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