Big Fish 🎣

Today brings you a fishy tale in celebration of Pisces season.

It was a beautiful and balmy 71 (!) degree day when I stepped outside with Nellie 🐶 for our usual afternoon walk. I thought about changing into shorts, but I didn’t—and we continued down the hill through our neighborhood and through a scrambly trail down another hill until we emerged at the edge of the Potomac River, which is our favorite place to be at around 4 pm in the winter, mostly because the sun is positioned about like this:

I’m able to take Nellie off leash when I get down to this area, mostly because she’s good about sticking by me anyways and also because we hardly ever see anyone else here. We both have so much more fun this way! Sometimes she gets into things she probably shouldn’t, which is what I thought was happening when she ran with a particular urgency up to a group of guys fishing on this unseasonably summery day.

I tried calling her back to me but almost immediately I saw what she had seen and became just as enraptured as I watched one of the fisherman pull a 35 lb. catfish out of the river (!!!)

What made this moment particularly strange is that we had just literally walked over (via a pedestrian bridge over a busy road) a car on fire that Nellie had smelled and alerted me to 5 minutes before I even figured out what was happening. By the time we were close enough to see what was going on, sirens wailing around us, we could see the smoking brown metal frame of a small sedan sitting in one of the lanes on Canal Rd., as if it had just stopped and spontaneously combusted right there, then burnt down to the kind of crisp car skeleton you might see only in a junkyard pile.

After a few quick prayers for anyone involved (from what I could tell it didn’t look like anyone had been hurt, hopefully the car’s passengers had been able to evacuate), and in an attempt to not be a rubbernecking bystander, we continued our walk through one dramatic scene and into this next (remember the catfish?!?)

All set to the backdrop of—again—this magical weather, something about these concurrent events just seemed so…cinematic or something.

These guys were of course so friendly and excited that they’d had an audience, and they were so sweet to Nellie. We were all so in awe of the moment and it was a cool shared experience for all of us.

The concurrence of these two events I had just witnessed felt like one of those reminders that like, all of the time, at any moment, babies are being born, people are taking their last breaths, sperm whales are swimming, cheetahs are running, someone is saying “I love you” for the first time, or starting to write the first sentences of the next best-selling novel, or cleaning up spilled milk.

After a few moments of joyful celebration and disbelief, these guys gently released this big old (he must have been ancient!) and I’m sure grateful guy back into his watery home.

As we parted ways and tried to lock into our memory everything we’d seen in the past 5 minutes, Nellie and I made our way down the trail to the next fork in the path, where we saw a sign that the weird stuff wasn’t over—

just a perfectly good package of sausage hanging on a tree!

I swear to you this is exactly how I found it and how we left it. I don’t know why someone would hang sausage on a tree but it’s a shame because I’m sure by this point it wasn’t safe to eat and it actually looked like it might have been perfectly delicious.

So we continued on, baffled and content.

🎣

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We did a vision board workshop this weekend in The ALMANAC (the membership community for Lady Farmer) and it was SO FUN! It’s been too long since I did a vision board, I think for many reasons, not the least of which being just the mere fact that there seem to be less magazines/catalogs hanging around that I could use to cut things out of (??). I guess this makes sense, but it was also cool how between random magazines that I’ve held onto for far too long + some newer ones I’ve seemed to have accumulated, I was able to pull some awesome words & images and create a collage I love so much, I just want to stare at it all day.

This is such an interesting exercise and, depending on how you go about it and the intention you bring to the process, a really wonderful glimpse into your own subconscious.

I’m not sure if you’re supposed to share your vision board super publicly but whatever, I trust you trusty newsletter friends and I hope that this little project might inspire you to make time and space to cut things out and tape them together if you think that’s something that might make you happy.

I don’t know what any of it means (except that blue and green are really making me happy right now!) but I do love staring at it.

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I’ve been fan-girling over this pottery company for a couple of years now, sucked in by their beautiful glazes shown off by their incredibly engaging social media content. As a company, they are admirable for many reasons, including the fact that they recently raised their minimum wage to $22/hour, which is amazing for Western North Carolina, or really anywhere for that matter.

I can’t say exactly what it is about this pottery that is particularly cult-forming, but I do know that personally I’m so drawn to all of their colors (that they rotate and retire seasonally), simple shapes, and the way that everything works together so practically.

As a Valentine’s treat to myself, I bought a mug in this Rococo glaze pictured below. It’s the only thing I’ve had a drink out of in two weeks.

Here’s an example of how different some of the colors can be and how you might think you have enough mugs until you see all of them together and realize you’re actually missing all of them from your mug cabinet.

The best part about this whole thing (and what prompted me to include it in this week’s newsletter) is that I was recently added to both a text thread and an Instagram DM thread of other East Fork Pottery enthusiasts by a friend who knew I had caught the bug before I even knew what was happening.

I don’t think I’ve experienced this type of particular niche excitement about something so random shared in a small group context before.

It’s really fun.

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Like many of us, I’m trying to take in as much of the current events as I can without spiraling into complete despair, but thanks to my dear Ukrainian-American friend Lida (@lidabenson), I’ve been getting almost hourly updates via her Instagram stories.

On the docket to watch in the next couple of days is this documentary which is currently on Netflix. I understand it to be one of the best ways to understand the fuller context of the conflict.

Here are a bunch of helpful links I found through Lida as well if you’re looking for more information or how to contribute to the fight for peace.

MARIA PRYMACHENKO A Dove Has Spread Her Wings and Asks For Peace (1982)

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blessings all

made by:

emma