bye july

A view from the deck of the barn as the next downpour began.

If there was a single theme running through the month of July, it may have been sweat. So many thunderstorms and so much excessive heat. And even on the rainless days, and the occasional day of reasonable temps for July, the constant, enveloping, stultifying humidity. Like walking into a sauna. Like breathing through a steaming towel. Every single day, several times each day, sweat would literally run down my face as I walked slowly through the paddocks, drip into my eyes as I leaned to pick up an empty feed pan, and saturate my hair before I returned to the house, threw my wet jeans and shirt into the dryer for a few minutes, and blotted my hair with a towel.

If this sounds like a lot of whining, I'm sorry - I don't feel that way about it. It's just been my reality. And the goats' reality as well. With added mosquitoes. I try to provide a high quality of life for all the animals, and there's no way around it: July has been rough. 

I feel so much concern for the people in other places who are desperate for rain. For people from places that are literally on fire. Again. Situations that are totally beyond our control, and which affect our lives in very real ways.

I think people generally become accustomed to the rhythms and range of weather patterns in a place where they have lived for a long time, and do their best to prepare for expected events and even occasional extreme events - hurricanes in my neck of the woods, for example. Maybe there's an unusually dry summer which raises the threat of fire. Or maybe there's a huge storm that causes local flooding and washes out a road or bridge. But now it seems the extremes and "hundred-year" events just keep coming, on and on, one after another, year after year. Have the extremes become the norm?

Well. When I began writing, I had intended to simply post a few of my Daily Markmaking sketches from July, which was World Watercolor Month. But starting out with that first painting of rain through the trees kind of sent me off on a tangent. Yikes. 

I'll close with a few watercolors of trees without rain:

Here's hoping August will be kind to all of us.

~~~~~

blue-sky day

 

It rained all last night and this morning, with a forecast of "continuing" and a warning about high winds. But yesterday was a blue-sky day, and so warm that I was able to do something I've been wanting to do for weeks:

gather up the feed pans and give them a scrub.

Very satisfying result.

And because it was so warm and sunny and the forecast was for this 24-hour rain we are currently in the middle of, I dragged the chaise out and spent an hour or so just enjoying the day. The deep blue sky, the tiny downy woodpecker bold enough to visit the suet feeder even while Moxie and I were lounging only a few feet away. Such a perfectly pleasant day - a warm clear day with no biting insects - is a rarity in my neck of the woods. Very much a "seize the day" event.

So I did the Daily Markmaking, with this water-soluble graphite sketch:

This sketchbook snap is from a cell phone. It's an experiment, because I suspect my actual camera is signalling it's pending retirement with various mysterious behaviors. I know many cell cams take excellent snaps, but my phone is very basic, the images are not high res, and I'm not sure about their blog-ability. Please feel free to comment/advise.

And to bring us back to today, here is a barncam snap taken a few minutes ago: Violet and Sambucus in the barn, waiting out the rain.

Very wise, goats.

You know Room Service will always come to you.

~~~~~

recent markmaking

Roman glass

Owly eye

Pebble of the Day (twitter @GongFuPoet)

from one of vanGogh's pollarded trees

from (another) Harry Burton photograph
taken in Tutankhamun's tomb

Tiny ball of string.
Does everyone still have one of these in a drawer?

Rutabaga

Red maple in late stage of life.
I relate.

~~~~~

paintbrush archaeology

 

I didn't notice until taking the snaps tonight, but there has been a bit of an unplanned theme in recent Daily markmaking: still the only non-essential activity that takes place every day, no matter what.

~~~~~

and inhale

The weather has been complicating daily life here for a while now. It's a waste of time to complain about weather but the simple fact is, there is nothing - not one thing - made easier in my life by rain. So when it goes on for days and weeks, it becomes wearing. Even the goats have been uncharacteristically subdued, when they are not being frustrated and short-tempered. It's a tough emotional range. I understand completely.

BUT.

Today the sun (the sun!) is shining and the sky is astonishingly clear. There's a breathability to the atmosphere that has all the exquisite quality of a very fine wine. Even more exquisite to me, since I rarely drink wine these days, and I breath frequently.

When I stepped outside this morning I stopped dead in my tracks, inhaled, and sighed in relief. "Let's savor this, shall we, goats?" I called out to the herd. "Let's all live in the moment and breath frequently!"

