New Landscape for the Wide Game

A new bulb pot arrived the other day.  As it sprouts, the surface looks like a strange dessert landscape.  The charlottes are checking things out.  A new scale is in play here, as the sprouts are in the same scale as the charlottes for once.

4000!

This one little page doesn't seem to have 20 drawings on it, but the note at the top explains that 12 of the drawings that I did yesterday and today were line illustrations for publication and could not be posted .  I assure you I worked for hours on these things (and not only did I work all day but I have poison ivy that began on my face and has now spread all over, and I am seriously whining).  So in spite of looking like Mrs. Potato Head I ventured out with P and friends last night to a great Korean restaurant for some stone bowl seafood rice, and made the quick drawing of a flat slab of a plate that dumplings were served on before dinner.

Tonight, still itchy and swollen and miserable, I reflected on how the current Jesse-inflicted charlotte carnage in the dead tulip pot expresses very well my state of mental health.  Sneaky winter poison ivy grrrr.

Farmyard at Twilight

Maya and I walked down to the farmyard as the sun was setting, down the trail, through the golden bamboo grove, past OwlMan,  through the garden,  past the chicken yard, up the hill, down the farm road, and into the little pasture  where the five fluffy sheep were clustered together in the chilly breeze.  After a few  minutes watching the sheep, we went over to the pigs and admired the dozen babies of one mama and then the teenaged group in the next pen.  Meanwhile a little Banty rooster was crowing in a scratchy, high-pitched voice and following us around.  We watched some hens settle down on top of a box.  No farm workers were in sight, and the animals were all making their noises.  Swallows dipped and swooped.

Puffy Sheep in the Thin WInter Light

M and I went for our weekly walk this morning.  Today our mission was to go down to the college farm and buy some eggs. M is moving to the other side of campus soon, and we're very excited about being able to walk to each others' houses through the farm and the woods and along the river.  It was very breezy and chilly, but on our way home we cut through a small pasture near the farm office.  A few sheep were being pastured in the field, and they were fluffy and puffy and very unshorn.  They also might have been pregnant-- hard to tell under all that wool-- and maybe being kept close to the farm center in case their babies arrived.  They were all sitting down in the grass when we spotted them (3972);  then as we approached them to get a better look, they began to lug themselves to their feet and move around a little.  M is very willing to wait while I draw and doesn't even make me feel like she's being patient and suppressing deep sighs;  so I happily drew these big mamas.  They were pretty much constantly moving, so these are essentially gesture drawings.

The Dregs

Sharing counter space with the glorious tulips is a pretty ceramic bowl that holds fruit and sometimes vegetables.  Tonight I had really given up on getting any drawings done for today (that is drawings that I could post;  I spent the day doing drawings for publication that I can't post yet.  They count!) As I stood there sniffing the tulips and telling myself it was way too late to start drawing, I noticed that all the occupants of the so-called fruit bowl were actually complete dregs.  The bowl looks like the bottom of the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator when you finally get to the bottom of it.  So I started doodling around and I give you:  the Dregs.

At top left is a wizened beet, extremely hairy.  Probably someone out there could rescue it and turn it into a nice soup or something, but not me!  I cook only from recipes, and I've never found one that calls for shriveled beets.  Below Mr. Hairy Beet on bottom left is the stalk that used to hold elephant garlic.  And slightly up from it is a dessicated clove of elephant garlic itself.  I don't like this stuff, but P does, and he always buys it but forgets to use it.  I leave it alone to turn brownish and bruised looking, and then we throw it out.

At top right is a lime that feels like a bocce ball, leathery and hard.  It was a promising purchase, destined to be sliced up and put in Maya's fizzy water, but it got lost among the potatoes and oranges, and now it would take a power tool to cut into it.  Just below the former lime is a nice Roma tomato that had a tiny fleck of black that has now grown with alarming swiftness into a festering black dent.  At bottom right is the partner of Mr. Hairy Beet, another hairy but shriveled beet.  This one still has a little of its original festive orange color, but the black stuff from the tomato seems to have spread to it.
We think these are all sufficiently dreggy to go out with the compost tomorrow.

Tulips That Smell Like Peonies

 Here are the tulips yesterday, continuing to emerge from the leaves and their green bud covers.

Today they're all the way out, except for one late-bloomer, and they not only have gorgeous apricot and pink petals but they smell like peonies.

Reddish Tulips in Grey Light

 The tulips that are in the pot of hyacinths and daffodils are slowly unfurling.

 Nothing better to brighten the greyest of days!

Meanwhile other tulips are already breaking through the almost-frozen soil in the garden.  Strange winter here--