Marja-Leena Rathje

There’s not been much art busy-ness happening here since I wrote this art and garden busy-ness post last April. I’ve been busy with garden, family, a few little trips away but lots of laziness too, sometimes due to hot weather, often just downright slothfulness on my part.

This is a Labour Day long weekend here in Canada, and the only labour we managed was yesterday’s day of pruning shrubs in the garden, work that should have been done in the spring. I’m back-and-knees sore from hours of picking up the prunings from the plants beneath. The fall gardening season is almost as busy as the spring one for I need to start bringing in many of my non-hardy plants that spend the summer outdoors as well as take cuttings for next summer’s garden. We harvested the last of the cucumbers and composted the plants. We’re still enjoying the tomatoes though now they are ripening more slowly. The peppers are in full abundance right now so last night we brought the pots into the solarium to assure they’d keep reddening in spite of the cool rainy week just started. We’ve had many delicious and healthy Greek salads this summer. Time to use up the basil for pesto too.

As you can see autumnal thoughts are much with me with the changes in the light, the longer shadows and the shorter days, and a few rainy days like today that have us putting on socks and long-sleeved shirts, along with the annual feelings of a new beginning with the traditional back-to-school right after Labour Day.

Years of being a student, a teacher and a parent must have left a permanent imprint on me. Maybe that was what gave me the sudden impetus to sign up again for the fall in the printmaking studio even though I’d originally planned not to go back until January. So now, I’m feeling some anxiety about getting myself back in the art making mode after the lazy summer, as if I were still a student. Tomorrow is my ‘first day’ back!

If you read the above linked post, you’ll know that I had many good intentions to get my small home studio in order over the summer. It did not happen. I’m still looking for used flat files too. Maybe with a more structured routine this fall I’ll get to it. I feel guilty that I have not yet put up my past year’s work on this blog, which requires first scanning the smaller works and taking good photographs of the larger ones.

Oh, and speaking of smaller works, one or more of my prints was accepted into the BIMPE VI exhibition! The opening is on Saturday September 11th, but that’s a subject for the next post.