Comics and Compost

More comics and tunes in 2017
Says it right there in ink and watercolor.
Start as I mean to go on.

Actually, I'd be fine if I didn't have to do that much more snow shoveling,
​but perhaps I can take that drawing to mean more attention to my house and garden as the season demands --scrubbing the toilet and turning the compost pile and weeding and such. You know.

 And really, it is best if I don't make gradiose plans.
My life is already packed with things I like doing --
so many that the best I can hope for is focus and simplification.

Adding a few refinements to my sketchbook diary practice
(ink and watercolor over the pencil and maybe a few more hourly comics),
is probably not an unreasonable dream though,
especially since I started with the ink back in October. 

 I've also been playing music pretty steadily for the past 11 years, so a little more time every day  with my amazing new baritone concertina to strengthen my fingers, learn tunes and help the bellows become more flexible etc. is not out of the question.
​
Everything in moderation, right?

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Comic Diary #1

As if.
Looking back at this first entry in my first comic diary (which I didn't even know I was starting),
I see that the problem of competing ideas and projects is a recurring theme.

Funny how every day feels fresh as I'm living it,
every angst brand new,
​even as I keep repeating myself.

One of the unexpected delightst of keeping a comic diary for a chunk of time
is the fun of returning  to the old images.  
​Flipping through old Moleskines (I'm on the 9th since 2012),
I often crack myself up.        

Important stuff, eh?

Not so entertaining are the wordy journals of my youth which, though sometimes sweet, are not things I enjoy revisiting-- and certainly nothing I'd want anyone else to look at ever ever ever and certainly not out here on the internet.
For decades, these have languished in a box in basment beside worn out boots and term papers I wrote in 1975.

Then last summer
​in an (almost) Marie Kondo style clean up 

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 I ditched the lot with a touch a glee. 
​​

Most of it anyway.
The papers and boots  could go, but,
though I wasn't interested in the content, the journals didnt' feel  like garbage.

Happily, a week or two later, while burying a couple of unsatisfactory-but-hard-to-get rid of tapestries, I realized that the compost heap (home of many an unfin. proj.),  was the perfect home for the journals as well.
In they went, layered with eggshells and apple cores,
​without regret..

Looking at the snow-covered pile this morning (FYI, our winter compost goes in a worm bin in the basement), I felt nothing but satisfaction.
The worms and microbes and spent tomato vines and bits of yarn and corn cobs and ideas and carrot tops and that stupid mean thing I did in 1986 are busily  transforming themselves into nourishment for the future while I get on with the essential business of learning a new tune.
How about: Grandma Hold the Candle While I Shave the Chicken's Lip?

Compost Compositions by Evelyn R. Swett

Truth to tell, I'm lazy about my garden and may not even get to turning our compost pile for a year or two (too busy drawing comics and weaving and so forth).

My wonderful sister Evelyn R. Swett,  however, will enter the the growing season with buckets of black gold.
A glorious gardener, Lyn is particularly passionate about compost
and has just created a little book, Compost Compositions, with some of her amazing  photos.

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It's almost like getting to look at a bit of her diary without any boring parts.
How cool is that?
Maybe that snow shoveling drawing  up at hte top of the page means I might get to be more like her this year!
 I can only hope.
​
Anyone know a tune about compost?