Things have been scattered here – but looking through old photos is always fun. This is a picture I took on a hike with a friend last August – a wild morning glory alongside a local creek. This year the wildflowers are even more amazing than last year’s because of all the rain. I hope to see more!
For the past several days I have had a lot of little gardening projects going on. I transplanted a number of seedlings into pots. I also started seeds. I have some seedlings I have sent on to a new home. This season I have vegetables already setting fruit, even it won’t mature for weeks, and seeds which are sprouting, and seeds I am waiting to sprout. Vegetables this year include winter (hard, yellow) squash, bush beans, radishes, lettuce, pepper of the hot variety, tomatoes, parsley and cilantro.
I also have a lot of flowers. These include hummingbird and butterfly mixes all thrown together in the front flower bed as well as foxglove, larkspur, polka dots (which I think are scabiosa or pincushion plants), carnations, nigella, Mexican sunflowers, Titan sunflowers (they can grow 12 feet tall with seed heads 24″ across!), and moonflowers. Herbs include the usual rosemary, sage, parsley, thyme, basil, but I have also added summer savory and a few Asian ones for variety. Mint and lemon balm and lemon verbena.
With all this work, there has been little time for sketching or painting. Thus I decided, much like my “Not Taken Vacation” that a sketchbook dedicated to this year’s gardening efforts would be fun to do. I have a fanfold Chinese calligraphy book I am using. It is a fanfold, so I can spread it out if I want to create a panorama, or use individual pages.
Above, just an individual page to get a sense of the paper. It is very soft and very absorbent, as well as a creamy color that is far from white, but not yellow. I figured my first foray into this documentation would be best served with a simple ink and watercolor drawing to see how the paper handled. Overall, I like it. The soft paper requires a bit more caution with the water, yet it does seem to handle it very well.
So, a few pony packs with seedling waiting for a home on my gardening table. My hand trowel is not well represented, but such is life! Meanwhile, I can enjoy the sweet smell of a freshly turned bit of earth and dream of flowers and garden produce.
In a few posts I vaguely mentioned learning an instrument, and then the u-word. Now I have been putzing around a bit on WP and decided to add a page about ukuleles. You will find it at the top of the home page and posts along with other pages – Home, Recipes, My Knitting Patterns.
The Ukulele! page is a list of links to YouTube teachers, resources, and such. It’s going to be a slow build, but the point is I like to have my resources readily available, and the only solution is a dedicated page. Love it or leave it – just don’t expect any videos or sound tracks of my playing!!
Years ago we spent several weeks in Canada, and by far a favorite place was British Columbia. Protection Island is off Nanaimo, and on it is a lighthouse and residence. The lighthouse is called Gallows Point, and as you can imagine, the site of an execution. The history is interesting, and you can read more about it here.
I really did not have much of an idea what to do today – it is cold and foggy and so chilly that the house was 66F. The damp makes it worse. So, bundled up, I went looking for things to do. Some ukulele practice, chores, dog petting, and finally the decision to pull the gouache out of the refrigerator (keeps down the mold) and off I went. I spent a few hours painting and while not an especially beautiful painting, or accurate, it was fun to do a bit of color frenzy with gouache – which I have not done for awhile.
Gouache, 10×12, hot press paper.
The coastal fog rolls in, sometimes doing nothing but bringing cold and damp and chill to summer. Other times of the year, in fall and winter and into spring, the coastal fog is not fog at all, but lowering clouds. Sometimes you just don’t know.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 