"Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow."

Although, I wouldn't mind having a patch of teasel someday...  

Instead, I have these:

Catalpa tree blossoms...  Last year it was a bit Dr Seuss-ian, two tall thin trunks with a poofy cluster of leaves at the very tips.  It's filled out a bit since I cut down some of the privets that were blocking the sun.  So much so that the weight of the leaves has bent one of the trunks down low enough that I can touch it!  

A few wildflowers, nasturtiums, roses...

The produce section... chard, carrots, beets, onions, cucumbers up in the planter box,
Tomato, zucchini and yellow squash, brussel sprouts, basil, lettuce, beans and peas down below... More tomatoes, herbs, squash (yellow/zucchini/white) and gourds are elsewhere...

This thing was just freakishly huge... And I'm such an idiot, I just killed it!!!  Waaaaaahhhhh!!!!

I finally gave in and let the berries grow.  Not sure yet what kind they are, but they've snuck over from my neighbors yard.  There's another vine/branch that's climbed over the fence and through the birch tree and reaches halfway to the house.  I put up a string for it to climb so I wouldn't keep walking facefirst into it... You can just barely see it in the June 09 picture below...

View from the back door out towards the yard...  It's grown up a bit just in the couple weeks since I took that last picture.  The sunflowers against the house are now almost touching the eaves and I had to put taller cages around the tomatoes...

I forgot to take a picture when I first moved in, there was ivy covering the back fence, both planter boxes, and about four feet out into the lawn... It took me a few months to get it all cleared out.  Of course, it's still on the other side of the fence, so I have to keep an eye out for evil little vines sneaking through and over the fence.  Grrrrrr...

The placement of the 'flowerbed' was determined when the bulbs came up in a swath across the back of the yard.  I just moved a few bulbs to make a path up to the bench...  I was debating whether to keep the lawn or not, but the thought of wasting water on it and having to drag out the weedwacker to mow such a small space just didn't appeal to me.  I'd already put down weed barrier cloth and woodchips in the front yard, so I decided to do the same in the back.  Then I discovered that the whole backyard already had a layer of plastic about four inches down!  So instead of spending money on the weed barrier, I spent a couple of days digging out all the dirt from the middle section.  Of course, the shovel ripped holes in the plastic (which shall henceforth be known as "puddle prevention perforations") so I had to dig out the whole thing with a trowel.  Oye!  

Brand new nasties...  I went a bit nuts with them, they're ALL OVER the yard.  Can't wait until they're all in bloom :-P

This is my backyard, so far...  Yesterday I finished landscaping the last 5 feet of the front yard, all the way over to the neighbors driveway.  I put down more weed barrier and woodchips, a few plants.  It finally looks finished, no big swath of dead grass anymore.  Yay!!!  Pictures of it may or may not follow...

terrible, slow loveliness...

To start out the weekend, I sanded and painted my new kitchen cabinet (thanks grandma) and stenciled some fuschias on it. Still needs a bit of work cleaning up the edges, the paint ran :(

But now I have a 'tea drawer', and a nice dark place for my wine and potatoes.  

The sun was playing out in the backyard when I woke up.  
So...  I joined it.










The backyard is a bit of a mess, I'm still trying to figure out what goes where.  I got some seeds planted, weeded a bit...  Everything's coming back to life.  Last week, the little oak tree was bare.  A few flowers have come up too, tulip, hyacinth, daffodils, grape hyacinth, cal. poppies, even a couple rose buds have started.

In a few months I should have a cascade of little nasties :)


Thora was very disappointed that she couldn't join me outside. I'll have to put the cat-run up soon so she can come out and play with the birdies...


The catalpa tree (seen here being fondled by the neighbors birch tree) has the most gorgeous flowers in summer/fall.


There's a whole swath of these little white flowers (possibly a pushkinia or scilla?) across the backyard.  Buddha seems quite happy with them.

So now I'm a bit sore, but the yard is a little more organized.  When I weeded the flowerbed, I also planted a few more things, and made a border out of the privet trees/branches I've been slowly exterminating.  

Pandora continues...

Almost done!!!  After several weeks away, I'm finally back in the studio.  This time I worked on the box, the gold designs, her face and hands...  I still have a bit more to do on her hands and maybe a few other details, but for the most part she's done...

'Air à danser

Pandora's current incarnation...

Finally getting somewhere with this.  Still contemplating what to do with her robe and the background...  then I have to get to work on her face and hands, and the box...

Here's a photochopped pic of the direction it may be heading...

**note** the woodgrain across her face/hair isn't quite so conspicuous in real life, the scanner tends to highlight it.

and so it goes...

Pandora's coming along nicely...  nice and slow...  frustratingly slow, if you must know.  all those little cloudy bits are a bit time consuming.  But I'm having fun with it, also doing a couple other pieces on the side...

It was supposed to be Pandora letting all the little evils escape, but then I realized that they're not quite 'evil' enough, so it must be hope escaping...  Or is hope evil too?

P is for Pandora. And Pomegranates.

