DAYS

 

LINK

How do you want to spend your days?

May you breathe 

May you breathe

May you breathe

xo

Photos by NAE @pomegranatetrail ©2026

Less Than A Day of Time Traveling

 

I've pulled out more of my old classroom books in preparation for my next mailing. These few books include two siblings, both of whom were in my class, at separate times. I keep in contact with this family and mom said she'd love to have them as mementos for her children! Yay! I keep working on finding appropriate homes for these kinds of things. I look forward to writing their memory letter to go with the books.

This reminds me about how much I love mailing off goodies to friends and family. Every month, I am still mailing postcards from our old collection to the little grands. Last month, I came out of the post office saying how much joy and pleasure these mailings give me. Me. I did not mean just the fact of sending them something, I meant actually opening the flip-door and dropping the postcards in...because in that moment, I am the child again. I can well remember the joy of little me getting letters/gifts in the mail. The surprise of that. The curiosity of that - what is inside? The feelings of fun and being cared about. I'm so lucky I get to provide some of those feelings for others.

This Disabled Sheep Drives Her Own Wheelchair | The Dodo

LINK 1:54 minutes

Inside-out, Outside-in: Today we went off to the VA. It was rather early and super, super foggy. The top photo shows the view from the second floor. Normally, one can see far across the whole Valley - seeing the mountains rim the other side. Unfortunately there was no way to get the fog without the reflections in the window, but you get the idea. Inside on the first floor, there are live trees! There are many windows and skylights, which is how this works I guess. But, I'm always a little surprised when they drop their leaves. They seem like they should be artificial trees, but are not. Surprising.

Today I noticed a small, 8X10? plaque on the sub waiting area wall. A large wall, empty for this one photo plaque. I got up and walked over to read it. A memorial for a doctor, who dies at about 40 years old. It was brief, but lovingly written in appreciation her skills and traits as a doctor and as a human being. It mentioned things she enjoyed doing in her free time. It struck me as such a nice thing for a huge, bureaucratic workplace to do, while still standing, physically, as such a small comment on a whole life lived. Left me thinking. 

Also, we walked in from a different side of the parking lot today, so we saw the memorial plaque. Another surprise. I had never seen this in all of these years!

As an observer of people, it's always an interesting adventure. Everyone who works there, from the security, the staff, the techs, and doctors are so nice. That makes it an oddly uplifting visit. 

When I got home, I found an AARP magazine on the free pantry shelf in the mail room. Yay! Something more to cut up! This pic of Rod Stewart was perfect timing, since when we pulled out of the VA parking lot...we saw someone who looked JUST LIKE him in the clothing choice! The stranger's outfit was silver and black leopard print...but, same print short boots like Rod's! haha

I'm still in the thick of cutting and gluing. My green book is still the furtherest along, but the brown, blue, and pink are getting attention too. My plan continues to be to make red, orange, yellow, green, blue (and indigo) and purple...along with black and white (maybe gray and sepia too), brown and pink books. I was happy when I found the pig in the magazine today. 🐷

I will also be making a "rainbow" book. I've started collecting for that too. I'll share that next time, as it involves more story and I need a nap!

How do you make art? How do you memorialize someone? How do you embrace the weather or peoples of the world?

 

May you keep considering 

May you keep looking

May you keep engaging

xo

Photos by NAE @pomegranatetrail ©2026

Water, Glue, Song and Life

 

Teens on a photo shoot of their own making. I wonder what that was about.

Colors feat. Black Pumas, Slash, The Pocket Queen | Playing For Change | Song Around The World

LINK 4:56 minutes

I came across this video the other day and had to listen since the name was 'Colors'! I like the message of the song. I am most certainly seeing everything in colors these days, due to my glue booking.

I have a few ideas in place for this whole Glue Book undertaking. Having fun is of course the most important. But, other plans include that each mini composition book is a different color. So far: green is the closest to completion, brown has a lot in it, and pink, purple and red have barely been started. Blue was graced with about 9 background pages today. I used one piece of copier paper sky and clouds, which is left over from an old classroom of mine. Sky paper was the theme in the room if I needed to put up some documentation. I also had the calendar page from last month, which had a snow covered mountain and bright blue sky, so I used that.

I'd put aside the blue image and word papers I could find and pulled together a page. I used local magazine and a local bus schedule.

 I'll be playing around some more. However, the only other washi tape I have to use is in the orange color range. Besides that thought and my search for images to use, I've discovered that this kind of making uses a lot of glue sticks. I am so used to being in the mindset of not making purchases and using up what I have. So, I'll see how that feels as I move forward.

It was very busy at the bridge today. Owly just sat up there looking around. I wondered if the extra activity is disturbing or not. In the reading I did, I learned that they will be fierce about protecting their nest (eggs or young). I like the photo with her eyes pinched shut.

We were able to walk to the 'fence change' today. It morphs from the brown wood nature fencing to the white 'city' fencing. Off in the distance you can see the mountains, but not as clearly as on other days. When I said that I like when the clouds roll over the mountains, but not the hazy brown of bad air quality, it really got me thinking about how we frame things. I usually pick the bluest sky to share here. Why? What don't I choose to show the other, very real skies? That led me to think about how we do this in many areas of our lives, not just sky photos. My mind went on from there.

So, on the way back, I tried to catch some of that haze.

