Thinking of Spring! While in hospital waiting for my best-beloved to get out of surgery!

A caricature I did a few years ago!

This is me last summer working on a portrait outside at Alfred Festival Day in Alfred, ME.

St. Patrick's Day is next week and the first day of Spring is just around the corner! I would have been playing irish music today on my guitar with my wonderful friend Mary, who plays awesome flute and penny whistle, at a local cafe. But instead I am spending the weekend with my sweet, brave and patient husband as he recovers from surgery in the hospital near us here in lower seacoast Maine.

Yesterday during the long hours of the surgery I could have taken a walk outside, but I got lazy in the waiting room, warm and cosy, free coffee always available! I actually got a little done on my fantasy novel for middle readers, or young adults. I haven't decided which yet!

It's a good way not to focus too much on the distressing situation at hand. I read somewhere, probably in one of the many writer's blogs I tool around at, that the best time to write is when concerns become overwhelming. A great way to help your main characters come alive and become someone that readers can really identify with.

Any way, spending the whole day inside makes me long even more for Spring to come, and I am so grateful that my husband came through surgery in good shape, although healing takes time, and I am so glad that the earth is also healing and about to bloom forth! I work in a Nature-based child care center part time, and am always amazed to see the  slow and graceful transformation of the forest classroom, where I spent time almost every day with children.

I did this drawing a couple of years ago to celebrate Spring!

The Baha'i New Year is March 20th. Here's a quote from the Baha'i Writings about the Vernal Equinox:

The Baha'i New Year(Naw-Ruz!) is March 20th.

This card is available in my Etsy shop:Waterbrook Gifts!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/270302643/naw-ruz-greeting-cardbahai-new?ref=shop_home_active_3

From time immemorial this day has been consecrated, for in this there is a symbol.

At this moment the sun appears at the meridian and the day and night are equal. Until today the north pole has been in darkness. This sacred day when the sun illumines equally the whole earth is called the equinox and the equinox is the symbol of the divine messenger. The sun of truth rises on the horizon of divine mercy and sends forth its rays on all. This is the beginning of the spring. When the sun appears at the equinox it causes a movement in all living things. The mineral world is set in motion, plants begin to sprout, the desert is changed into a prairie, trees bud and every living thing responds, including the bodies of animals and men.

The rising of the sun at the equinox is the symbol of life and the human reality is revivified; our thoughts are transformed and our intelligence is quickened. The sun of truth bestows eternal life, just as the solar sun is the cause of terrestrial life. (Abdu’l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p.75)

Happy Naw-Ruz! happy Spring!

Below are some great videos on sketch booking outdoors, which I will be hopefully doing more of soon. Enjoy!