Spirit Guides

 

Camel-Eagle

Last week my friend Liz and I visited the Sonoma Botanical Garden because we wanted to see the exhibition "Spirit Guides - Fantastical Creatures from the Workshop of Jacobo and María Ángeles". It was fantastic.

The first sculpture greeted us in front of the Welcome Center, Camel-Eagle. When you stand behind the sculpture you can see the hump.

The eight monumental sculptures, made from fiberglass and painted with acrylic paint, are distributed throughout the garden, most of them along the California Oaks Trail.

The sculptures are inspired by the astrology of the Mesoamerican Zapotecs. Zapotec astrology features animals associated with birth dates. These animals can be symbolic of personality traits, but they are also believed to share a destiny and soul with their human counterparts. 

 This is Coyote-Fish. As you can see here, these are rather strange animals - coyotes with fish tails, eagles with camel humps, monkeys with iguana backs etc. Fantastical creatures indeed.

Every part of the animal is painted in great detail.

The Crane - the only animal sculpture that didn't have a part of another animal.

Jacobo and María Ángeles are a Mexican artist couple from San Martín Tilcajete, Oaxaca, where they operate a community workshop providing training and emplyment to hundreds of local artists. Their work blends contemporary sculpture with Mesoamerican cultural traditions and patterns found in Indigenous Mexican artwork. 

The Monkey-Iguana:

This artwork draws on Zapotec beliefs about animals that share a spiritual bond with humas. For many Zapotecs, and other Indigenous Mexican people, special animals called tonas and nahuales act as spiritual companions or guides. Assigned to each person at birth, any animal may be a spirit guide, from butterflies to jaguars to monkeys. Different people interpret the influence of these animals in different ways - guardians, shapeshifters and companions with intertwined souls and fates.

Tonas and nahuales can also embody their human counterparts' personalities. The monkey, for example, symbolizes knowledge and an affinity for the arts, while the iguana characterizes an ability to adapt and persevere.

The Armadillo-Insect:

The following sculpture was my favorite one - the Jaguar-Eagle.

Look at this beautiful and intense face!

In my humble opinion, I think the Rabbit-Deer should have the name Rabbit-Antelope. Those horns don't look like a deer antler.

The head of the rabbit was exquisite.

A close-up of the pattern at its neck. The symbol is the seed and stands for fertility.

Lastly we came upon the Deer-Butterfly.

According to the Zapotec astrological calendar the deer symbolizes agility and energy, while the butterfly represents hope and optimism.

Aren't these some wonderful faces and worthy for Nicole's Friday Face Off?

Finally Back to the Lake

 

You might remember that at the beginning of May I hurt my leg and was diagnosed with ITBS (iliotibial band syndrome). After stretching brought some relief but didn't result in healing, my GP referred me to PT. I tried to get into the PT practice that helped me after my knee surgery, but they canceled my first appointment 90 minutes before it with the reasoning that they don't accept referrals from my doctor's network anymore. As you can imagine, I was livid! Thankfully my GP referred me to a different PT which had an opening two weeks later and today, I "graduated" from 9 weeks of PT. The leg isn't 100%, but so much better. I will continue doing my home program, confident that it will further help me. 

The wonderful outcome is that I can walk again. So a couple weeks ago I went for a short, 30-minute walk at the lake - finally! 

It felt so good to put on my hiking boots again.

I chose one of my favorite trails. You can see the lake through the trees.

This is my favorite tree, an old crooked oak, overgrown with poison oak at its base.

A bird feather and an acorn on the ground.

Often there are people who fish from the pier at the boat launch.

Then I saw this little American Mink. I had never seen one before, and I first thought it was a baby otter since there are otters in the lake. But no, my research told me it's an American Mink. S/he had just caught a small crayfish.

Since I was there last, the Water Hyacinth has spread considerably. It is a very invasive, non-native plant. Its flowers look beautiful, but I wish it wasn't there.

Blackberry bushes loaded with berries lined the path along the water. These are quite invasive as well.

It had felt so good to be back again. Since then I have taken a few more walks in favorite places that I missed so much over most of the summer. More about that sometime in the future.

