Mapping My Walk

My brother told me about a phone app called Map My Walk.  As soon as I got my new phone I raced to put that app on it,  I love it because it draws a little map as you walk!  I can even use it to find myself when I go exploring and  can't find my way back to the trail.  This past couple of weeks I've been exploring a new area of the woods around here, and the drawing above shows where I walked this afternoon.  I did a 4.1 mile walk mainly following the river (you can see the trail, which begins at the upper right at the black outlined circle, the parking lot by the trail head.  When I got into the woods that did not follow the river, I followed a series of trails that I had never been on before.  At one point it felt like I had missed a turnoff, so I looked at the map and sure enough, it showed that I was heading off in the wrong direction.

The drawings above show the key to the various kinds of terrain I passed on or through or near.  This area is so interesting to me because the trail goes through farmland on one side of the trail and woods on the other for a long distance.  Meanwhile the river is constantly burbling and singing, cows are bellowing in farm fields, and occasional cars go whooshing by on the road, unseen but really quite close in places.  Wonderful smells of roses and honeysuckle, the blues of blue-eyed grass, and cool breeze with warm sun made this a perfect afternoon for a walk. 

You will not be interested in all the other information Map My Walk heaped on me:  my speed, calories burned, something called Blitz speed(???), varying altitudes I passed through, other similar walks in my area, an offer to find friends for me to share my walk information with, and the offer to upgrade to a paid version of the app that will tell me even more.  I could not be happier than I am with my free version and its miraculous little map that even shows when and where I deviated ten feet to check out some hammocks that were strung in a tree and in which students were napping.

The Garden Babies

It's late afternoon and the air is soft.  The new babies in the Victorian Square Ft. Garden are unfurling and spreading out.  Jesse comes out to get involved, licks my watercolors, rubs up against the handle of my brush, then walks across the page and over to the front lawn where he seems to have gone to ground after a vole.  Meanwhile here are, from left to right, an okra, some leaf lettuce, some Russian kale, and

basil, Swiss chard, some arugula marching across the bottom and a cucumber seedling.  The okra and the cucumber still have their baby cotyledon leaves, reminders of how short as time ago they were inside their seeds.  The spinach is not yet sprouting, and four squares still await tomatoes, parsley, and cilantro.  Drawing these plants brings me right into their silence.

Conglomerations

I set out to draw a giant tree at the beginning of the river trail this afternoon, and I found my eye and pen wandering over the contours of the whole group of trees that seemed to have no individual boundaries.  They share the same soil, air, water, light;  and who is to say they're individuals----

--- any more than the cows in the conglomoration of cows that I found at the turnaround point a mile and 3/4 down the trail?  Drawing any one cow was utterly impossible.  There WAS no single cow.  The herd was an inky mass of lurching, swaying shapes. and the closest to an individual was the curly-headed bull.  But even he constantly shape-shifted, appeared, and disappeared, his massive head floating along the horizon of black backs and heads.

Tonight's carrots seem like individuals in this drawing, but within a few minutes they had become a stew, and the kale had wilted into the carrots within minutes.  Is the whole concept of an individual anuthing nothing but a reification?

Sunday Afternoon

Our friends B and L live in a house that they built for themselves in the 70s.  When you build your own house with your own hands you get to have all the spaces that you can imagine.  One of my favorite spaces in their house is the downstairs bed corner.  Today we were spending the afternoon with them, and after working together in L's studio for a few hours, we walked through the woods to their house, where we found B stretched out on the living room bed.  That bed corner is exactly what I wish we had!  I love that the windows on two sides come down to the level of the mattress, and that at the foot of the bed is a built-in bookshelf with space above it for a collection of interesting objects.

We drove down the mountain back to Asheville and went to our favorite Thai place.  While waiting for my wonton soup (on the right) to cool,  I drew faces of people who walked past the restaurant.  We were sitting at a table situated like B and L's bed corner-- surrounded by windows but cozily inside-- perfect for speedy sketching of people in action as well as the slowly cooling soup.