By the way, do these look different than my usual line drawings? They do to me. Back in June I tried a "micro tip brush pen." I thought it would be like my longtime favorite Micron 0.25mm pens, just with a bendy feel because of the brush tip. Well, it is certainly bendy but not very micro. At first it felt like drawing with a fat Sharpie. I stuck with it, adjusted my approach, and began aiming for quick, bold lines, instead of my usual slow, delicate lines. It's been a really useful exercise.

These flowers - daylilies, milkweed, spiderwort - were drawn from photographs taken during the rare moments in the past two weeks when it was not raining. Even so, every flower in every photograph was wearing raindrops. I don't want to sound mean about it, but I felt no inclination to include the raindrops in the drawings.

I decided to post a few of these drawings because this afternoon I did something I haven't been able to do in weeks: I took my sketchbook outside, sat in a dry chaise, chatted with several goats who ambled cheerfully over to see what I was up to, and made this sketch of one of the black birches:

It was such a relief.

Just like breathing.

~~~~~

wordless wednesday

 

~~~~~

nearly wordless wednesday

sketched from Vincent van Gogh's
"Landscape with Pollard Willows"

the spiderwort is blooming!

horse brass remnant,
found by @scottylar

~~~~~

may becomes june

stitchwort, Stellaria media

The month of May zipped by in a stream of delightfully cool mornings and sunny days, with just enough intermittent rain and gloom to provide a perfect counterpoint. There is always so much to do at this time of year, and nearly every day of May presented at least one extra task of the "this must be done before that can be done" variety.

Here are things I know happened in the last week of May:

A load of 2022 hay was delivered. Hopefully there will be 2023 first cut hay available before this last load runs out, but it depends entirely on weather. As always. 

The mosquitoes arrived to keep the black flies company.

Driving home from an appointment which turned out not to exist due to a glitch at the office, I stopped to escort the first turtle of the turtle-escorting season safely across a busy road. Thus making the trip to a non-appointment both excellently timed and entirely worthwhile.

I misplaced two pairs of eyeglasses in one week. This is a record. Increasingly intense searching commenced, and soon reached the point where one looks in places where the missing item could not possibly be.

Friends visited with their lovely grandkids, 8 and 11, and brought a load of freshly-cut conifer branches to feed the goats. Possibly my favorite "hostess gift" ever.

After two days of searching in every likely and unlikely place, I found one pair of missing eyeglasses. They were in their own case, on the same table where I always keep them. In other words, the first place I had looked.

marsh marigold, Caltha palustris

It's often been nice enough to sketch outdoors, at least in the brief lull before biting bugs overcome their reluctance to fly through a miasma of herbal repellent. I've done many line drawings recently: one pen, one sketchbook, quick getaway.

Amsonia

One day while I was picking goutweed for the goats, I saw my micron pen fall from my shirt pocket. My hands were full and goats were waiting, so I shared out the goutweed before going back to pick up the pen. I could not find the pen. I looked and looked. I now expect it will suddenly turn up in the bean can where I keep my micron pens. On the table. Next to my glasses.

highbush blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum

The last lilies of the valley of 2023:

Convallaria majalis

I treasure these tiny gems and have coaxed the few that were rescued from a goat paddock project several years ago into a slowly growing group inside the little wildlife area. A few weeks ago an unknown nighttime visitor crushed a section of the lightweight fence surrounding the wildlife area, leaving the lilies of the valley flattened beneath just as the flower buds were beginning to appear.

Well, heck, I said.

Darn it, I said.

I lifted the fence off right away, and hoped for the best.

Most of the plants survived, and enough flowers bloomed that I could bring in a couple of stems now and then. Lilies of the valley are my favorite for springtime fragrance.

Did you have a good month of May?

Do you have something special planned for June?

~~~~~

wordless wednesday

 

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variations on a theme

layers revealed in an eroded shell

layers revealed in a sectioned shell

.

.

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a view of Stonehenge

an alternate view of Stonehenge

Daily Markmaking continues.

What daily practices help keep you focused, sane, alive?

~~~~~

 

markmaking

 From -14F a few days ago to a forecast in the 40s later this week.

Maybe it will be nice weather for outdoor sketching.

I don't expect to see any leafy shrubs or poppies or sprouting crocus bulbs out there,

but there's always something to sketch.

~~~~~

pebbles of the day

 

A few Pebbles of the Day borrowed from twitter:

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recent marks made

 Something I've enjoyed and appreciated about twitter over the years, has been the constant stream of images from which to sketch. And the variety of subjects! Pebbles, flowers, the Northern Lights...always something.

~~~~~