Moss Whispers

Been clearing last bits of leaves from The Hillock so the mosses can keep spreading! Freshly washed blue skies, mosses soaked with green and sunshine, spring peepers and a pond full of frog eggs waiting to hatch! These were the greeters of the day! The dogs helped me rescue more praying mantis egg sacs before bush hogging makes room for the wildflowers!

It’s been about 20 days, actually, that Joe (4 yrs), his baby brother, Alex (8 months), his mom, Catherine and Dad, John have been staying inside their 2 bedroom home on the 11th floor of their Apartment Building in Beijing. There are only a couple of cases of the Coronavirus in another building among the whole group of buildings that make up their large neighborhood. Now deliveries are only left at one of the gates which Catherine picks up at different times of the day, masked and covered for protection. They are quite resilient and patient!

For about the last week, Joe and I have been have a special story time every evening through FaceTime. It’s been quite fun! We spent alot of time reading different dragon adventures and now we’ve been reading about making maps. Tonight, their morning, we began working on placing objects on paper and making a map of his room and his mom and dad’s bathroom.

It looks like I’m having a mapmaking session only with myself, but he’s got his own paper on the other end of the phone on the other side of the world!

Here is the map Joe was making on the other side of the world . It’s of his bedroom on the other side of the world! His bed and floor are the same color, in case you’re having trouble figuring out what’s what. He really did an amazing job of getting all the furniture in the right places. I know because he let us sleep with him when we were in Beijing at the end of the summer!

It would be so awesome if we could play Harold and the Purple Crayon and draw maps to each other’s houses and airplanes to get us there!

Here are the pages before I’ve made next writing edits and painting edits. It’s a good way for me and others to get the gist of the story. Now that Old Owl has found Martha’s Shoe, I’m challenging visitors to my Mosswhispers website to see if you can find these discrepancies in my paintings: 

Challenge 1: On which pages is Martha wearing a tennis shoe instead of a red leather shoe? There is one page where her shoe never got painted.  For a bonus point, what is that page number? List the page numbers where is Martha wearing her shoe on the wrong foot?

Challenge 2: List the pages where Slab is missing his shoulder strap and map.

Challenge 3: Slug helps Slab find clay. Where does he usually do this for Slab?  Who is Slab’s other clay helper and where does he help him with his clay? He actually is not pictured in the story and is only mentioned once. 

Challenge 4: What do the fairies know about the One-Winged Bird’s missing wing?

Challenge 5: What is the name of the Cafe where Slab and Martha make their Search Plan?

Challenge 6: There is one character who is actually performing  family role reversal in this story. Who is it? And what is the role that should be played by a different family member?

Challenge 7: How many places on social media would you be willing to share my moss whispers website?

Doing this last page was a challenge. Not sure why but I have many ‘suspicions’….•finishing anything has a charge to it! (is it ‘enough’? what will I do next? I’ll miss this little project so might be hard to ‘let go’ and ‘move on’ •have I really reached the end? • painting what’s in her mind (PLUS what’s in MY mind!) gets complicated. • I need to stop and learn how to paint ‘firefly glow’ • I need to practice how to get her body moving right and figure out how to merge the different sizes and scales. • I’m wiped out from a bunch of woodworking I’ve been doing • I MUST procrastinate and take a break!

I guess I’m good at making such lists! Now finally here’s a rough last page!

Way to go ME! And way to go Martha Julia Agnes Adele! We’re all proud and relieved to have done what we’ve done and learned what we’ve learned!

Now comes the really fun part!!! Re-editing and re-editing everything from type-os to mistake-os! And rewriting the book, changing words, concepts, plot and all! For now, we’ll let you ‘Sit and rest a spell, Martha Julia Agnes Adele! Thanks for this adventure!

Something about this last page seems to be asking my imagination to pull together lots of pieces, to practice with pens, pencils, and paints, and maybe procrastinate a little in between each part? So here are a few pieces waiting to find their place in the last painting.

I spent all day on this one painting! It was actually quite fun since I did the drawing yesterday and got to start on the painting early in the day while my hands were sort of nimble. Then after I had loaded it on my computer and added the pre-written text, I realized that the fireflies somehow were not on the page! They must be off on some other twilight job, so will add them when they return! One more page to go! And it may take awhile to map it out! We’ll see!

Hard to say goodbye to her friends at The Hillock, but Martha’s excited to have made new friends and learned something new! I identify with the energy involved in going on adventures and then heading home. Feeling a little fatigue which can be helped by a good night’s sleep! Sleep well everyone!

Been doing a lot of rewrites of these last pages and even ended up adding an extra page! Also trying to paint without using the ink drawings. Still ended up adding ink at the end! I’m looking forward to the day when I can paint without drawing first! Still learning as I go! Thank goodness!

This page invited me over and over to rewrite, reread, re-edit, and spend days learning to draw. Each time I re positioned and redrew Martha Julia Agnes Adele, she grew up a tiny bit more! I KNOW she felt like she had learned and mastered something new, and probably DID feel a little older and smarter, yet I think she grew up a little too fast! Glad you’re realized you can tie your shoes tight and that you are feeling more confident, Martha, but I DO wish you could keep your baby face and chubby arms a little longer!

This old map of The Hillock was sketched a few years ago, and has morphed a bit by little hands in the neighborhood. Just as Neverland maps take on the shapes of children’s minds, so does the map of The Hillock. This morning I noticed that even a few houses had been moved to another Pebblestone Street! Perhaps this was the map that Slab carried in the pouch over his shoulder?