May Newsletter

NO. 46 | May 2025

From the Desk of Madison Moore is a monthly newsletter of friendly writing on living a creative life. Here, we celebrate the joy and magic of making things! And by reveling in the expansive definition of making, we acknowledge that we make things everyday. More concretely, I write about the process for all the kinds of things I make (books, clothes, illustrations, quilts, paintings, ceramics, baked goods, flowers…).

But, creativity is also more than an isolated craft—it’s a life practice. So you will find me writing about life, the natural world, home, food, and more.

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The sun breaking on the first day of May is a special feeling. We have crawled over the hump of spring and begun to emerge on the side of summer.

Red Eft

I have also personally turned a corner these last couple of weeks, or at least tried to. Since the end of February, things have been quite busy in our life. To an extent, I am used to being busy, and I like being busy. I’m always working on a lot of projects and dedicating lots of time to the things I love makes me happy. But last fall, I let it go too far. I was so burned out that none of my work felt good, and busy felt like underwater.

As April came to an end, it began to grow warmer. The spring ephemerals began to bloom.

Trillium

The first foraged meals hit the table.

Wild greens pesto with Ostrich fiddleheads and Hosta shoots

Our little seedlings are nearly ready to go outside.

And as I stood in the sun and tended these young plants, I realized that I was too busy and too stressed to enjoy everything happening around me. And that wasn’t okay! I was headed down a too familiar path, where projects and deadlines and commitments shrouded the joy of just spending each day in my life. (Remember, the big art is our life!).

Of course, stressors don’t just disappear, and they are stressors that I’m sure many of share (money, work, time). But I spent time in my journal untangling which of these things I could try to release, where I can make my time feel expansive, what I needed to do to make my projects feel joyful instead of begrudging. And I’m feeling better!

Emilio and I stumbled upon this massive Oak last week.

Emilio & the Oak

It reminded me of a scene from Braiding Sweetgrass. The author, on a rainy walk through an old Cedar forest, finds a massive fallen tree. She decides to lay down under it, as a respite from the rain.

This log, inches above my face, weighs many tons. All that keeps it from seeking its natural angle of repose on my chest is a hinge of fractured wood at the stump and cracked branches propped on the other side of the stream. It could loose those bonds at any moment. But given the fast tempo of raindrops and the slow tempo of treefalls, I feel safe in the moment. The pace of my resting and the pace of its falling run on different clocks.

How can minutes and years, devices of our own creation, mean the same thing to gnats and to cedars? Two hundred years is young for the trees whose tops this morning are hung with mist. It’s an eyeblink of time for the river and nothing at all for the rocks. The rocks and the river and these very same trees are likely to be here in another two hundred years, if we take good care. As for me, and that chipmunk, and the cloud of gnats milling in a shaft of sunlight—we will have moved on.

If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are.

Always, nature is a teacher and a reminder that we need not flit through our lives absentmindedly, too concerned with what may come or what has happened to remember that we are here right now. In so many ways, what we make of our time is what we make of our life. What’s one busy day to a tree? Is anything worth being too stressed to look up at its branches? Not in May, at least.

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Song Sparrow

I am soaking up these last few golden weeks of bird photography, before leaves begin to shroud their perches. The busiest migration time in my area falls in May, so I’ll certainly be out with my camera!

Baltimore Oriole

I am in the middle of preparing for my shop update on MAY 12. I will have 25+ fish bags for sale, and as a newsletter subscriber, you will get first access (via email) that morning! Very excited to share these with you!

Portfolio Peek

I’ve decided to add a new section to the newsletter—a monthly feature from my portfolio! I’ll choose a piece to share each month.

This is a drawing I made all the way back in 2018 or 2019. It’s a little bit rare for me to love a piece over so many years. But for some reason, this simple, sketchbook marker + colored pencil drawing still makes me smile.

This month, I’m spotlighting the printmaker Lily Arnold. She makes these bold, gorgeous, botanical block prints. She’s based on the West Coast, so many of her common and native plants are different than the ones I see around here, and I’m still so captivated by them! I particularly love the garden towel on the left!

✷ New Kendrick Lamar music video
✷ A video on Hellebores (which I can’t wait to plant one day!)
✷ My iron died this month, and I replaced it with a CHI
✷ Awesome spring foraging round-up for the Northeast!