It was a big lizard count day, the highest so far with 27 lizards spotted...and one dead toad. We thought it so strange that about one year later, we saw another dried up toad in almost the same place! I wondered about that white line going down its back. Poor guy.

There was also so many grasshoppers, butterflies and birds out today. But, no hawk. 

The crows added quite a bit to their nest. It no longer looks like a framework of a nest.

Before crossing back over the bridge, we had to walk through a group of young cheer girls and their mothers. Boy, did that bring up a lot of feelings. I remember well my days of being a dance mom. These girls looked to be about 12-14 maybe. It felt really awful that as I walked past and saw them in their short outfits, beautiful make-up and hair done up, one of my first thoughts was that is the age preferred by E & T and many other powerful men. Sickening. I can only hope that those cheer mom's not only do their hair, but have their back too.

How do you make choices regarding what to partake in?

 

May you carry the haze with the brightness

May you keep getting out in nature, even when hard to do

May you stick something together in some way

xo

Photos by NAE @pomegranatetrail ©2026

The Time We're In, A Mash Up

 

My sister sent me this LINK also. Go there to make sense of what I am saying here. It's instagram, so I didn't know how to import it here.

While I thought at first that the instagram post was just humorous, before it even came to an end...there was a certain bittersweet quality to it. How we all wish to go back to a simpler time. Yet, here I am writing my personal thoughts (my diary) for all the world to see. That one just keeps feeling weird to me, yet I continue. Huh. 

At any rate, the news of the world, the news of anything has me shifting from bitter (sad, angry) to sweet, again and again, and often a mixture of both. At least I'm able to keep my humor alive too.

I think I'd like to escape to this kind of place! And I know which one I'd choose on most days. haha

I love how the pages in the GLUE BOOKS just fall into being. It is very freeing. I'm appreciating how even in the ease and fun of this new form of creativity, I'm able to see some connections to other parts of life. Of course I am. I mean, really...even without trying, deeper meanings come through. I couldn't stop myself if I tried, real hard! haha Wild.

Today quotes keep popping into my head, as they relate to myself and others. Playing with words is always a fulfilling thing to do. Playing with images, colors...just playing are all such good forms of self-care.

If you've lost focus, 

just sit down and be still.

Take the idea and 

rock it to and fro.

Keep some of it

and throw some away,

and it will renew itself.

You need do no more.

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Online weather reports it will be 90° today and 61° tonight. Then were set up for 80° 's - 90° 's until the 31st of March. April first = rain? We'll see! This porch thermometer is very old and sits in direct sun much of the day. I'm not so sure it's accurate at all, but perhaps it's close enough. However, in some moments it really does reflect a "feels like" temperature! Kinda like the whole 'wind chill factor' - but with intense sunshine!

Where are you landing these days?

 

May you find the bitter not too harsh

May you find the sweet mind-numbingly sweet 🙂

May you shift and swing with ease

xo

Photos by NAE @pomegranatetrail ©2026

Mini Glue Book

 Okay then. I'm still busy with paper. Today it was the color brown. My current resources include the gifted subscriptions to TIME & SMITHSONIAN magazines, among other free local magazines and grocery store flyers. I came across a lot of browns , black (or grayish) and white and some other interesting images. My sister may have some magazines or catalogs for me to use. Yay, I hope so!

The steps to creating a "glue book" include prepping the book by taking out some of the pages and adding washi tape along the sewn middle page to make it stronger. I'm glad I had some old washi tape from long ago. So far, what I have is dictating what color book I will work on (i.e. green, brownish, blue, pink, purple).

Once you've done that, you can add 'background' papers to each page, which also makes the pages stronger and provides a base to add your images by covering up the white pages of the book. The 4 pages above are background pages, so much of what is seen may be covered in the end. This does not matter, it is the way of going. Or I may keep some of the images showing (like the two children in the muddy water). We'll see.

On the background of the map, I added the bowl of food and the little bird. One image came from a magazine, the other from a daily calendar. It is not a complete page to me yet.

Next or at the same time as the images, I will add words and/or phrases (as I've done on a couple of these). These steps are my favorite so far. I like that you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT! Again, it does not have to make sense, be important, be deeply meaningful or executed perfectly (just like anything else one chooses to make)...it is for practicing to gain skills, playing, and having fun...zoning out. I am doing just that. 

So, does that kind of bird live in that desert environment? Who knows! Could those mules (or are they donkeys?) really be in that area, looking in that too small for them door? Heck if I know. Would those geese (?) fly over that canyon, which is not a canyon because I ripped up the papers and placed them every which where? Yeah, probably not.

So, what will I do with the goats? Will I leave "SHIFT" showing or cover it? These are still unknowns, which is another aspect I like about doing this project. I can skip around and do bits here and there, completing a page over time. No rush, no stress.

Today I am loving this page from the green book. We joke around a lot pronouncing 'deal' as dill, so this one makes me smile. The 'all natural' is half of the sticker from a lemonade bottle. We're on a big lemonade kick on these hot days.

Speaking of hot...it is. It was 98 here today, but the porch thermometer read 106, sitting there baking in the full sun of the late afternoon. That was not a correct reading of course, but it feels that hot, mostly because we know in our heads that it is still just March and the first day of Spring!! Oy.

This was in a link my sister sent me. Ugh. I hope not! 

When do instructions help? Are there instructions for everything we need to learn?

 

May you find fun things to do

May you share your fun with others

May you keep a little silly in your heart

xo

Photos by NAE @pomegranatetrail ©2026