Summer’s Harvest

I might do more drawings of my container garden as the next few days pass, but it’s hard to tell. The heat is up here with it in the mid-90s F, so sitting outside to sketch is an early morning thing rather than a mid-day thing.

My vegetable garden this year had some oldies which I know work well, and some new ones, some of which worked and some of which aren’t worth the effort. Above, orange habanero chilis. We usually do pretty well with these.

This drawing is of my heirloom Strawberry Crown Squash, a hard winter squash. I planted a bunch of seeds in a 20 gallon pot, and pulled all but 4 out. I have never planted winter squash, much less in a flower pot, but they seem to have done quite well. The vines grew and flourished and produced a lot of flowers. The vines were about 20 feet long each and moved across the dirt of the back yard with the sun.

But, I only have 2 winter squash for all that! I haven’t harvested them yet, but expect I will in a few days. I wonder if I need to learn about the art of winter squash gardening – but why?! Pumpkins are so prolific!

I don’t have room for a garden as I don’t have any place that isn’t lawn or just dirt. The back yard is a disaster as I still need to remove 11 or so trees whose roots jut out at all angles in the back yard. Until the trees and roots are gone, to the tune of a small fortune, container gardening it is.

These were sketched in a fan-fold Chinese sketch book. The paper is a creamy yellowish color, a bit tan, and very absorbent. It sucks color up so I had to do a bit of scrubbing to even lay in a wash of any size. Scanning, too, was difficult and that can be seen in the drawing of the winter squash. The differentiation between the dirt and squash leaves is not as muddied as it is here.

Watercolor and ink on paper.