I've been working on this off and on for the last month while I was in Michigan. It's going to take a while to finish, as all the subtle ones do.  I'm thinking of going all Klimt-y on her robe, deep dark red, with a dark indigo for the background.


So I started another, just to finish something. But this is going to take several days too. Oi.

*update* here it is finished:

YES!! Michigan

A brief summary of my trip to Michigan:

Weekend 1:
Braved whiteouts and -6 degree weather to visit cousins north of Chicago (including this new little guy)



Weekend 2:
Saturday, 8am, awoke to thunderstorms. I could see the lightning through closed eyelids. I went down to the basement to make myself some coffee (my dad has renovated an espresso machine or two, they're in the basement awaiting placement in the new addition) and stepped in a big puddle and got my socks sopping wet. The drain outside the basement door had flooded yet again, from the rain and melting snow.  The thunderstorm was caused by a heatwave (yes, 40 degrees is now considered a heatwave) coming through, the warm rain melted all the snow and there was fog rising up from what remained of the drifts.


This is the view from the house, looking off to the west towards what will soon be apple orchards.


 

Weekend 3:
The highlight of the trip (sorry mom and dad) was getting to see the Siegel-Schwall Band. Hands down the best concert I've ever been too. My dad listened to them in his teens, and their first album was the very first record I ever owned (the second was the Flamin' Groovies).

I gave in to peer pressure and got a picture with Corky Siegel. (the bald guy on the right was their former bass player, who sat across the aisle from my dad and got up to play a song with the band) 


The main purpose for my trip was to help put in the ceiling in my parents new addition (is there a limit on how many years it can be referred to as 'new'?)

we had a lift to get the sheets of plywood up to the 18' ceilings


Marc, me, my dad, putting a sheet on the lift


the scaffolding, viewed from the loft


I manned the lift while the guys screwed the plywood into place 


Then my dad passed the last of the insulation up through a 1'x4' opening to Marc and me 






It was three feet high at the top, sloping down from the peak... Which eventually caused a small encounter with a roofing nail...


I lost.

and here's the moon and  Venus at sunset...


Then I came home.

going back to the land of ice and snow

Whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might

Yay! Finally finished this thing.

Scanning this just doesn't work, too many reflections from the gold (as seen here).  

The camera worked a little better; but the gold always exaggerated every stray ray of light, with a dark me-sized reflection in the middle.  I finally figured out that all I needed to do was cut a little lens hole in the middle of a sheet of drawing paper to block out my reflection and get an even reflection, and angle it in a slightly north-easterly direction about a foot behind a cloud-diffused ray of southern sunlight.  Whew.  I need to get a better photo setup.

Still had to photoshop it a bit, but it turned out more or less looking like it does in real life.  Well, it's way cooler than I could capture, the dragons scales reflect the light as you walk past it.  Oh dear, don't tell me I'm going to start posting videos of drawings :P

Deliquescent Glow

3.25"x4.5"

Another gold leaf piece.   Varnishing sometimes enhances the contrast and saturation of the coloured pencil and wood, so I wanted to see how the gold reacted to being varnished.  Not too bad, doesn't change the surface too much.  If anything, it brings out the colour and contrast of the body so it's not overpowered by the gold...

Back to the dragon...

Gold is worse than wood!

11"x14"

I've been working on this piece for a few days (in addition to finishing one piece a day, I'm trying to have a larger one going at the same time). I found my old stash of gold leaf and thought I'd try it out on the wood. So of course, instead of doing some test pieces first, I dive right into this behemoth. A bit big for an experiment, but I love the challenge of figuring it out as I go along.  Especially when I don't really know if it'll turn out or not.  Keeps me from getting bored with the whole process.  Still needs a lot of work, but the hardest part is done.  Although I'm not sure I'll try gold leafing individual scales again any time soon.

So, the birch: If you don't go too thick, the coloured pencil sits on the top of the woodgrain so the picture seems to move as you move past it.  Different colours fade in and out, shadows deepen, highlights vanish and then reappear. If you look at a piece straight on it may look dull and flat, but take one step to either side and there's a face bursting out of the wood at you. That's one of the main draws for me, the reason I love working on wood.

I've kind of figured out how to photoshop the birch pieces so they look at least similar to the originals, but this goldleafing... Hmmm. It does the exact same thing, multiplied about 10 times. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the way it's turning out, but it's going to be a bitch to photograph.  

How the hell do you take a straight-on photograph from a 45 degree angle???

The edge of the moon

4" x 7 "
coloured pencil on wood

Like a sunset going down

6.25" x 8 "
coloured pencil on wood

two trees on a hilltop

3" x 4.5" 
coloured pencil on wood

After that last one, I needed a change of pace, fresh perspective and all that...  and so, a landscape

closing your eyes (won't make you blind)

3" x 4.5"
coloured pencil on wood

Not sure I like this one as much, this cheaper wood (not the birch I prefer) gives a courser look...

Shift

4" x 12 "
coloured pencil on wood

That's What Keeps Me

5.5" x 9" 
coloured pencil on wood

With this one, I stained the wood before drawing on it.  I like the look of it, the way it brings out the woodgrain and warms it up.  I think I'll do more.