A Breast of Robins Descending

In the bleak chilly wintery-mix-filled air above our front yard today this rare large group of robins descended on our holly tree and stripped it of its red berries.  The term for a large group of robins is a breast, I have learned.  I drew so fast, not bothering with precision, just so caught up in the swirl and swooping of the birds.  A couple of non-robins timidly pecked at the ground nesr the house. 

By contrast these six sheep, last spring’s lambs, are laden with bales of wool and move slowly, browsing in the bleached grass of the pasture.  I love their swagger and awkward stretches.

Sleepy Post-Solstice Bulls

In the thin midday sunlight the bulls are napping.

Drawing with Frosting Tubes

Group effort at our family’s cookie decorating party last night.  Yes, that IS a self-combusting flame —-

Catalog Update

Here’s the back of the catalog, and below are two more spreads.  I ordered fifty copies today and should have them within two weeks.  I found out that individuals can’t order direct from Ingram Spark.  So far the only way to get one is to order from me via email (gdiehn1@gmail.com) or Facebook message .  Send me your postal address so I can mail your catalog to you.  Cost is $22– 20 for the catalog and 2 for postage.  You can paypal the money to me at gdiehn1@gmail.com or mail me a check to 154 College View Drive, Swannanoa, NC.  Soon, however,  you will also be able to buy them online (malaprops.com) or from the store at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville!

Drawing Ten Thousand Things— the Catalog!

The ten thousand drawings are going to be on exhibit at Asheville BookWorks for two months , opening January 26.  A catalog seemed to be a good idea, and it’s now available.  Here’s the front cover and below are two of the spreads.  It is 60 pages long, all in full color.  If interested, please message me privately on FB messenger or email me at gdiehn1@gmail.com.

This is the second page of the intro and the first illustration.

And another spread.

Meanwhile in the Bull Pasture, Flerding

When the news makes me feel like committing unspeakable acts, I go down to the pasture and watch the flerd.  

Mystery

No mystery here— just the blue pickeral pod that I’ve been incubating curling back its opening to reveal its jewel-like seeds.

But here’s the mystery object,  shown in three views.  The name is encoded in the letters above.  Enlarge the letters to better decipher.  What IS this thing?

Crimson for a Chilly Day

Possum Bones, Pigs and Sheep

I’ve been waiting for this poor possum to stop smelling sovI could get close enough to draw it.  Mostly fluff, a few graceful ribs, and a snakey tail.  Also here the smiley sow and some pretty moss.

I like this pot sherd even though it doesn’t look that old.

The lambies are getting big and wooly!

Five Distinctive Piggies

Maya and I spent a good long time down in the chicken and pig yards yesterday as the sun was setting and chores were winding down.  We saw around a hundred red hens running in groups near two chicken tractors.  But the best were five mama pigs who seem to be either between pregnancies or just barely pregnant.  For once no babies were pursuing them.

We discussed them at length and finally settled on names for them.  Down Doggy piggy did a yoga stretch that was astonishing in its length and duration!  Tongue piggy let her tongue hang out constantly!

Dragon’s Teeth and Secrets

What’s left in the corn field, a dragon’s skull with many teeth?  

Secret book unfurled and spread out on its box/display stand

Detail

Cover of box

Sweet Time Yesterday

Above— lush and exotic giant elm mushrooms as a centerpiece at the sweet thanksgiving gathering we went to.  Our new friend C actually grew these in a plastic bag full of mulch with spores in it.  As beautiful as they are, they are just as delicious to eat, we were told.

After dinner C, B, D and P played music, 2 fiddles, a dulcimer, and a mandolin.

Gleaning/ Napping

The farm crew members have harvested the corn in the far back field.  I enjoy walking along the newly-cut field at sunset, sort of a Romantic Millet’s Gleaners feeling with the crows circling and geese dropping down in the apricot light and single ears of corn here and there, mostly stripped of kernals this late in the day.  Not actually very romantic to think of people actually living on these meager pickings.

Jesse takes frequent daytime naps on cold days but still spends his nights out.

Lemongrass, Hyacinth, and More

This sweet-smelling lemongrass came from L’s garden, good for simmering into a soothing tea as well as for using in Thai cooking.

I still need to draw people in meetings;  and these hyacinths blooms were undaunted by our light frost this morning.

Guarding the Secrets

Clay beads to guard secrets

Secrets

I’ve spent a lot of time lately knitting secrets into a scroll for an artist’s book on the topic ‘Secret.’  In the process I learned a lot about steganography, or the concealing of a message, image, or file within another message, image, or file.  Go to flagelknittingfiles.blogspot.com to learn all about what Madame DeFarge was up to as she sat knitting before the guillotine in Tale of Two Cities.

I wish I had known how to do this in high school, when passing notes in class got me into lots of trouble—

Little Local Celebration

Ramblings

I was waiting for L to come home the other day, and got so entranced by her front porch things that I almost wanted her to be late.  This broken ceramic hand with its appendages, the specimens from the bone table—

And out in the dried up frost bitten garden by our front porch one of the dwarf hibiscuses is putting forth blooms as though it were still August.

I can never resist pulling into the driveway by the white barn and sketching the leisure bulls.  

Curious

Have you seen this lone,  dried-up looking, green and white striped leaf lurking in the fall and winter forest? This is the winter stage of the putty root orchid, the tiny blooms of which I watched avidly last June.  In winter the chlorophyl-laden single leaf makes food for the plant even when snow covers it and icy winds flatten it.  Meanwhile underground a complex root with bulbous corms stores the starchy food.

I found fifteen of the leaves where the flowers came up last summer.  I dug up one leaf and the corm to which it was attached to see if the corm really had adhesive putty inside.  It does!  Native people and early colonists/settlers/displacers of Native people are said to have used this corm’s sticky pulp to mend pottery.  I tried using it to adhere a piece of paper to this page.  It works very well— dries flat and it can be reversed with water.  The putty root is not endangered in NC but check its status in your area before digging any up.  I replanted mine in our front garden.

Sheep at the Fiber Fair

Finally a chance to get really close to sheep!

All different breeds and all groomed for the show.

A Shetland ewe

And a Shetland lamb ram

A big Icelandic

At the end of their competitions some owners had their sheep shorn, and here is a master shearer at work.  The sheep was relaxed and looked like it was lying back in a barber’s chair.  The shearer wore interesting Australian felt shearers’ moccasins.

Odd Duck

Three ducks — a male and a female mallard and the unusual green-billed duck above— were dabbling around the dock at Beaver Lake yesterday.  There are apparently many hybrids of mallards, who breed freely with other duck breeds as well as with geese.

The steers were very close to the fence ;  it feels like being in the middle of the herd.

Late afternoon on the farm.