Creative Explorations: Earthworm Lunar Cycle

Between generating twice a month blog posts, the planning process for the new home build (we hope!) , learning and practicing expressive abstract landscape painting - and the continuing craziness of current politics - my stress levels soared. My creative practice is central to my whole way of being in the world, so I am trying some new ways to stay centered in compassion and loving kindness and not succumb to panic or anger.

The pieces I make and show you are a visual diary of my explorations. They are meant to show the reality of my creative process - the attempts, victories and failures in the fall-down-pick-yourself-up-dust-yourself-off-and-try-again process that creating is all about. Some days I love what I do and feel exhilarated, other days I feel as though my hands and brain are made of wood, but I try again anyway.

Today's post is a synopsis of the Earthworm Moon cycle, now that I've had a few days to review and reflect. I'll share another new update a few days after the end of the Pink Moon cycle on April 27, 2025.

New Moon To Full Moon - 2.27.25 - 3.14.25

Being under the Earthworm moon raised a question in my ever-curious mind - how do earthworms live through the winter? It turns out earthworms can tunnel down to six feet (depending on the porousness of the soil) to spend the winter at a depth where the earth does not freeze (if earthworms freeze, they die). And then I wondered, exactly how fast can an earthworm tunnel, and it turns out the answer is, pretty darn fast; small ones can tunnel at 37 feet per hour and medium sized ones at about 185 feet per hour. Earthworms' pointed heads help them dig and their muscular bodies expand and contract like accordions to push them deeper. As the earth warms again, they return to live nearer the surface. So if you begin seeing earthworms this month, that is a very positive sign that warmer weather is indeed arriving.

Full Moon Lunar Eclipse 3.14.25

An amazing solar halo visible around the edges of the moon

Billions of stars visible in the crystal clear sky behind the full moon lunar eclipse

I got up at 3 AM to see the amazing full moon lunar eclipse on Friday, March 14 just 25 minutes after totality, so the moon was still quite orange and the sun's gaseous flames were visible around its edges. I've blown up this photo to show you what my eyes were seeing. A huge bonus was how incredibly clear the night sky was - I saw thousands and thousands of stars, near and far, stretching further and further into that vastness of space. How I wished that night I had a telescope to see it more clearly!

Earthworm Moon Cycle Creating

I felt like I was struggling creatively a lot through this cycle. I was doing something I had no experience in and started being judgmental about my efforts instead of playful, spontaneous and kind to myself. I did experience some moments where I felt new understanding click, but I forgot to celebrate them. Basically, I kept digging a deeper hole and climbing out, then falling right back in again.

In a used book I purchased, Creative Landscape Painting by Edward Betts, he writes,

"Simplify radically. Search out essences. Be ambiguous - get your ideas from what you observe firsthand. Develop your own system of gestures and marks. Assemble color, marks, shapes, lines to suggest landscape forms without being specific or 'readable'. Even when editing or revising, keep the spontaneity."

This is what the work ahead of me looks like and I'm confident I will grow more comfortable with these ideas as I practice them. This cycle I tried out a variety of approaches in my small studies and will continue to observe, work on spontaneity and "suggesting."

Some Earthworm Moon Cycle Images

Here are a few of the pieces now in Book 3, where the push-pull between representation and abstraction, comfort and tightness are pretty evident. I am still working on the text pages and cover, but all the works are in it, and I am happy with the many variations I attempted as the winter snows melted outside and the first buds appeared on branches. I felt thrilled when the final page was glued in - the project still absorbs me fully, and producing so many new samples is quite encouraging. I'm doing the work! These books will be a wonderful record of my explorations, challenges and discoveries.

abstracted landscape

abstracted landscape

abstracted landscape

abstract landscape

abstract landscape

abstract landscape

abstract landscape

I'm hoping the works I create each month during the 13 lunar cycles will show a progression over time; that my visual language for abstracting the landscape will become stronger and more confident.

Next Lunar Cycle Preview

A total month ahead of quick samples on paper from a daily walk-and-draw on our property, followed by a studio warm-up using inks with a variety of tools on paper. Yesterday I did my walk and draw with a 9B waterproof Lyra crayon and today I used a 9B graphite pencil, looking and responding to the trees, myriads of bare bushes and weeds, without looking at the page. After I sketch outdoors, I come indoors and work over the surface with inks.

The entire hedgerow is a mass of branches and bushes and weeds with stalks, limbs and branches going in many different directions.

Walking along the hedgerow quickly, everything is dense thicket of bare stalks and branches going in multiple directions.

My idea now for the next cycle is to sketch-and-walk and then do a warm-up with inks every day, responding to the changing landscape, then do a simple expressive ink piece with hints of landscape forms.

Since my state of mind fluctuates during a lunar cycle, I'm going to start a blog draft and add short entries every few days during the Pink Moon cycle, so that by the end of the cycle, it will be ready to post. I want to see if that will help me record more of the emotional moments and insights I have during each moon phase. At the beginning of the next cycle, I'll review and reflect on what is working and what I need to shift and try to include that as well.

