It has been four months since I decided to leave my job and be a farm intern while following my creative calling to paint. In the past, I took pride in being able to accomplish a lot in a small space of time.

Last week I finished a painting and could not think of a title that fit. So I decided to engage my social media audience and invited them to suggest a name.

Trading my retail job for an internship at a farm has given me the opportunity to become part of a new community fondly known as my farm family or “farmily.” Our conversations sometime turn to discussions of tastes in music.

My 91-year-old mother is a musician. She played piano and organ at our church in New Philadelphia, Ohio until Alzheimer’s disease robbed her of her abilities.

The kitchen is a place where my art-inspired life comes full circle. I often set a group of colors in my memory as I spend time in the garden or at the farm.

I have been gardening for almost 10 years. There is no one in my family to hand down the skills of a gardener, so I started out small with a raised bed and relied on books and the internet as guides.

The fiber artist in my life, Ann, has recently been getting to know my niece B.J. This relationship has been building in a crazy round about way.

Several months ago I started a 36×36 painting. I had no looming deadlines, and I was at a place where I could explore new techniques that had been bouncing around in my head.

Life is full of distractions. Too often we allow the shoulds, as my friend Mimi calls them, to rob us of time that could be better spent.

Everyone has a measure of creativity in them, and every work of art has a story. For me, it was a long journey from the inception of, “I think I can paint” to picking up the brush and pallet knives and doing it.