Balloon Vine seed pod November 2023
Fall is my favorite time of year. It’s the reward for surviving a Mississippi summer. The respite from humidity and sweaty nights and the reward for lasting another season. Fall brings with it the thankfulness of making it through another year no matter if it was good or bad, successful or failure, feast or famine. It’s a time to reflect on the year’s accomplishments and start planning for the year to come.
The photo above is from a balloon vine. I’ve shared some pictures of this plant before HERE. You can buy seeds for this vine and it’s a fast growing hearty little plant but it also just grows wild here on the fencelines in Mississippi. When you shake the seedpods you can hear the small black seeds rattling around the dry brittle husk of the lantern shaped seed head. I know a lot of people would have passed by a brown vine lying on the ground by a fence but sometimes you have to be willing to see potential in the details. Be willing to look past typical beauty and see beauty in the atypical. Be willing to see potential where others might not. Light, texture, and color can be found anywhere if you just look hard enough. Potential can be found anywhere if you’re willing to look around for it, just a bit.
I struggle to balance my art practice with my office job and my “Momma job” constantly. Art isn’t something that you just do as a hobby, it can be, but for many of us, we know it’s just a part of life, a part of who we are. We’re happiest when we get to do something creative. It fulfills that part of ourselves that wants to create, to bring something we see in our mind to life that no one has ever seen or thought of before. Making art a lot of the time is as involuntary as breathing. When I can see a little beauty in something as mundane as a dried, dead vine on a fence row that makes me happy. The image above was taken with my phone. A quick snap as the sun went down and yet the light and the composition make me pleased. Could I have gotten my big hulking Nikon out of the bag in my car? Sure. Did I really need to for an Instagram post? Maybe, maybe not. It’s just the fact that I got to take a neat picture and share it that made me happy, and at its core that’s all an artist wants to do. We want to make something with all the enthusiasm of a child finishing a finger painting jumping up and down and asking excitedly, "Can we put it on the fridge!?!” We want to share something that elicits a reaction.
As we go into the weekend I hope you find something that makes you happy, do something that makes you proud of yourself, and find someone to share that feeling with as well.
Happy weekend my lovelies.