Wild ink painting of asparagus, now 5 or 6 years old. Made with wild grape, dandelion, buckthorn, horsetail, acorn, sumac, and a bit of help from avocado pits.
Painting posed in front of the forest of baby asparagus that’s currently under lights in my studio. These asparagus babies are growing from seeds I collected from our micro-patch last year, hopefully headed to start a much larger patch elsewhere.
From time to time these wild ink paintings do get sold or gifted, but I’m always nervous to do so. Not because I can’t let them go, I love to create things and have others enjoy them. But because some of the wild inks change so much over time. (You can see how different this painting looked like several years ago — here) Fortunately there are many kindred spirits out there who not only accept the paintings will change, but find joy in that they do.
Nothing gold can stay, but who knows what new beauty might arrive next.
I couldn’t decide which spring ephemeral to paint yesterday, so I painted them all. This quote has been rattling around my brain lately, and inspired me to just dive in and play:
“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very quiet if only those birds sing there that sang best.” ~Henry Van Dyke
It’s an embarrassment of riches in the forest right now. The sweet spot where everything overlaps. The bloodroots are just beginning to drop their petals and reveal their seed pods, the trout lily are still blooming in force, there are still tiny spring beauties to be spotted, and the white trilliums are popping open all over, while the mayapples explode up from the ground
I snuck a couple of science-y easter eggs into this painting. Like a tiny nod to — and buckle up for a five dollar word — myrmecochory: seed dispersal by ants. A process that’s very helpful to the spread of trilliums and other ephemerals. And the different shades of trout lily anthers, from bright yellow to brick red. A variation which, last time I checked, we still don’t know the anther to.
…Yes I do make that joke every time. // Exploring watercolours thanks to our dear friend Robertson, whose paints I am using. Rob was a soulmate and one of my all-time favourite humans who died of lymphoma at Thanksgiving, so many decades too soon. Love you Rob. Thank you for all your brilliant colours.
Wrestling with wild grape vine, trying to corral it for fall’s jelly harvest, I’m suddenly surrounded by smoke. I freeze, but my brain can’t work out where the smoke is coming from. Unexpected fires are usually from neighbours burning garbage, but unless I’ve forgotten again, it’s not garbage day. And those fires generally make smells not smoke anyway. This smoke is doubly strange — forming low-hanging yellow clouds that are now billowing lazily towards the driveway. I move again, and even more smoke joins this curious yellow fog, and finally my brain solves the puzzle. It forgot to remember where I’m standing — under the juniper trees, their branches so thickly slathered with pollen that the whole tree is the colour of creamy mustard. As I flail the spent vines over my head, I’m knocking the pollen from the tree behind my back, and it is agreeably taking flight in great plumes on the spring breeze. Later, I see a red squirrel do the same thing as me. She’s not tending grape vines, but leaping through the copse of cedars with the sort of gravity-bending abandon only a squirrel understands. She lands at the tip of a branch, and the tree bounces heavily under her four soft red paws. She’s suddenly invisible behind a curtain of exploding pollen. *Poof* and abracadabra, she makes herself disappear.
Hope you’re having a good week folks. Between the big magic of the eclipse, and the daily wonders too. 🌲💛
I finally made my first sign for the woods. From a scrap of cedar milled by a friend, and some paint made from linseed+graphite. It’s in Swedish. Whatever else you know about me, you probably know that I am not Swedish, do not speak Swedish, and have never been to Sweden.
But in a sincere effort at “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, I based this sign on one found in the forest of Maria “Vildhjärta” Westerberg. I recently watched a film about Maria, and her attempt to rewild and replenish her bark-beetle afflicted spruce woods. Made monoculture by her grandfather, for the immediate gains of her mother’s generation…
“…And now comes the bill, to my generation and to the younger ones…”
The planet is tiny and the problems are shared. We see much of the same devastation here in Canada’s woods. Where the skin of many different trees blisters and weeps. Where so many of the ash, their branches like the tines of a fork, stand tall and bold and dead.
