That's Gneiss! #148 ~ Tending my personal forest
Plus: amazing pen & ink drawings, and an oafish dog
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It’s really feeling like the back end of summer now. It’s been a beautiful sunny weekend and just an hour ago there was no sign of the rain that’s headed our way. Now I can see the wall of clouds coming in from the northwest and by the time I take Rowland out for his walk they’ll be here.
It’s been a relaxed weekend hanging out here at home (not like we do much of anything else). Both Michael and I have plenty to do to keep us busy. Even though we miss going out and doing things, we are pretty happy here at home too.
Rowland does a great job of keeping us entertained. One of his favorite camping activities is burying a rawhide chew. To give him that camping experience we let him take a chew outside yesterday afternoon. After ferociously protecting it from our attempts to “steal” it, he decided to hide it in the garden…
Oh Rowland.
I took advantage of the nice weather to get some work done in the garden - something a bit more productive than Rowland. There’s a shrub on the north side that I dislike immensely. In the right spot it would be fine, but it’s the sort of plant that needs tending to keep it from getting overgrown. You can see the unruly sprouts growing out of the top, and it’s starting to crowd the nice cedar tree next to it. It’s also starting to grow through the fence into the neighbor’s yard.
Not for much longer! I have begun the removal process. Yikes. What a tangled mess! It’s a giant ball of intertwined branches with leaves on the ends. I cut back enough to fill my yard waste bin for the week, and will continue working on it until I can dig the rest out. About the only thing that plant is good for is growing in impenetrable hedge. In fact, there’s a house not far from us that has just that! Theirs has totally consumed the fence along the front of the yard and you can just see the fenceposts sticking out.
Here you can see my progress so far - there are a few big pieces on the right that didn’t fit in the yard waste bin this week. That cedar is going to be happy!
I was looking through old photos for the hedge, and found this one that I took shortly after we moved in. Somebody had done a messy hack job on a lot of the plants before we got here, and this is what this shrub looked like. It grew A LOT in two summers! One more year and we’d be buried by it. I’m happy with my decision to take it out - and just wishing I’d done it last year. That will be a nice spot for some pretty flowers.
Perhaps these vine maples would be nice in that spot! I spotted it next to a condo we walk by and grabbed a couple of branches as we passed recently. Don’t worry! Nobody will even notice they’re gone - it’s nice little grove of trees at the corner of a parking lot and the vine maple is almost hidden.
I have quite a few little trees I’m tending in our yard. There are two very small Douglas Firs growing in the beds next to the house. They’re both about two inches tall. I have what appears to be a Big Leaf Maple growing along the north fence - it won’t be hidden from the neighbors much longer! Next year it will probably pop up over the top of the fence. The neighbor also pointed out a walnut tree growing by the lilacs - I’ve made a bit of space for it and propped it on the lilac so this year’s new growth will harden growing straight upwards.
If we stay here long enough maybe I can swap out the ornamental landscaping for more native plants. For now I’ll just enjoy taking care of my little forest.
I took on a small but impactful project in my craft room/office this week. When I first set everything up I used my collection of coffee mugs for storing pens and the like. This was fine and good, but it took up a lot of room on the desk. Combined with my propensity to collect stacks of papers it created an unusable space. Since I’m working at home and spend hours every day sitting at that desk, I decided it was time to do something about it! Micheal found a nice wire mesh pen storage rack on eBay, so I bought two of them to tame the wild mess.
BEFORE.
AFTER.
Much better!
I still have more organizing work to do. It will be good for the upcoming fall and winter days when the weather is not conducive to outdoor activities.
Work is keeping me really busy these days and that’s a good thing. We’re preparing a new website to go live in early October. It’s pretty exciting and I think people will really like the change. The days fly by and I’m too busy to think much about what’s going on in the world. Even better - this week I only work three days, and then it’s five days off for me! I’m looking forward to the nice solid break from work.
That’s all I’ve got today. When the stormy days return I’ll return to more scintillating subjects.
In the meantime - wear a mask and please, don’t put others at risk.
Tidbits
Two metres or one: what is the evidence for physical distancing in covid-19? - relative risk based on the FEW studies that have been done. Stay away from people and wear your mask! We don’t know enough about this to get complacent.
As Determined Couple Sues NY State To Have Their Wedding Party, A Small Maine Wedding Becomes Fatal Superspreader Event - selfish decisions caused people who had nothing to do with the party to become sick and one died.
Strangely beautiful popsicles made with polluted water
The Measure of Things - comparative measurements of all sorts of interesting things.
How long is 310 feet? About as tall as Big Ben.
Making: a cleaner work space for more art (see above). I finished my 12 days of two inch art pieces. Here they are all together!
Recently eaten: last Monday we had takeout from Tampico, the Mexican restaurant not far from our house. We actually bought the food on Sunday afternoon so we could get margaritas (TAKEOUT MARGARITAS), but already had a meal planned for that day.
Reading: Between books.
Eye Candy Corner
Yesterday I heard some disturbing news that Jake Parker, the creator of the very popular Inktober challenge has very likely plagiarized the work of Alphonso Dunn in his upcoming book. Plagiarism is a terrible thing, and if it is proven to be true I hope Jake suffers appropriate consequences. I watched part of Alphonso’s video where he compares the images from Jake’s book with his own (published five years ago). He shared more comparisons in a post on Facebook. There are too many similarities for it to be pure coincidence. I see many people arguing that art technique has been shared by many over the years, and that is true. However, this is about the design and layout of the two books, not the techniques themselves. After getting a glimpse into Alphonso’s books I immediately bought them and am looking forward to improving my pen & ink skills.
Now let’s take a look at Alphonso’s work. Wow! Click through to watch the video on this one. His skill for drawing the human form (and other realistic subjects) is incredible.
Here’s a fun one.
I won’t be doing Inktober this year. I will be spending time with Alphonso’s books, his tutorials on YouTube, and drawing when I feel like it. Perhaps some day I’ll be able to draw a mushroom this well!
Video of the Week
This song is more timely than ever…
Current Temperature: 59.0F (15.0 C)
Current Humidity: 87%
Wind (max gust): 9.2 mph
Precipitation: 0.00 in
Poor Rowland! Like watching Sisyphus drag that rock up the hill, only to have it fall back down. Well done on nabbing that pen rack - what a difference! And boo on Jake Parker - NOT cool at all. But thanks for sharing Alphonso Dunn - I'm a new fan.