This apple was sliced and exposed to air, but nothing else about this post was “cut and dried.” I have been working and re-working it for months. First by making variations of the dried-apple scans of 2024. Then taking flight with new artwork and bringing life to the sequence.

At last, I liked the way it looks. But still tussled with what to say.

In the northern hemisphere, the First Day of Spring arrived on Wednesday, March 20th. I want this, always, to be an occasion for unbridled celebration. A time for completing my projects with passion. Yet news of the world, ominous on nearly every front, left me tormented and tossed.

It took far longer than planned or expected, but the unfiltered beauty we can sense, touch, see, hear moved gently into the scope of my vision and thoughts.

On the morning of March 24th, the cry of a blue jay flying by my window. At twilight, the outrageous song of mockingbirds on rooftops. On the ground in the following week … hardy snowdrops, purple crocus, the ephemeral wood violet’s shining dark greenery poised to cradle a riot of sun-yellow blossoms, and two small primrose plants already blooming through last year’s chilled, wet, fallen oak leaves.

Through the nights this past Winter, a cardinal slept ­– orange-red, puffed up, face hidden, protected in a tall and elderly yew tree, surprisingly revealed by a small patch of light from the otherwise obnoxious security lamp in an obscure corner of the brick-and-cement-lined alleyway.

There is a star inside the apple. Slow down, look closely, find the miraculous.

01 Resilient Skin • 02 Power and Loss • 03 Red Curves in the Kitchen • 04 Afterimage of a Beautiful Serpent • 05 Descendant of Eight Thousand Years (The Star Inside the Apple) • © Catherine Rutgers 2026