Tag: dog free zone

Ready to Plant

Today is a day to spend cleaning up the side patio – aka “The Dog-Free Zone” or DFZ – getting rid of dead, dried stems, old planting soil, digging up bulbs to replant and share. The usual gardening stuff. And, to plant some peppers: Mirasol chilis.

There is something that got my eye with these chilis. The plant is tall and upright, and the peppers stick upright, like fingers, from the far end of the stalk. The flavor is good, too.

So, into some coconut planting containers to see if, in SoCal, I can get these seeds to germinate in our mild weather. I plan to date the planting containers and move through them over a course of several weeks to see if they will pop up. No idea if they are self-fertilizing, so we will see what we will see.

Nothing like spring cleaning before spring planting!

Bee & Borage – The Sketch

I am trying to do something everyday when it comes to drawing or painting. Some days only allow for morning time, and that is when I did this drawing of a bee in a borage plant. Today, I used a dip pen, my ca. 1810 pewter ink well, and iron gall ink. I have never drawn a bee before, and using a dip pen and focusing on the shapes, rather than what I think I see (thank you, Sharon, for that great advice!), produced fairly decent results. I’m rather afraid to draw anything that requires a bit of realism as I really doubt my abilities to do this. Practice is needed here!

Borage is a lovely plant, covered in fur, with beautiful blue flowers. If I recall, it is an invasive plant, and one best kept contained in a pot. I had some in my dog free zone (DFZ) this summer amongst the lilies.

As an aside, I’m getting used to using a dip pen, which is really a rather nice skill to have as I don’t have the big blobs I used to get; I know when to refill the well and dilute the ink with water. Something we don’t think about in this day and age of non-dip pens.