drawing and doing battle with the wild space

I did another drawing of a woodland violet. That makes four. The first two I drew on a separate piece of paper and then thought what the heck am I doing? I have a sketchbook. So I transferred those two over. The other two I drew in the sketchbook. Now that I have the small sketches, longest dimension 3’, I’m less than enthusiastic. I think that I’ll do at least one in colored pencil after I enlarge it  maybe to 4” and then see how I feel about doing a watercolor.

      

I have my paints back out, did a little touch here and there on the pomegranate and zucchini even though I had considered them done. Not sure it made any difference and so yeah, they are really done now. I have small frames for them that give a small margin around the paintings but I think, for originals, I want bigger with a mat so I need to see what I can find online. 

Yesterday at SHARE was busy, 22 food orders in the first hour and a half. We open at 9 and when I got there shortly before that the little waiting area was already full, all seats taken and people standing. By 1 PM, I think we had 43 food orders alone. I don't know how many people came for clothes or other assistance. We're expecting it to get even busier with all the cuts to food assistance perpetrated by this administration. We are fortunate that we have grants that allow us to buy food at retail prices since the regional food bank is offering less and less. We still have to pay for the food from the food bank but at a reduced price.

I spent another hour and a half or so outside today, got the rest of the big limb transferred to the truck and then started back on the area behind the big cedar at the back corner of the property. 

There’s a small wooden shed behind it, which you can barely see, that we abandoned after we built the barn. The wild space between properties is behind that, and back in that wild space is poison ivy and wild grape, virginia creeper, and a bazillion rain trees and other trees growing unrestrained all of which I am trying to keep from taking over the shed (a lost cause), the cedar tree, and from it the big pecan tree. Back when Montreal owned the property to the east of me, the guy who mowed it for Montreal kept that corner pretty much in check but the woman who bought it last December has had the property mowed only once and the grass is almost waist high right now on the half acre to the left of the tree. The woman who rents the house has had just the area around the house mowed only twice. Needless to say, where our two properties meet on the SE/SW corners is quickly being swallowed by the wild space. 

Mainly what I’ve been doing is pruning all the low hanging small cedar branches and trying to cut all the grapevines that are growing into the tree. You can see at the top in the picture of the tree where the grape vines have turned brown from what I cut last week. I’ve cleared it out enough to be able to walk under the tree back there, cutting more vines today, but the plan is to prune back the cedar branches away from all that wild growth.

You can see what I’m dealing with here. The marker for the property line is behind that shrub like thing in the middle.

I know it’s a losing battle but I really don’t want the grape jumping into the pecan tree.