Magic in Nature Archives

sunlight behind yellow flowers in a meadow at sunset

Cornerstone Content, Entertainment, Magic in Nature, Our Magical World

Our Magical World

October 18, 2024October 18, 2024 Ella

Dorothy was right – sometimes you don’t need to look further than your own back yard to find wonderful things to inspire you. Who needs a trip to Oz when our magical world is where we wake up?

I’ve always had this sense of wonder about the natural world. It’s often simple things like the beautiful symmetry inside of a purple onion, or the star shape of seeds when you cut the apple sideways. I’ve had friendships with trees (very good listeners) and connections with rocks, which I bring home from practically any walk outside of pavement. In some ways, I’m always on the lookout for treasure from nature, a hole in a tree that could be a fairy door, or a sunbeam that stirs that part of my imagination that longs for connection and magic.

This has led me to become a Wiccan, to take photos and turn them into art, to fill shelves with birch bark, seed pods, seashells, feathers, crystals, fossils, bones.

I’m fascinated by this idea that things out of stories and fairy tales are all around us, here in the real world, if you only know where to look. You have to be sensitive to it, like a psychic channeling spirits, awake to the possibilities. It’s almost the opposite of cynicism, embodying the belief that the real world already is inspiring, fascinating, beautiful, peaceful, connected, magical.

Dewdrops lined up like pearls on a spider’s web. Flower bushes that resemble a congregation of butterflies. Bicycles bringing communities together. Bunnies that are blue, octpuses change color when they dream, and Tasmanian devils that glow in the dark. The World of Wonders is not just fiction, not just imagination, but our magical world is at your fingertips and all around us.

A lot of what I blog about is the art of seeing, and I hope we can gather real things, people, and places that fulfill the dream of seeing our magical world is real.

Our Magical World

Dorothy was right – sometimes you don’t need to look further than your own back yard to find wonderful things to inspire you. Who needs a trip to Oz when our magical world is where we wake up? I’ve always had this sense of wonder about the natural world. It’s often simple things like the……
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Schoolhouse of No Return

I found bittersweet beauty in an old schoolhouse, on the edge of my town and a crumbling past. One of the things I’ve been promising to do once school was back in session is to go on a photography safari. Not to shoot wildlife, just take a drive for an hour or two and stop……
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The Wonderful World According to Jeff Goldblum

I’m always on the hunt for other people who create joy around them and explore the world with an eye for wonder. The Disney+ show, “The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” is a short-form series that basically lets the actor and connoisseur run amok while exploring a singular topic in our modern world. Denim. Ice……
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Magic in the Mindfulness

Wildflower Vagabond

July 25, 2021February 23, 2024 Ella

Most people don’t need to be told to Go Play Outside as much as they can in the height of summer. My pre-teen son, maybe, when he’s eyebrow-deep in videogames and YouTubes of other people playing videogames. But otherwise, we all know July is a playground, don’t we? Summer’s free gifts abound wherever you look.

Example: When you find yourself free for half an hour while your kid is in drum lessons (in person again, thank God and Goddess), walk up the hill so steep you have to zig-zag in switchbacks to spare your ankles.

Find an intriguing path through unfamiliar woods.

Follow the path as it loops around a park, empty but for an ancient swing set, made of wood and rusty metal, replete with one broken swing.

Count four varieties of butterflies. Pause at mossy trees, like twisted skeleton hands, among the riot of green life. Get scolded by a blue jay. Startle from an animal crashing through the woods, across your path and into the bushes on the other side, so suddenly and loudly that for a moment you aren’t sure what it was. A dog, surely, as you are surrounded by neighborhood and farmland. But those woods, that whip of a tail, that speed….

It was a dog, chasing a rabbit. Must have been a dog.

Stumble across daisies. Dare to pick a few, hoping no one in the neighborhood that is not yours will notice, or mind.

Find a complicated purple flower bubbling up on fountains of green leaves. Learn by a Google Lens search that this has the romantic name of “crown vetch“.

