now appearing

The tulips I hastily planted in the new raised bed on 15 November 2017 are beginning to appear! Snow predicted tomorrow, then days of rain.

But today: tulips.

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and the winners are

The sun has been shining all day and I'm heading back outside for another round of cashmere combing. But I didn't forget about the Sow True Seed giveaway!

Here's the random.org result: 

The winners are Spinnerin and Tess!

Please send me your mailing address (q.piper at hotmail dot com) and tell me whether you'd like the Summer squash or the Winter squash. I'll try to get the seeds in the mail this week.

Happy planting!

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someone else's photograph

Sometimes lately I've drawn or painted from another person's photograph, always after asking permission from the photographer. Usually it's something posted on twitter. The good folks working at Kew Garden post lots of interesting plants, for example.

Last night, a writer - Michael Marshall Smith - posted a photograph of a plant I have never seen growing in the wild. I became a bit obsessed with trying to get the feeling of that photograph onto paper. I did not succeed, but at least gave it a few good tries over two days! Here is the sequence in order of appearance:

Many times after I finish a sketch I think of another way to approach the subject. This time I actually did it. But it's still not satisfying.

Hmmmm.

Also, don't know if sharing this will make an interesting post.

Don't feel that you have to say something nice in the comments - really.

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P.S. There are still a few hours left to enter the giveaway.

I'll do the random number generator thing after midnight tonight.

Good luck, gardeners, or friends of gardeners!

~~~~~

always learning

There is a tendency to see things as larger than they are, especially when it comes to wildlife. And memories can grow, as well. One rarely, I think, remembers a hawk or a bear or a spider as smaller than it really was.

Well.

This morning, glancing out the porch window, I was astonished to see two otter-shaped creatures bounding around in the Upper West Side. Look right at the center of this image (left-click to embiggen):

They must be fishers,

because there is nothing else they can be.

I have seen fishers before, although not often and only once close enough to examine - an adult female that had been killed by a car, retrieved by a biologist, and thoughtfully stored in the refrigerator in my office. Hello.

Fishers, in my experience, are somewhat larger than ferrets.

These two were much bigger than ferrets. They were very similar in size to large otters! As my mind clickety-clicked through the possibilities - are they both unusually large males? are their winter coats making them appear bigger than they are? - I decided a combination of the open area and bright snow must be distorting my perception. Because, unlike even the muted tones you can see in these images, the high contrast of snow and dark animal meant all I was actually seeing was solid black silhouettes.

I was working hard at convincing myself that the "big animal" thing was just a trick of the eye, but then...

one of the critters began walking straight up to the corner of the fence closest to the house, maybe 15 feet away.

And I said, "It can't be a fisher - it's huge!"

Normally when something this unusual happens, I focus on paying attention instead of trying to get photographs. But this time - feeling that my sanity might later be in question - I tried to do both, hence these poor-quality images of two fishers - the first I have ever seen on my property.

One fisher was startled by something and loped down the paddock and across the road. The other ambled around for a while before heading out of sight, up my driveway. I quickly pulled on boots and went out to look for tracks in the morning's dusting of fresh snow.

And found a perfect set.

If you imagine a head added to the front and a big tail added to the back of those tracks, you get a pretty good idea of actual animal size.

So.

Apparently fishers can be a lot bigger than I thought!

I have learned something new today.

How is your Sunday going?

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giveaway

It's been a while since I've done a giveaway here on Comptonia, but something came in the mail today that seems like a perfect Thing To Share.

I've mentioned the Sow True Seed company before. I like this company a lot, both their mission and their catalog, and I'm grateful to Tipper from The Blind Pig and The Acorn blog for sending me their way. Sow True Seed is a big part of the annual adventure in sweat and emotion I call "gardening."

This year, in response to a rather challenging winter which is ongoing, I have already ordered my seeds, including lettuce and candy roaster squash and little short-season melons.

These squash seeds are not actually part of my order, but I have a couple of packets to share. If you think you would like to win a packet of either variety, just leave a comment on this blogpost. Any comment will do, but if you include a gardening tip it will count as a second entry - we all need all the gardening tips we can get, don't we?

Please feel free to share this in any way and with anyone you think might be interested. I don't mind folks just dropping in to Comptonia to enter a giveaway. I'll draw two winners at midnight on March 30th and post the names on March 31st.

Seeds! Just a little something to help turn the page on the month of March.

And...ahem, coughcough...not to make a fuss about it but... you happen to know the person who painted the watercolors for the seed packets.

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