Chasing the Sun in Mallorca

 

We have often done spontaneous or crazy things in our little family. Therefore, it is no surprise that Kaefer did both a bit more than a week ago, when she decided "last minute" to go to Mallorca to watch the solar eclipse on August 12. Mallorca - a popular vacation destination for Germans and other Europeans for as long as I can remember - had never been on her radar until she read that the "grand finale" of this year's solar eclipse would happen right before sunset in Spain and Mallorca (which belongs to Spain). She was lucky and got a cheap flight, a couple nights in a hostel in Palma and another couple nights in a hotel in Sóller. Not easy in the middle of August, but I guess if you're that spontaneous AND crazy, luck is on your side.

This was not her first solar eclipse. When she was a teenager we drove up to Redding to watch an annular solar eclipse and in August 2017 we experienced a total solar eclipse in Oregon on the Snake River. 

The few days before the eclipse Kaefer was looking for the perfect spot and settled on a hill above the Port de Sóller. The view was wonderful, but she certainly wasn't alone there.

Her little rabbit that accompanies her on all of her adventures was watching as well.

Of course she had brought her eclipse glasses (and a headlamp for the way back).

For Nicole's Friday Face Off

After waiting the entire day, the spectacle finally started when the moon moved between the sun and our home planet.

The light slowly changed.

It's getting exciting!

And then - clouds drifted in front of the sun! They would not be able to see the corona of the sun.

But Kaefer took a video of the moon shadow when it raced across - it is fascinating to watch. She sent me a sped-up version of the video and I do recommend watching these 1½ minutes.

The sun appeared again - I'm not sure that it was this red, but it can be difficult to represent the true color in a camera.

The sunset was atmospheric and fascinating.

And then everybody went home. 

All photos are by Kaefer.

Goodbye Kibeau

 

Last Saturday my sweet Kibeau crossed the rainbow bridge. He had declined rapidly - I'm still shocked about how quickly; one day he was jumping a six foot fence, two days later he couldn't walk ten feet without resting. Granted, he was a very old cat - 18 years, which translates to 85+ human years. But that didn't make it any easier. Renee, Kibeau's "legal" owner, eventually found a vet who would come to our home. It was very peaceful, I stayed with Kibeau until the very end. I had been his person for the last six years and there was no way I wouldn't be at his side for his last journey.

I admit, I haven't cried that much in a long time than I did the last few days.

Here I wrote how he became my cat. The following photo is the very first picture I took of him when he turned up in my garden in the fall of 2018.

Back then I was already fascinated by his paws.

He had the cutest paws - big and chubby, and ready to extend those claws!

Like all cats, he was a master snoozer.

In 2020 he began staying in our garden full-time, no going home anymore and Renee asked us if we could feed him. Of course we could. I have to give it to her, she took it very gracefully that Kibeau wouldn't go home to her anymore. I guess there were too many other cats in his home plus a dog - and he really hated dogs. When I thought about the timing later, I realized that he decided to stay here shortly after Kaefer had left for Germany.

He adored Kaefer!

Because of the Geek's severe allergies, Kibeau couldn't come into the house, so he became the most spoiled and pampered outdoor cat in the neighborhood. I got him a cat house, friends of ours gave us a heating pad that their little dog didn't like (and Kibeau loved) and it's emparrassing to admit how many blankets he had so that he would stay warm in those cold winter nights.

He was there when I put the laundry on the line, sat with me while I was knitting or just snozzed in the flower beds.

One day we hadn't closed the screen door completely and suddenly he turned up in our bedroom.

Of course he took his sweet time checking out everything and being cute.

Sometimes I let him in my studio where he enjoyed sitting at the window. looking out. While I was trying to follow along a creative writing course on Zoom, he thought it was appropriate to take a nap on top of my notebook.

He was such a rascal!

But in the last few days he reached his ultimate goal - our couch. The Geek, my allergic husband, took dozens of pictures of Kibeau sleeping on our couch. He is such a softie.

Kibeau had worked his way into our hearts and he has a special place there. I will always remember him very fondly.

And today, Kibeau is my star for Nicole's Friday Face Off.