Thanks for reading - its nice to share my process with fellow creatives.

The warmer weather will mean more time to get outdoors and enjoy the natural world, which is a growing source of joy and insight for me:

"Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some

strengthening throb of amazement -

some good sweet empathic ping and swell.

This is the first, the

wildest and the wisest thing I know:

that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness."

--Mary Oliver

May the Pink Moon fill you with appreciation for the gifts this new season brings!

Namaste,

Jeanne

Earthworm Moon: Shifting Landscapes

A light snowfall overnight made the morning light just before sunrise look other-worldly. I am eager to translate this reference photograph into a new drawing. Love the color palette!

The Vision Behind the 13 Moons Project

We are surrounded by farm fields and live down the road from a huge dairy and small organic cattle farm. Fields of crops have their own beauty and purpose, but all the forests and meadows that once filled this region and nourished wildlife here are long gone. There are still small patches of trees here and there, and some hedgerows to prevent more soil erosion, but we are primarily surrounded by crops, much of which are grown to feed cattle. And our own property is predominantly grass, at least four acres of which Bob mows and has mowed for 45+ years.

Our local government does make a strong effort to protect the water quality of the lake we depend on for drinking water, but with so much construction of housing developments over significant periods of time, wildlife and insect populations have fewer and fewer resources for survival here. And since this same destruction of habitats is happening everywhere across this nation, everyday citizens need to take action to increase food sources and habitats for birds and pollinators, or they will disappear.

I knew very little about ecology when I first became interested in native plants and pollinators but I am making a sincere effort to learn more, now that I realize caring, creative individuals need to take responsibility for how our actions impact life for all beings. We can make small changes that add up into huge movements. I will do what I can to protect and rewild this land. I'm committed to restoring and rewilding our property to create a thriving ecosystem for birds and pollinators, whether I live to see it to fruition or not.

Intention combined with loving action are powerful tools and I feel certain we will see countless others nationally and worldwide making the same choices to help restore the earth. It's a movement that is kind and restorative and flexible. Every person can do something to help on any scale.

During the winter months I've been reading Douglas Tallamy's The Nature of Oaks and Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard. They are valuable resources to learn more about the natural world so we can appreciate how amazing and complex it is.

We have some young and one mature oak already on the acreage next to us where we hope to build our new home. Oaks attract the largest number of caterpillars of any native tree in this area and alhough we don't find them appealing, birds love to eat caterpillars! And the caterpillar explosion that native oaks offer comes just in time to feed hungry birds building nests and rearing their young in the spring. . Adding more native trees to our property can create a small forest here over time - along with a beautiful meadow and numerous native plant pollinator and vegetable gardens. As Doug points out,

"If half of American lawns were replaced with native plants, we would create the equivalent of a 20 million-acre national park, nine times bigger than Yellowstone, or 100 times bigger than Shenandoah National Park."

Douglas Tallamy

Deepening a Connection to Nature

These are the intentions that are driving the 13 Moons project, a desire to observe, to pay attention, to see with gratitude and appreciation the beauty in the microcosm of the property I live on. The more I learn how to do that, the better I can become at being a good steward of the natural world, and help restore natural habitats we humans have destroyed so ruthlessly over centuries.

Sharing the vision, the progress of the new native plant and wildlife habitats as well as creating mixed media responses to nature and its cycles are very important to me. I appreciate your interest in these creative projects as they take shape.

The Full Moon and Fourth Quarter Explorations

The period between the Full Moon and the end of the lunar cycle got exciting. I let go and really started to relax and enjoy what I was doing and it felt freeing. I worked from memory of the photos I had taken outdoors and abstracted them. I could visualize the landscape in my imagination and it no longer felt important to me whether anyone else could see what I was seeing, and gave myself permission to interpret "landscape" in any way I choose.

Interestingly, the more I played, the more excited I became, and the easier and more fun it got to work. I collaged right onto the pages, no longer trying to make even sizes and borders. Loved that. Because the book pages are still not bound together, it was way easier to work on the pages and then move them around than glue them into a book that was already bound.

The Snow Moon book currently has all the artwork in it but none of the texts that I had selected to include, so it still isn't finished. I'm good with that, it will get there and you'll see it soon.

The new lunar cycle has started, and I'm working again with loose pages that can get bound later. Because a new cycle starts immediately after the previous one ends, I tried stopping making new pieces several days before the Dark Moon, glued pages I had made earlier in the month into the book and cut new pages to start the new cycle. Then I started crafting this blog, which takes a good amount of time to create, edit and do the SEO entries, and yet I enjoy doing it immensely.

Although Snow Moon's pages aren't dated, they do form a time line of my creative evolution. However, I want to express that passage of time and process more visibly. Do I want to date them? I can but that will happen only if I decide to keep working on Cycle 2 at the same time I'm working on this cycle. I collected notes and quotes each day through the Snow Moon cycle, so I've got those in my journal if and when I get time to add them. I do think it will be more possible to do that this month.

