much more fun than household chores.  

They have little "backpacks" filled with lavender sachets to catch bad dreams 

and convert them to good ones.  Each "nightmare catcher"  is an experiment, 

every step of the way--"what if I ...do this, try that, use those?"

The lack of perfection and auditioning scraps from other projects has been fun!

More in progress; I have loads of failed projects and scraps that will be perfect for these strange little characters.  And lots of lavender for their backpacks or to stuff bodies.

I listened to Neil Gaiman's Art Matters while working on them:

• “Credo”, his remarkably concise and relevant manifesto on free expression, first delivered in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings
• “Make Good Art”, his famous 2012 commencement address delivered at the Philadelphia University of the Arts
• “Making a Chair”, a poem about the joys of creating something, even when words won’t come 
• “On Libraries”, an impassioned argument for libraries that illuminates their importance to our future and celebrates how they foster readers and daydreamers.

All of these were good and listening to Neil Gaiman's voice is a pleasure,

 but my favorite was "On Libraries" and the importance of fostering readers.