Chickens & Sheds

© Robin Edmundson, 'Shed, Willow & Chickens', watercolor, 9 x 12 inches.  $375, framed.

Our willows are starting to green up and I've been looking at them a lot. They sprout up wherever it's damp, which is just about everywhere. There are a few of them on this farm a couple of miles aways.  They have a lot of chickens, guineas and peacocks that roam in and out of their shed.  I love the gold chickens on spring green grass. 

I'm not done with this scene yet.  The next  version will have a blooming redbud instead of the willow.  And maybe a plowed field next to it.   And then I might do one with the shed door mostly closed....maybe....we'll see.

Blackberry Rd. Barn & Shed - Spring

© Robin Edmundson, 'Blackberry Rd. Barn & Shed - Spring', watercolor
14 x 10 inches.   Framed to 22 x 18 inches.  $375

This is the next in the spring series I've been working on.   It's the same property as the previous painting ['Blackberry Rd. Silo & Barn - Spring].  There are several buildings on this property and I'm excited to paint more of them.

A Quiet Place to Read

Earlier this summer I passed a barn like this with a willow throwing shadows over it.   It stuck in my head.

I tried painting it a couple of different ways.   I like this one well enough.   It needs more something but I haven't figured out what yet.

I think it's time for me to paint some autumn things.  

Mystery Chrysalis

I spied this chrysalis in a willow sprout at the edge of the road, right in the path of the mowers.   I snagged it and brought it to the house so we can watch it.   I have no idea what kind of butterfly will emerge.


Great camo, isn't it?   Looks just like bird poop from more than a yard away.

I'm excited to see what will come out.

Willow

I like the texture of early weeping willows against the sky. 

This willow is nearing 30 feet tall now.  I got the start as a single short switch in a gallon bucket years ago from my friend, Robin, who has since died of breast cancer.  

This tree is extra special and it makes me unspeakably happy when it greens every year.  It's the first tree on our place to get leaves.

Willow Galls

So last week I went outside and found this large bush full of these things.

They're cool and fuzzy and look like some sort of bud.










This is the type of branch they were on. 

Willow.  And I remembered it being a regular old willow.  Nothing special. The problem is that willow bushes don't have buds like that.

So either someone had uprooted my wild willow and planted some exotic cutie with fuzzy cone-ish buds or ..... well, I didn't know what. 

So I took the pics and  looked it up.

I heart Google.  I searched for 'willow cone image' and found other pics just like the top one.   And when I followed the links, I ended up at this post:  http://www.blogsmonroe.com/nature/2010/02/gnat%E2%80%99s-not-a-pine-cone/

You have to go there and read the whole post.   The guy is hilarious.

Long story short, this isn't a bud, it's a gall formed by gnats - or any of a number of other things like the gnats or that like to eat the gnats.

Now I'm wondering if I should leave 'em alone, or cut 'em off and burn 'em before we have an infestation of some kind.   

What do you guys think?

Elderberry Cuttings

I've been wanting elderberry bushes forever. 

For. Ever.

We bought some nice expensive ones years ago, but they died.   Since they grow wild around here, I couldn't justify buying more, so I read up and learned that they start reasonably reliably from cuttings.

Some say you should root them in water with willow twigs [which release a rooting hormone into the water].  Others say you should just stick them in the ground as soon as possible.   

I got my cuttings and stuck them in water with willow for a day -  I don't know if that was long enough to get enough hormone from the willow, but I figured it wouldn't hurt while we decided just where to put them.  

I got 6 cuttings from a neighbor whose wild bush sprouted at the mouth of a culvert, down in the ditch.   

We stuck 4 cuttings next to a wet area that grows a lot of orange grass [Acorus calamus] and we stuck 2 cuttings on the hill between the chicken coop and the veg garden where the garden drainage runs down the hill.   They'll get plenty of water there. 

We protected them with fence to keep the rabbits off them and mulched around them with cardboard so they can get a head start from the grass.  

Fingers crossed that most of them take.    I love elderberries.