My promise to write something about an object I love is dueling with my new nature card project. I am having so much fun with these little drawings—I wake up at six each morning thinking about the next one. I have decided to rely on the simple dictum that has served me for half my life: Follow your heart, use your head, move your a**. So here’s the screech owl that comes to my yard every winter. I never saw her until very late one night a few years ago she perched on a power line right outside my bedroom window and whinnied. She’s small, less than half the size of her better known relatives, but even from the dense cover of my neighbor’s well-treed yard, her eerie equine call penetrates a still cold night, and sleep.

MEMOIR WORKSHOP NOTES:  A writing project doesn’t always cooperate with early intentions. Novel writers often find their characters stubbornly ignore the plot line and head off in crazy directions. This sort-of memoir was begun to get my artist/writer self—and yours—functioning again and it’s working. Don’t let me throw you off. If you have begun your own writing project, go with what gets you up in the morning. By the way, is anyone trying this?