“They were supposed to live long after I have died, and they all started to die before me”
Fortunately, there is a lot of life in a dead tree. As both habitat and nursery. But, as I see it, only, only if we finally learn the lesson of diversity. When a forest is rich in species, it is rich in possibilities and resilience. Where oak and basswood and hop-hornbeam and hickory mingle, and cedars cultivate the edges, and young birch stand in the duff on the slope, until they fall and are replaced by the young maple who were waiting at their feet. Then, though many trees might die, the forest may yet survive.
Our forest is only about 75 years old, and I hope just beginning its life. It has been spared until now because of its difficulty to harvest, its terrain, its distance from roads. It has been protected by that most burly bodyguard — inconvenience. But these temporary injunctions do not protect it against the extreme and erratic weather of climate change, or from those insects imported accidentally, who stow away alongside the cheap goods that we must have at all costs. And so we witness and watch as too many of the trees here die too quickly too.
“I cried all the time…”
But action is a great balm for pain. So each year, we pull up DSV and prune away buckthorn. And in the disturbed spaces, along the edges and where holes have been punched through the forest, we plant more baby trees. Add more possible futures. A diverse forest is a far better forest manager than we are of course, and well-suited seeds will find their own way to fertile openings. But from time to time, we dig in a little hope too.
“After my 100th planted tree, I had stopped crying, because I was so tired physically.”
If you do nothing, despair is guaranteed. If you do something, you crack the door open, and hope might be able to find a way in.
“…At my 800th tree, I started to feel some kind of strength and hope. And I was eager to wake up in the morning…”
🌱🎨: Discover the world of wild inks. Learn about foraging for colour, unlocking the secret pigments of plants and, best of all, make your own “Wild Inkling” art to take home! Together we’ll explore the world of pinks, yellows, greens, browns, blacks, and purples hiding in plain sight.
🌳👍: This workshop is hosted by and in collaboration with Lower Trent Conservation, so in addition to making cool art with plants, your registration supports our local conservation areas. Double win!
(Also I saw turtles basking in the quarry right beside the workshop site, sooo…. triple win!)
🔗: Link to register through Lower Trent Conservation is here. Hope to see you there! // Covid Notes: The workshop will be held entirely outdoors, based in the picnic shelter. Registration is limited. // 🌈🎥: Interested in making ink but can’t attend? The Colour of Ink featuring Jason S. Logan (Toronto Ink Company) — author of the incomparable ‘Make Ink’ — is now available to watch free online here.
At Toyota, waiting for car service. I always wait outside if I can. Every waiting room seems to have a TV, spewing bad news on my lap. Out in the real world, the news is at least mixed.
I’ve spread my picnic blanket out on a patch of garlic mustard — or is it creeping charlie? — behind a line of supersized pickup trucks. Their hulking metal forms the back wall of my improvised porch. A short chainlink fence straight ahead warns lazily about the high speed highway beyond. I could jump the fence easily, and I am terrible at jumping fences.
But to my right is a tiny green tangle — a few yards of plant life. And the longer I look, the more threads I see. Purple loosestrife is woven with yellow salsify, stitched through with queen anne’s lace. Patches of white sweetclover, pops of sunny goldenrod. Tall swishing grasses, and the velvety stalks of sumac. Some plants I recognize, some I don’t know. I look them up, though my phone is old and battery life is precious. Knapweed, burdock, birdsfoot trefoil.
I’m alone back here, save for the guy a few dealerships to my left, who is working this fenceline with a weedwhacker. But he’s going slow, and I’ll probably be gone within the hour. I doubt he’ll get to me and this little thicket before then. If we’re lucky, he’s only working his dealership’s particular domain, and his weedwhacker will be stopped by a line in the corporate sand.
Chicory’s pinwheel flowers bloom mauve nearby. On each one is an iridescent green sweat bee, harvesting pollen. The chicory harvested, the bee moves on to the pretty pink rosettes of the field bindweed. I notice another little green bee, then another. Transport trucks storm past us. Decorated with logos of eagles and tigers, their bellies are full of fossil fuels and plastic.
