three and a half years later...

You might remember back in 2016, our friend and fellow glass artist was evicted from his studio after 40 years and given 2 months to vacate the premises which included having to move his house that he had had put on the property. He and his partner bought an acre of land on the other side of Houston (much like we did), got his house moved and fixed back up and now Gene is ready to retrieve all the rest of his stuff. He has, over the past few years, come and got this thing or that thing but now his new studio is done; slab poured, metal building erected, wiring done, doors installed, plumbing done. He came Tuesday and loaded up as much stuff as he could and he was back yesterday for another load because he's afraid that Texas is going to get locked down and then he won't be able to get his stuff. We let him borrow our trailer so we loaded that up too. The shop is going to look downright empty.

I finally took the string trimmer and cut away everything around the bluebonnets in front, all the hay grass and clover gone to seed and the cleaver and other stuff and raked into neat piles which I've picked up and trundled off and dumped father in the field behind me because my burn pile is already sky high.

I also worked on the drawing of the amaryllis flower bud and finished it. Next up is a watercolor of the same. Or maybe another drawing, something different.

Or maybe more yard work but over at the shop as we are in the last day/s of what is probably the last cold front. There are about a dozen small trees and in a few cases getting large trees along the fence line that have to be cut down and a large clump of poison ivy which has to go.

OK, so long sleeved shirt, long pants, socks and boots, hat, the only thing exposed was my hands and face and I got down in that deep ditch along the front of the shop and waded through a sea of poison ivy and dewberry brambles with a bucket containing the long handled nippers, a scary and lethal looking machete that a friend loaned me, 

and the stump killer and I think I got all the hackberry trees along the fence line, about two dozen, and squirted the stumps with stump killer. 

We'll see if they come back. Still plenty of trash vines and poison ivy to deal with. The virginia creeper and ironweed has all but smothered the wisteria in the corner, if you can believe something like that is even possible, and it didn't bloom well this year so all that has to be cut back. In fact this part of the property is where we are going to put the house for my sister so the entire fence needs to be cleared. I don't use poisons but I'm afraid that's what it's going to take  to really clear out that ditch and fence. 

Oof. I'm tired now.