I'm starting a new project!!!!

My next project in Freedom 101 is to do an art series with dragonflies and Persian poetry (e.g. Rumi, Hafiz). Actually I may do other things beside dragonflies, I'll see how it goes. I've been wanting for a long time to do a series of watercolors with Rumi and Hafiz poems, but I never have started. Today I did it. They are ATCs (Artist Trading Cards)and this small size is fun to start with although I can only fit short poems onto them. I plan to start The Artist's Way again and do at least one small art piece every day this month. Yeah!!!

Here's my dragonfly

I did a couple of other ATC's with watercolor and I didn't really like them. They are starting to grow on me a bit so I'll post them, too.

I don't think I've posted about Freedom 101 yet. In March 2009, I went to the HENA conference, my first and only homeschool conference and I heard Grace Llewellyn speak on Freedom 101, a curriculum for parents to prepare them to give their children more freedom. The basis of the curriculum is to do 4-6 projects in the year and to watch yourself in the process, being a good observer of your own style, quirks, hang-ups etc. While I'm not really doing the Freedom 101 curriculum, I'm thinking in terms of doing projects. The first was putting in gardens and fruit trees at my mom's which was already in process at the time of the conference. The next was to start this blog and now the Art series and I haven't decided on the next one.

This afternoon Jasmine came home from summer camp and immediately started working on copying poems and song lyrics into her notebook. She asked me to read Mind of a Raven to her while she worked. Then we had a lovely cuddly, tickly time together. Eventually we got up to do our housework while listening to The Wizard of Earthsea on CD.

In honor of starting my dragonfly series, I'm posting a wonderful story.

----------The Waterbug Story-----------------

Down below the surface of a quiet pond lived a little colony of waterbugs. They were a happy colony, living far away from the sun. For many months they were very busy, scurrying over the soft mud onthe bottom of the pond. They did notice that every once in a while one of their colony seemed to lose interest in going about with its friends. Clinging to the stem of a pond lily, it gradually moved out of sight and was seen no more.

"Look!" said one of the water bugs to another, "One of our colony is climbing up the lily stalk. Where do you think she's going?" Up, up, up it slowly went... Even as they watched, the water bug disappeared from sight. Its friends waited and waited but it didn't return...

"That's funny!" said one water bug to another..." Wasn't she happy here?" asked a second..."Where do you suppose she went?" wondered a third...No one had an answer. They were greatly puzzled. Finally one of the water bugs gathered its friends together. "I have an idea. The next one of us who climbs up the lily stalk must promise to come back and tell us where he or she went and why." "We promise" they said solemnly.

One spring day not long after the very water bug who had suggested the plan found herself climbing up the lily stalk. Up, up, up she went. Before she knew what was happening, she had broken through the surface of the water and fallen into the broad and free lily pad above. When she awoke, she looked about with surprise. She couldn't believe what she saw. A startling change had come over her old body. Her movement revealed four silver wings and a long tail. Even as she struggled, she felt an impulse to move her wings... The warmth of the sun soon dried the moisture from her new body. She moved her wings again and suddenly found herself above the water. She had become a dragonfly.

Swooping and dipping in great curves, she flew through the air. She felt exhilarated in the new atmosphere. By and by the new dragonfly landed happily on a lily pad to rest. Then it was that she chanced to look below to the bottom of the pond. Why, she was right above his old friends, the water bugs! There they were scurrying around, just as she had been doing some time before. Then the dragonfly remembered the promise. Without thinking, the dragonfly darted down. Suddenly she hit the surface of the water and bounced away. Now that she was a dragonfly, she could no longer go into the water..."I can't return!" she said in dismay. "At least I tried. But I can't keep my promise. Even if I could go back, not one of the water bugs would know me in my new body. I guess I'll just have to wait until they become dragonflies too. Then they'll understand what has happened to me, and where I went." And the dragonfly winged off happily into its wonderful new world of sun and air...