Turtles Again

Turtles keep coming into Jacob's and my outings.  Today we were on our way to hike up to the Mountains to the Sea Trail so Jacob could do some nature photography and I could do some drawing.  About a block from the trail head Jacob spotted a turtle in the middle of the road.  We pulled over, got out of the car, and did some drawing and photography.  Then we decided to help the turtle out by getting it out of the street.  But we thought it might be an animal that had a home ground, so we decided to put it on the side of the road that it seemed to be aiming toward and hope that it headed into the grass and not back into the street. 

A few minutes later we were just starting up the trail when another turtle of the same kind appeared right on the side of the path we were walking on.  This one was bigger and had brown under its neck, whereas the first one had had a pink neck and chin.  We felt a definite sense of turtles coming into our life since last weekend we saw that giant pile-up of turtles at the lake.

I looked up turtles and found out this turtle was an Eastern Box Turtle, fairly commonplace around here at one time, but growing increasingly endangered because of being hit by so many cars and trucks.  I looked up turtle energy and the Native American spirit meaning for turtles.  I learned that when turtles come into your life, health and longevity are often coming your way.  Turtles are symbols of wisdom (they are over 200,000 years old), endurance, protection, and innocence. 

It rained off and on all afternoon.  Jacob and I don't mind walking in the rain, and raindrops on flowers make very beautiful photographs.  When I got home I finished the turkey-proof square foot garden box.  Rain spattered down a bit while I wove the edges of the mesh together with bright orange jute ribbon;  so the soil was perfect for planting the plant starts I had gotten.  The sun came out just as I finished everything, making the little cube look very glowy.

Turkey-Proof Square Foot Garden

 

F and I took the day off from wallet and bag making yesterday to start the project of making ourselves some square foot garden boxes.  We followed the directions in the book very carefully, especially those pertaining to the soil mixture that is supposed to create the magic of these gardens.  Today I worked on turkey-proofing my box, since there is no point  in having a high-yield vegetable garden that the turkeys attack with their beaks as soon as the vegetables begin to come in. 

There were directions in the book for making a serviceable-looking removable varmint-proof box, and I bought some flexible PVC pipe to make hoops.  But then I began dreaming of a little Victorian-looking square foot garden that would not only repel turkeys and raccoons and bunnies and Jesse, but that would look good while it did so.  Drawing 2375 is of the box with two sections of old metal fencing from Tobacco Barn and some green plastic mesh draped over it.  Drawing 2376 shows what I want the finished garden to look like, with stitching made with my pretty colored jute twine to hold the sections together, and a side flap that is held down by a couple of loops latched with a bent piece of wire.

One of the most satisfying parts of the project was finding the nice peeling metal fence section that I needed at TB and then actually fitting it into my Smart. 

On the left are a few drawings made while walking with my friend along the expanded River Trail earlier this afternoon.  We sat up on a high rock overlook by the river and drew these delicate seed heads at about actual size.  We had no idea what they were.  I also drew some blue-eyed grass that I found along the trail.

The Toughest Thing to Draw

Last night's faces were the easiest things for me to draw-- the stillest of still life.  The French term for still life is nature morte--- dead nature.  Absent of all motion, carved wooden figures have already been abstracted, and all I have to do is copy the frozen, still forms.  I abstract them a degree further, from abstract wooden forms to abstract lines.  The real work has already been done by the sculptor.

Tonight's faces were the hardest for me to draw-- living, moving, constantly changing figures.  I was at Jacob's high school band concert.  By necessity none of the band members was ever still.  Even when a person was blowing into a trumpet for a couple of minutes his or her face constantly changed.  I was trying to abstract the fewest lines that would communicate something about the attitude, affect, and positions of the students.

Most fun was drawing the co-band directors as they conducted.  They are a married couple and do a great job of co-directing the bands and ensembles and quintets and orchestras.  I wanted to show the solidly-planted feet (and nature) of the man director as well as the more sparkly and bouncy affect of the woman director.  Their little four or five year old child plays on stage and backstage during the concerts.  The directors and the students seem perfectly happy to have their little mascot in on the performance, popping in and out of the curtain but not at all intrusive.  I wanted to draw the child, but she (or he, not sure which) was far too quick and elusive.