Tag: garden
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Since moving here one time of the year I look forward to is when we first start seeing the magical blinking and trailing lights of fireflies. It’s been a mostly cool spring here but with a heat wave coming on and the night feeling heavier and humid I felt like I might see them. So I went into a dark room that looked out on our mostly unlit backyard (neighbours on one side have permanent “security” lights) and yes, firefly season has begun.
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I enjoy how the harsh grid of the window screening softens the view into a light Gaussian blur.
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At least here in Ontario, the credo/reminder always holds true.
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This mini orchard does exist. We have a row of three mature pear trees and an even older apple growing in the land where we live. But this sketch of the three pears is imagined in that I didn’t look at a reference or go out there and draw them from sight. I do want to try some plain air drawing out there this year though — something I’m not familiar with at all. I added a few leaves to these imagined versions of our pears but they don’t actually even have leaf buds at this time of the year.…
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This is a pine tree sketched from memories of recently seen pine trees. Trees are so difficult to represent because they take up space and have a type of visual density that can be hard to articulate. I don’t mind this little sketch but it does feel more like a drawing of a scale model of a tree? I intentionally tried to place some of the imagined branches moving away from the front of the view but it still reads a bit flat like the tree only has one side. Nature is wonderful and hard to capture which is also…
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This was the frozen surface of the partially dug pond in our yard today. It’s a long process because we have dense clay soil but someday we’ll have a new mini-ecosystem to visit and observe through all of the seasons.
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When walk out in the yard after lunch these days we can’t help but feel Molly’s absence. The paths she would take through the garden and the spots along the way that she always revisited to check for “messages” from other animals passing through. Part of the joy of living with Molly was getting to experience her maps and pathways. She would sometimes stubbornly insist on going a different direction than where we were headed. She found her own plants for healing and enjoyment to munch on and had such a curiosity for everything happening in this shared natural space.…
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Update from the earlier photo showing the light, but wet!, first snowfall (more like slushfall) we got this afternoon. Gayla was saying that we can look forward to a fairly different snow-covered garden this season given how much has changed over the year. There’s a kind of winter architecture that’s exciting in gardens. We leave most structures and plants in place over winter so lots of aspects will catch snow in unique ways.
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Determined that standing in the dark of our yard trying to take pictures of fireflies is far less rewarding than just standing in the dark of our yard experiencing fireflies.
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This morning in the garden. We recently did some work on the bed in the foreground which will eventually be the backdrop for the pond we are digging. We planted a small Japanese Maple that will someday reflect in that future pond. It is strangely life affirming to work at a pace that connects with years ahead of us.
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Poem I love by Gayla Trail from the Grow Curious second edition. Painting and design by me. Both editions of Grow Curious had watercolour and gouache paintings by me but the second edition was full colour and meant I could play a bit more with how the artwork was used. bookshop.org/p/books/gr…
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I refer to myself as a generalist. The main aspect of this for me is simply having an interest in following a variety of creative and intellectual threads. I’m curious about where one thing connects with another and either forms a delicate lacework or becomes tied into impenetrable knots. … I recently ran into the phrase “niche down”. I mostly saw the phrase in reference to the successful building of an individualized career and audience. The idea being that by finding a self-defining niche, you can gather interested people to you more readily. I don’t know where this first came…