I took reference photographs of our property on several occasions, particularly to capture the play of light and shadow on the land in the brief hours when the sun was shining. Light and shadow are quite amazing on a sunny day after fresh snow has fallen!

Catch Up Video - January Cold Moon

Here's the first completed 13 Moons handmade book. I'll send you a video of the Snow Moon handmade book #2 for February in the next post.

Cycle Three Begins

I completed the 2.28.25 page today and it looks like text DOES want to join the images, at least that's how this cycle is beginning!

First Earthworm Moon Journal Page for the March lunar cycle

Blessings and Peace to all beings,

Jeanne

Snow Moon Insights

"The color of springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination." Terry Guillemets

Cultivating Silence, Rest and Simplicity

January asked me for silence, and I yielded to its request. I wrote daily but most of the ideas, references and words didn't make it into the first 13 Moons book. I craved silence and simplicity and although searches and synchronicities yielded lots of ideas to pursue over future cycles, what I needed most for myself was quiet and reflection. So I rested.

I began February with a small celebration of Imbolc, the pre-Christian Celtic festival celebrating the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. - a time when the earth is beginning to emerge from winter. The festival honors the goddess Brigid, lighting lamps and bonfires in her honor. Celebrants invited Brigid to visit their homes and bless them. They created cloth dolls made from small bundles of wheat and oats and set them outside their doors in a basket. People also made small woven crosses to hang in their homes to invoke her blessings.

My ceremony helped me set my own intention and ask for goddess Brigid and St. Brigid's blessings to restore an abundant natural habitat for birds and pollinators on the seven-acre lot we own next door. Our area is primarily crop fields and my desire is to create an oasis here that can help inspire others to become part of a pollinator pathway across the country. There are groups like Wild Ones that are teaching people who are concerned about helping nature to transform part or all of their lawns into native plant havens for bird and pollinator populations. I am committed to doing what I can to take restorative action for the natural world.

The Susan Seddon Boulet print on the left is of a young woman gazing at the crescent moon from the branches of a tree. It has been with me in the same inexpensive frame since I was 28 years old. It has become quite faded over time, so I bought a new print of it recently, then found I prefer this aged and much-loved one. The cutting from an evergreen bough symbolizes rebirth and the continuation of life. The three small bowls and shells contain milk, water and honey, all traditionally offered to Brigid. Goddess Brigid as well as St. Brigid are both known for fertility and healing. On the right of my altar is a handmade porcelain candleholder, a treasured gift from a beloved friend of over 45 years who transitioned suddenly and unexpectedly on Thanksgiving Day..

As this lunar cycle unfolded over the past few weeks, I decided to free up a bit, to work on all kinds and sizes of paper, to fully abstract the arctic winds, snow, and contrasts I am seeing all around me outdoors - and most of all, just let go! I was trying so hard to record of my experiences and insights for this project that I forgot to just enjoy it.

"Inquiry requires that we remain playful and open, noticing our energy and following it wherever it leads."

As Pat Allen writes in her book, Art as a Spiritual Process, "A consumer society demands that a product be consistent. The Creative Source pulls back and lets us proceed but without the fire and light we had before. We have stepped out of a gift economy and into a commodity economy...

Inquiry requires that we reman playful and open, noticing our energy and following it wherever it leads."

A Shift in Attitude

So I still love the idea of making a book for each lunar cycle, but I am going to put things in this month's book more spontaneously. Less measuring or cutting or trying to be precise. I started ripping papers and making small sumi ink drawings with sticks and hake brushes and mono printing on a sheet of vellum, pressing tissues into that to create patterns and letting those dry - and suddenly I'm happy and motivated again and excited to be sharing this all with you.. Below are some of the samples I've been creating since the full moon, which feel quite in sync with the arctic-like wind gusts sweeping across our acreage.

sumi ink drawing of high winds

sumi ink drawing of windy landscape

sumi ink drawing of snow covered landscape

sumi ink drawing of dried plants

sumi ink drawing of windswept landscape

winter drawing with sumi ink

The past few days have brought snow and ice covered tree branches to our area, always a beautiful sight, even when the sun isn't shining. So let me share a few photos of those with you, trusting that following this bitter cold, snowy weather some warmer days are soon to follow.

Ice covered branches

ice covered dried blossoms

ice covered branches

I invite you to celebrate your own playfulness as the winter winds and snowfall move past and more signs of spring begin to arrive. May ease and joy accompany your creative practice.

And of course, here is your invitation to say the Metta Prayer with me each day. It is often the simplest acts that have the most powerful impact.

May I be peaceful. May all beings be peaceful.

May I be happy. May all beings be happy.

May I be safe. May all beings be safe.

May I awaken to the light of my true nature. May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature.

May I be free from suffering. May all beings be free from suffering.

So may it be. Namaste.

Peace and love,

Jeanne