Wonder what a vetch is, and whether it’s some sort of curse or blessing.

More daisies, glorious daisies, all the daisies you could dream of picking. No neighbor would scold you for collecting them, for no handful could be missed in this vast galaxy of white and yellow stars.

Daisies and crown vetch, summer's free gifts

With your fist gripping your bounty, recall that wildflowers are just one of summer’s free gifts.

summers free gifts of wildflowers in a vase at home

Read about my winter bouquet, A Vase of Dessicated Things.

Magic in Nature, Magic in the Mindfulness, Our Magical World

Schoolhouse Rocks

January 4, 2021February 24, 2024 Ella

The rocks at Schoolhouse Beach on Washington Island, Wisconsin, are so smooth they feel almost soft. The unique silky texture makes the rocks precious; you’d get a $200 fine for removing one! On a chilly day, visitors built rock stacks with these smooth, flat stones well-loved by the waves, instead of swimming. This stack was ours.

I worked hard in post to get separation of color in the individual rocks. Plus doesn’t that swirl of cloud at the top look a bit like an eye? Look out for the VFD.

Visit my store at society6.com/ellaarrow to find art prints, canvases, and other cool stuff made from my art.

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Magic in the Mindfulness

Oak Tree Canopy

January 4, 2021February 23, 2024 Ella

Oak tree paths twist and turn above our heads, on a walk in Stoughton, Wisconsin.

My son and I got up a plan to walk the whole town, since we were doing a couple blocks every day with the dog, and we’d walked every block near our house so many times it was boring. I searched online for a detailed map, printed it on several pieces of paper, taped them together and posted them on my bulletin board. When we walk somewhere new, we mark it with a highlighter. My son especially likes the mapping part of it. This means we may need to drive to our starting point, whether a couple blocks or a mile, and then walk our dog together on a few new blocks. It’s still houses and sidewalks, woods and lawns and driveways, but there is novelty in it, and in a lockdown, your brain needs novelty to keep alert and break the unbearable sameness of the day-to-day.

We have not completed our goal of walking every street in our small city, which only covers about 4 square miles, because some days we just go around the block to get the dog (and us) quick exercise without fuss. But whenever we do, we discover something new. Stoughton has a great number of Victorian houses, for instance, and the architectural details never bore me. Plus we observe chicken coops and gardens and all sorts of unique choices. One block had no less than three large houses painted a very similar pink of the “dusty rose” variety. The vast canopy of an oak tree was one of those finds.

Visit my store at society6.com/ellaarrow to find art prints, canvases, and other cool stuff made from my art.

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Magic in Nature, Magic in the Mindfulness, Our Magical World

Poppy Burning Bright

December 21, 2019February 23, 2024 Ella

Satin shine and searing color conceal the secret web of darkness in the embers of the red poppy’s burn.

Visit my store at society6.com/ellaarrow to find art prints, canvases, and other cool stuff made from my art.

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Fairy Tale, Magic in the Mindfulness, Make your own Magic, Tiny Stories

Snow Apples

October 9, 2019February 23, 2024 Ella

It was the snow that made the apples irresistible. The icy glaze obscured any hint of discoloring poison, and heightened the longing for the last sweets before true winter gripped the forest. Now a sprinkle of magic to make the crabapples grow. There. Three of them in an old woman’s basket. White as her skin, red as her lips indeed. The girl would never suspect a gift so perfect, so like her fable.

Visit my store at society6.com/ellaarrow to find art prints, canvases, and other cool stuff made from my art.

Buy Snow Apples

Magic in Nature, Magic in the Mindfulness, Make your own Magic, Our Magical World, Tiny Stories

One Thing Clear

October 9, 2019February 23, 2024 Ella

The spider watched the fog catching in her web, each bright bead another dying breath of the misty September morning. Frankly, she preferred dragonflies, but at least it made one thing clear: sometimes you cannot admire your creation until you stop working.

Visit my store at society6.com/ellaarrow to find art prints, canvases, and other cool stuff made from my art.

Buy One Thing Clear