Artual (Art + ritual) for living Wendy Hollender

Wendy Hollender Drawing

“A weed is but an unloved flower.” 


― Ella Wheeler Wilcox


“It was such a pleasure to sink one's hands into the warm earth, to feel at one's fingertips the possibilities of the new season.” 
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden


“Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion.” 
― Eudora Welty

Acorn by Wendy Hollender

A month ago, while I was at my writing conference, T planted tomatoes and peppers. T had grown them from our southern window over the last two months. Saddly my worries came true. I was afraid they wouldn't make it out in the community garden. I wasn't concerned about the last frost date in Ohio (Mother’s Day Weekend), but the heavy rains or lack of rain. Baby plants are fragile. The poor things were taken out by a hail storm.

I love spring in Ohio. The trees are white and purple with blossoms and last week some trees glowed with a green mist: buds about to burst into leaves. In April, T and I had planted potatoes, onions, salad food, and peas. T finds the gradual covering over of potato shoots meditative. I’m in the garden experience for the eating of beans and peas off the vine. The garden is thriving in June and unusually un-weedly for us. 
Several weeks ago, I watched an interview with Wendy Hollender, a botanical artist, teacher, and author of Foraging & Feasting; A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook. Her medium of choice is coloured pencils and uses watercolour as an underpainting. See above is one of her drawings -- very realistic. She is a teacher who puts her students at easy, because she taught viewers her method to draw an acorn. However, what really interested me was her dedication to a plant per year.

Wendy described how she chooses a plant or tree to study for the year. She introduces herself in the fall and gives a gratitude offering to the plant. This is a plant she will visit daily on her walk. Wendy next showed the viewers several pages of her oak tree study that moved through the seasons. The fall showed a branch with leaves in various stages of drying out and nutmeg and cinnamon colors. There were several acorns and around the drawings questions: How do the leaves change and why? How many oak trees are there in the world? How old to they get? She treats these as interview questions to get to know the plant better.

Artual

Get outside and adopt a plant or tree for the season. Provide an offering to it and say hi. If you are bold sketch the plant and ask questions. On the red line, share the name of the plant or tree you have adopted.

Resources

See Wendy in action in a One Minute Video “How to Draw a Cherry Tomato.”

“How to draw an acorn”