Assemblages

I've been hearing about Tobi's chicks for several weeks now. They were her husband's idea and he built a coop for them, but until they have all their feathers and can maintain their temperature without a heat lamp, they live in a cardboard enclosure in the family room. I went to visit them…and Tobi…this morning and took a picture of them in their well appointed cardboard enclosure which has a mirror and a window. 

Tobi and I had a lovely visit on her terrace, covering a great number of subjects, but particularly the challenges of moving and of looking after a large country property. I'm afraid I kept her from her garden for too long….

I was going to take a picture of the items on the kitchen windowsill, but by the time I got around to it, the light was impossible. However, now that we have lived here for three years, I started thinking about the way these assemblages occur. Some of them, like Tobi's chickens are very deliberate. 
Others, like the collection of things on the end of my bookshelf were initially just a place to put interesting things that I picked up outside and evolved into a collection.

Thinking it was empty, ILooked  through the little drawer in the table in the guest bedroom and found the collection of 'foreign' money which included South African Rand, Norwegian kroner, and British pounds. In addition there were several forms of American currency like the $2 bills, which are still legal tender (I think) but haven't been seen in general circulation in decades. As I dug around  I realized that these objects were thrown in the drawer over the years, forgotten, and made the move from Berkeley, still in their drawer and still forgotten. I loved OilMan's Eagle Scout ribbon, and the campaign buttons from saner times and a different Clinton.

Having started with birds of a feather, I decided to end with an assemblage of pairs of birds which I collected from around the house. They were acquired from around the world, and are made of different materials, but they are all birds. The robins in the front are Danish Royal Copenhagen and the black ones next to them are heavy metal opium weights from Thailand. The clear glass bird was a wedding present and the blue one was a gift from a friend in New Zealand. The rubber duckies have been in my bathroom for as long as I can remember. One has its back turned because Blake found him and surgically removed his orange bill before I caught him.. Dana put a Band-Aid over the hole….I got he final cloth pair, flanking the others in Japan. 

It's been fun thinking about these things, where they came from, why I kept them and the memories that go with them. Not so fun will be removing the heavy gold wedding band, which I think was from OilMan's mother's third marriage, which I found in the drawer with the money and the boy scout badges and idly tried on. I'm hoping it will come off later this evening when the weather cools off and my fingers don't look like sausages.

These pictures are an assemblage of their own, and I'm not too happy with the free collage app I downloaded for them, but my glass of wine in the arbor awaits….