Category Archives: Musings

My Artist’s Business Plan for Wild Ozark 2019

So, this isn’t a ‘formal’ business plan, but more of an outline of my goals, plans, and strategy for the year regarding my art. To see the outline of intended subjects for the paintings, take a look at my Ozark Birds of Prey page. It’ll give you an idea of the focus and scope of […]

“I make paint from rocks…” A typical day at the market.

It’s a typical day at the market (for someone who makes paint from rocks). I’m most easily found during winter on Saturday’s at the Fayetteville Farmer’s Market. To see what other venues I’ll be at this year, check out my online calendar. And Wild Ozark is always ‘open for business’ at our Etsy shop. At […]

New Products Lineup for Wild Ozark 2019

Lots of new Paleo Paint products in the lineup for Wild Ozark 2019! Look for new handmade watercolors, new packaging (less plastic!) and more paintings. Since I started making the paint in June of last year, I’ve experimented a lot. And I’ve learned a lot. The same goes for the paintings using handmade watercolors. As […]

Winter Solstice 2018, New Year, and the Color Black

Full Moon and Meteor Shower at Winter Solstice 2018 Winter solstice 2018 in Northern Hemisphere will be at 4:23 PM on Friday, December 21. This is the longest night of the year, and although I typically think of it as a dark night, it won’t be this year. With a full moon and meteor shower going […]

An End of Year Post: Things going on at Wild Ozark

It’s been a busy past few months at Wild Ozark. I haven’t posted as often as I normally do, and when the blog goes silent, it’s usually because there’s just too many other things on my plate. Just in case I don’t get a chance to make another post to commemorate the end of the […]

Yay! Wild Ozark is back online!

After 3 days of being in website purgatory, the site is finally back to the light of day. Just thought I’d make a little post to shout out about that. You guys have no idea how much grief I’ve gone through trying to get it here, lol, unless you’re also of the geeky persuasion. I’ve […]

Clearing the Clutter: Promises, Broken Rocks, and Things to Come

Such promise in a broken rock… I see paints everywhere now. Makes it hard to walk down the driveway. As if that wasn’t already hard enough before I learned about making earth pigments! The path in my office/studio AND the website has gotten hard to navigate too, so it’s time to do some work clearing […]

Art Satchel-A Souvenir from Doha

This old, beat-up looking camel leather bag is my new art satchel. I love it. It’s a souvenir from Doha, Qatar, where I’ve spent the last two weeks. It has enough room to hold my paints, journal, a few favorite pencil colors, brushes and rags. It even holds my easel, if I don’t mind the […]

Nearly Dry

We’ve had some rain lately, but not enough. The creek that runs through our land is nearly dry now. Thankfully, there are still a few constantly refilling pools here and there, or else I’d have to carry water to the horses. Even the spring puddles on the way to the back gate are completely dry. […]

Kingston, Arkansas?

There are some hidden treasures in the Ozarks. The tiny little town of Kingston, Arkansas is one of them. The town itself is tiny, consisting only of a simple square with a gazebo in the middle for the “downtown” portion and across the bridge heading north there is the school and a gas station. That […]

A Week at Wild Ozark … No, I’m Not Lost

I’m just mired neck deep in a To-Do list of my own making, trying to get organized and into some sort of a groove now that market season has begun. Since I haven’t written in a while, I figured I’d write up a summary of a typical week at Wild Ozark. This is my first […]

What’s Not to Love?

I titled this photo “What’s Not to Love?” because I love (almost) everything about living back here in the middle of nowhere. Heading home is always a pleasure. Once I turn off the pavement, the half hour it takes to get to my house from there is pure sensory overload. I drive very slowly, looking […]

Day 13: Nature Journal Series

Signs of Life About this journal entry The signs of life during the coldest parts of winter always intrigue me. I love seeing the green grass shoots found under a layer of snow or peeking out from the shelter of tumbled rocks. I’m not sure why I left the chickweed uncolored in my drawing. I […]

Too Many Irons in the Fire

This is a fiery sunset photo taken several years ago and it prompted my idea to write this post about having too many irons in the fire. Dense dark clouds hung low on the horizon, allowing the setting sun to illuminate so brightly as a backdrop giving the appearance of wildfires raging on the distant […]

Things I’ve Heard but Never Seen- Spring Peepers

How many things have you heard but never seen? One that confounds me every year is a little frog. Today was a very windy and warm day, warm enough to make it easy to work up a sweat while helping Rob with firewood this morning. I can’t remember a sweaty February day before. The peepers […]

Guest Post: Climate Change. Just My Thoughts and Observations

A note from Madison: Just to clear up some confusion – This is a guest post. It’s not my article. My own opinion on things is a lot more woo-woo and probably a lot less “scientific”, in spite of my past history of a career in science. To state my own stand on the issue […]

Things I’ve Learned (Since Moving to the Country)

These are the things I’ve learned since moving out here to Wild Ozark. I used to think I lived in “the country”, before we moved out here. That was thirteen years ago and I quickly realized once we burnt the bridges and sold our house, that we had no clue what it meant to live […]

Endings and Hopeful for New Beginnings

Sometimes it takes a thing ending to spark renewed efforts to find new beginnings. Endings One of our little shops in town closed its doors abruptly this weekend. The owner has tried to make a successful business of it, but that’s a hard thing to do in a town with a population of only 500 […]

How Ginseng Stewardship Also Benefits the Landowner

Someone asked me yesterday about how ginseng stewardship benefits the landowner. It stumped me at first, because I’d never considered it from that angle. What is Stewardship? To steward something is to manage or take care of something. The short answer to this post’s question is yes. Stewardship benefits the landowner, especially if they want […]

Sun Sparkles

On this day in 2015, we had snow and sun sparkles. So far this year it’s been unseasonably warm and no snow so far. That could change this weekend, though – snow is in the forecast! Since we haven’t had any this year yet, I’m rerunning the photos from a couple of years ago. Sun […]

Long Dirt Road: Why it Takes me an Hour to Drive 12 Miles

This is a post from a few years ago that I love, so I’m reposting it. We live down a long dirt road. This little facet of our lives is the main thing that makes or breaks most newcomers to rural life. It takes a long time to go anywhere, if you go slow enough […]

Rambling On about the To-Do List

Lots of things on my to-do list today, and I guess I should be getting on with *doing* them instead of rambling on about them. But talking about it like this helps me to figure out what all I need to do. Plus in the process, it marks off one of the items, which is to make […]

Things Collected During My Morning Mile

I have a housefull of things collected. Some I actually do get around to using, some stay on a shelf gathering dust. A few of the most prized collected things are just there for me to look at and enjoy, like the hornet’s nest and abandoned bird nest hanging in my office. Most mornings after […]

Just an Ordinary Blog Post, and The Lost Penguin

The Lost Penguin Yesterday was mine and Rob’s 4th wedding anniversary. Our first date was in Eureka Springs, so each year we go back and have one of the mochas from Mud Street Cafe. Well, I must have ordered the wrong thing, or else they started making them a LOT smaller in the year since […]