After breakfast, Maria and I walk around our magical farm every morning. There is always something beautiful to see, something new, something born, something dying, something I want to talk about or take a picture of. I love being around nature; Maria has come to love being in nature.

This has greatly enriched my life here. It was, in a way, the missing ingredient. I was drawn here to be in nature but not always able to grasp it. I was a city boy all my life, as my friend Ed Gulley used to point out every chance he had.

Today’s walk was short, beautiful, and unique. Come along with us on our walk. This is what the Bedlam Farm Journal is all about.

On our inspections, we discuss the animals and look around for new and old things.

Maria also talks about plants, insects, spiders, birds in nests, Herons and ravens, animal tracks, and scat. This has opened up a whole new world for me. I love to look at nature, but I rarely stop to know what I am looking at. My photography is changing that. So is my wife.

Maria is taking the trouble to know what she is looking at. She takes videos and pictures, does meditations, and takes and writes excellent notes for her blog. The natural world has become her Temple, just as it became a Temple for Maria Oliver. Our walks show up in all of our creativity. I especially enjoy watching her rescue all kinds of bugs from the water tank. I swear they know her by now. She sits with frogs at the pond and talks to Ravens flying overhead.

It is a festival of life.

Our walks infuse our art, her quilts, pictures, and blog. This and our animals and life’s challenges keep the blog rich and fertile, at least for me, and I hope for you.

First, the flowers, the barn, the pastures, and the woods. I can’t walk in the deep woods in the summer any longer, but I can get close.

After lunch, we’ll see Cindy Casavant and her baby goats. More later.

A Geranium snuck up through the Rose Bush to meet her Love.

 

The animals are like we spread out in the barn. It’s clean and soft.

A beautiful pink, shrouded by buds.

 

 

Sox likes to know what’s going on. She keeps an eye on us.

So does Lulu. She always waits for us at the gate and walks wherever we go in the pastures.

Maria lives in nature, always learning, noticing, recording, and researching. I love her Notes From The Woods; if anything should be a book, that should. She says she looks like a British Nature Lady, but I think she looks like Maria.

The country has beauty everywhere, even when looking at the Purple Cat Tails.

That shade of blue gets to me every time.

 

Kim, our shyest sheep. She is never at ease with a human. She is even scared of Zinnia. She is the one animal we have never gotten close to.

 

Last but not least, we are preparing to say goodbye to our barn swallow newcomers; they are about to take off into the world. (Photo by Maria Wulf)