Dead Plants Society

I spent a pleasant two hours this morning among women making things -- paintings, drawings, quilt blocks, book pages -- in the simply decorated community center. They are members of the loosely organized Dead Plants Society, dedicated to environmental issues and to meeting with one another each week to chat and craft objects and writings.

A few years ago, my then-neighbor Diane invited me to the opening of a show at Stirling's coffee house. She and other Dead Plants women mounted an exhibit of their work and read and hooted (loved the owl calls) and chatted about the abundant flora and fauna where we live. I wanted at that moment to be a dead plant.

I got to be one, however briefly, today and had a delightful time. Among us were Jill (who said the other day, "I'd love to do crafts all the time," who writes like a dream -- see her blog RoadKillBlues -- and plays banjo with Bazzania); Yolande of the Sewanee Herbarium (who frequently guides informative hikes on the Domain), Mary (a classmate in the School of Letters and also an Herbarium staff member as well as keyboardist with Bazzania), Mary (a former Country Day art teacher in New Orleans whose daughter's "Meals I Have Eaten" blog can be accessed at the right), Jean (who with her husband Harry is a fixture here among naturalists and whose delightful "Nature Notes" appears in the weekly newspaper), and Alex (whose is here about six weeks and then "home" in Chapel Hill for six weeks, off and on).

I am grateful for the company of lively women and for the work of heads and hands, together.