A Date With Graphite

It has been so crazy hot here in the Northwest lately! I miss the clouds. Le sigh.

Here are a few little sketchbook peeks. I've been locking myself inside with the pencils to try and stay cool and so have been plowing through my sketchbook pages, drawing lots of portraits and planning new works. Almost time for a new book, me thinks.

This little lady will end up being a falconer (I've always had a huge interest in falconry). On my painting table and in the works is this painting:

That crown is literally the size of a fingernail! I still have a bit more painting to do (the faint sketch on the surface is a wasp...) but it's in the home stretch and should be finished shortly.

Outside in the garden the snails were completely obliterating my poor pumpkin plant. I'm a sucker for slugs and snails, but in the end, I had to put up a poison barrier to try and save the squash. It looks to be working because I have quite a few cute wee pumpkins a'growing safely (sorry snails)!

Do stay cool, everyone.

Fruits of Labor

Another member of the Polar Royalty Convention is here to make his grand appearance:

"The Polar King"

acrylic on wood laminate tag

3.5 x 5"

More polar portraits are in the works (including a rather dapper little ermine, who I'm quite fond of) along with some larger pieces I hope to show you all very soon. I'm really happy with the rich colors and details in these smallish ones. They somehow walk that ever-fine line between serious and silly. I like that. I'm aiming to have the entire collection finished by the first week of July--more details to follow shortly.

Also, my veggie container garden is doing great! The carrots are the only disappointment so far (and it was my fault--I wanted to try growing Purple Haze carrots and it looks like they're not digging being in containers...oh well). Here are a few quick snapshots:
Snow peas! These are amazing with some fresh-from-the-garden onions and a little bit of oil + balsamic vinegar drizzled ontop. Yum.The strawberries are in overdrive--every morning there are at least 3 or 4 berries waiting to be eaten.My two zucchini plants are enormous. The leaves are three times bigger than my hand and they're currently in full-bloom. I'm so looking forward to homemade zucchini bread!Happy Monday, all!

Victory Gardens

It's Spring (yay!) and as I mentioned before, I decided to grow my own veggies this year. I'm growing them in containers because a) I live in a rental, b) for ease of pest and soil control, and c) to get the most out of the sun. It's been years since I've done any gardening and I must say, I'm enjoying it immensely. This year I'm growing cucumbers, butternut squash, zucchini, basil, red onions, green onions, snow peas, purple carrots, cantaloupe, and strawberries.I'm using a lot of pots I already had on hand, mixed with recyclable containers (my favorites being large plastic water jugs sawed in half--with holes drilled in the bottoms they do an amazing job and are deep enough for root veggies like carrots). The seeds were started indoors last month inside newspaper cups I had folded (easy to do and a great way to keep newspapers out of the trash--here's one of many online tutorials).
These pictures were all taken last month and everything has since doubled in size (except for the cantaloupe, which are taking quite a bit longer to beef up--to be expected as I don't exactly live in melon country). I accidentally left the cucumber seedlings outside one day and therefore lost about half of them due to the cold temps at night...but the few that survived seem to be doing great (Darwinian science at its best!).

This week it will finally be time for me to transplant the squashes and the hearty snow peas. Yum...I can already hear them sizzling on the grill...

I know a lot of people are growing Victory gardens this year, which is awesome. Self sustainability is a beautiful thing, indeed.