first fall day, lilies, and progress

Between Friday and Saturday I’m four piles of tree debris down, two on the burn pile, two in the truck, and three more to go. I’m not done making piles but I want to get the ones I already have either burned or moved over to the burn pile first. I’m only burning one truckload at a time so that the bonfire doesn’t get too big. Fortunately this stuff is very dry despite the rain we’ve been having and it goes up fast.

This picture of the back of my property past my property line is for Sabine who asked if I could leave some of the tree debris for the bugs and what not. It’s the Wild Space I refer to that is really part of the field behind but all this wild growth has grown up from not being mowed completely when they hay the field which they’ve only done once so far this year I think. 

Saturday was a beautiful blue sky day, low humidity. When I woke up it was cooler outside than inside for the first time of the coming fall season or what passes for fall around here. I opened all three doors to air out the house. Today is just as nice. Monday it starts to cloud up again and by mid week more rain is predicted. Even though it got hot later, up to 90, and supposed to hit high 80s today, nights are down in the 60s.

Walking around the yard, admiring the oxblood lilies popping up everywhere in the front

with Cat following me around,  

I noticed these. 

Last spring I dug up a big clump of surprise lilies (what Ms Moon calls hurricane lilies) that never bloom, or just one flower once in a blue moon, and replanted them where I thought they would get more sun and were less crowded. Two of the clumps are sending up bloom stalks. The third is a no show so far so I guess they aren’t happy there but I’m going to have at least 13 blooms!

Current progress on my colored pencil drawing of the tallow leaves. I had put in the dark gray shadow that shows in the picture but it just did not read as a shadow from the curled up edge of the leaf on my drawing and I really didn’t like it so I took it out altogether. Still need to work on the stem a bit but this leaf is essentially finished.

My only task today is to torch the burn pile if it’s not too breezy as I think I overdid it yesterday. I didn’t feel like I was exerting myself all that much just dragging dead branches out of the truck and tossing them on the burn pile or walking back and forth between debris pile and the truck and the stuff isn’t heavy but I was hot and sweaty when I came in and I definitely felt it later. I’ll spend some time working on my drawing and maybe sit out on the deck and read.