Maria is all about art when it comes down to it.

She is constantly creating, sketching, thinking, sewing, taking videos, and writing notes from the forest.

And she loves animals a lot, but not as much as making art.

She’s been talking about making a jelly roll for some time, but I wasn’t sure what that was until I went out with her to look. She makes are all the time.

A jelly roll jump, she told me, was a game she played when she was in school, a hop-and-skip game. I told her in 200 years; anthropologists would be arguing over its meaning here.

I learned a lot of things about Maria that I did not know. This morning I learned that barn swallows.

Then I took Zinnia out for a jump in the pond, which she loves very much. She is a happy dog.