Lee needs to spend time outside every day…regardless of the weather. Here he is re-stacking his rocks down below. He is constantly rearranging them. Keeping an order to something is very important.
By the time I got back from the gym this morning,fixed his breakfast and filled the feed buckets for him to feed the birds and deer, we had this sunrise. It quickly turned cloudy and dull.
So this morning I decided we should cook up some meals for the freezer. Lee is still fairly good at chopping up vegetables and pulling chicken off the bones. So a big pot of chicken soup, a meatloaf, lots of french toast cooked up and placed in waxed paper before freezing, and the start of a puttanesca sauce to finish Sunday. The house smells wonderful.
Last week we had two meals from four chicken thighs over dressing.
Pure comfort foods.
I also had time to work in the Bush Book. A mole and Canadian goose were added to the bear pages.
And a good start on the next section.
There is a bobcat, hummingbird and tufted titmouse joining the skunk and cardinal. I have now drawn in all but the last double page with all the critters on my list. Then I went to the studio and cut all the sections for the next book that will have wildflowers painted within the marks. It is a bad time of year to make contact prints, but I will use what I have here in the yard. I don’t think it is a worry to get good images…just some suggestion of place through marks.
And of course the Drawings A Day with Haiku.
I cut the basket
short in this drawing because
I ran out of room.
From Indonesia
a small and intricately
woven container.
Another hand-carved
wooden box from the kitchen
holds some essentials.
A basket-like box
waits to collect small odd bits
that then go nowhere.
Two chickens pecking
away at nothing with strings
below being pulled.
He raises his axe
and slams it down on the log
with little result.
I am going to do all the kinetic toys that Lee and I collected or made. Such good memories of us working together in the shop. Me coming up with ideas and Lee cutting out all the parts. A carver in Ann Arbor made the wood chopper and the next two I will draw. He had a distinctive style. Then I will move on to the ones we made. I must say that holding the paddle and swinging the weight below just to hear and see the resulting action is very satisfying.
I might bring them all back upstairs for both of us to play with.
Til later.