Warm hands, cool soil.
Four decades moving material, then a life with hands in the dirt. I teach the discipline that kept a warehouse safe — and I paint the landscapes it let me live long enough to love.
i. New: a short film
The warm-check I learned at the loading dock — hold your thumb on the valve, wait for the heat — is the same gesture I read the garden soil with. A 72-second meditation on why we protect ourselves long enough to finish what we started. My first film; made slowly, the only way I know.
The Warm Check
Rendering now — my channel will host it. Watch for it under my films.
ii. The Warm-Check Protocol
The habits that kept a warehouse calm are the ones that keep a garden bed honest. Not fear — order. Same count, same walk-around, same respect for the body doing the work.
Check the load
Before the shift, before the water can lifts: read the ground. Is the path clear? Are the hoses where they should be, rolled and out of the walk? A trowel left edge-up is a hazard, same as a pallet left in an aisle.
Mind the body
Kneepads before the knees, gloves before the trowel, water on the neck before the Georgia sun makes its point. Hydration is not a suggestion — it's PPE. We learned that in the heat of the dock; the garden knows it better.
"Safety was never about fear. It was about staying long enough to see what you planted bloom."
iii. Field Notes
A working gardener's journal — the small, specific things worth remembering. Painted and pressed on cool evenings while Debussy plays.
- Mulch is a blanket, not a garnish. It holds the cool in July and the heat in March — the garden's own thermostat, spread thick and even.
- The morning read. Five minutes at first light: which leaves look tired, which stems lean south, where the soil is too dry to forgive.
- Blue-green and sienna. Georgia soil isn't one color. When I mix it on the palette, three or four washes are never enough.
iv. The Studio
I paint the patches of Georgia I've tended — the tomato rows in late light, the wet shine of a just-turned bed, the red clay showing through new grass. Watercolor is the honest medium: you can't fully undo a stroke, any more than you can unsprout a seed. You work with what the paper gives.
Detail over dust Wet-on-dry
- short safety sketch film on Georgia garden edges concept — early planning: warm valve checks meet mulch-bed warmth. https://audrey-zazulia.4ort.net/
v. Teaching
Safety for the Steady Decades
A gentle, patient course for older movers — kitchen, garden, workshop. The warm-check, the cleared path, the honest read of your own body. Nobody rushes. Nobody is graded. We are all just learning to stay long enough.
Capturing Georgia: A Watercolor Primer
Weeks on hot-pressed paper, from the first wash to the finished field. I teach the way I was taught the dock — one careful, repeatable gesture at a time.