I get up to investigate some burdock, and when I return, three tiny grasshoppers are sitting on my plaid blanket. Dandelion clocks that have run out of time float past and snag on the nap of the fabric. The four of us sit surrounded by wild carrots, raspberry, and grapes, with a few plastic takeout containers chucked on top.
I look up at the summer sky and spot a tiny bird chasing off a crow. The tiny bird is so very tiny, but nevertheless, it persisted. The corvid flies past another invisible line and, triumphant, the tiny bird sails back home. I can’t make out what sort of bird this is, this stalwart little spirit. It’s a David and Goliath story, with the part of the pebble played by a self-slinging bird.
The guy with the weedwhacker is inching closer, fighting against all the life that’s already made it up and over the fence. It’s whacked and whacked but the green just keeps coming. Already, the bindweed slinks undaunted over the harsh gravel meant to keep plant life at bay. As if the gravel were a river, and the bindweed were thirsty for more.
It’s all about as simple as everything is, which is to say, not simple at all. Most of these plants are invasive or introduced. I drove here today, and I will drive home. I’m woven into all sides of the story. Sometimes I cut down the green, kill the bug, and whack at “weeds” too. But, as Amy Krouse Rosenthal said: In the alley, there is a bright pink flower peeking out through the asphalt.
Neil took this beautiful photo the other day of an eastern tiger swallowtail on our ninebark shrub.
I hate ninebark shrubs. Also, ninebark shrubs are one of my favourite plants.
The ninebark in our yard is the legacy of a previous owner. It is a good size and prominently placed. I would never have planted ninebark here. This nursery variety one is called “summer wine”, branded to evoke warm afternoons and pleasing things. But to me, a child of the 80s, it is the colour of repressively brutalist elementary school buildings and suburbia. It belongs to a landscape of pressure treated stacked railroad ties and salmon-coloured patio stones. To me, it is “morose maroon”.
It is not… to my taste.
But when we moved in here, we left all the plants as-is for awhile. We didn’t know much, but we knew enough to know what we don’t know. So we gave ourselves a few years to learn about what was already here, and kept a light touch with our horticultural changes. We added, but we didn’t take away.
We moved in during summertime. When our first spring came the next year, we discovered the ninebark exploded with baubles of tiny pink and white blooms. Alright. That’s a solid +1. But that’s still many months of morosity.
A couple more years along, and my love of and fascination with insects was beginning to blossom. In the springs that followed, I realized that the ninebark was covered, absolutely covered, in what looked like tiny buzzy bees. Each spring and early summer the shrub literally hums, throbs and pulses with life.
Now, 7 years later, the ninebark is still here, in pride of place. And it is welcome to stay as long as it likes. Because now I know that it is a much needed source of early food and shelter for all sorts of flying things. Yesterday a hummingbird perched on the tip of its branches. The tiger swallowtails flutter through it, birds build nests under its canopy, and the tiny buzzy bees are a sure sign more blooms are on their way.
I recently learned there are two more ninebarks here, struggling to survive in poorly suited sites. I dug them up out of the ground — and moved them to better locations. You can’t have enough ninebark.
🥔Tuber-u-lar experiment! My favourite flower might be the potato. Before we grew some of our own potatoes here, I’d never seen a potato flower. And maybe it’s because I find them so enchanting that I leave them be, and enjoy them as long as I can. And maybe it’s because I leave them as long as I can, that last year, one potato plant formed an extra surprise: a potato berry!!
The little green “berry” is the fruit of the potato plant. And since it’s not really how we grow potatoes anymore (by planting the tubers, we grow clones of plants instead), and is at least a little toxic to eat, it doesn’t get much fanfare or cultivation.
🐝: But if the weather is just right, and the variety isn’t sterile, and if you have some bumblerbees around, your pretty pretty potato blossoms might get pollinated, and you might end up with a potato fruit!
And if you’re the curious type (🙋), you might just wait patiently until that little green fruit is ripe, and lurk around your potato plant checking until the day it drops to the soil. And then maybe you lovingly scoop it up, and pop it in a little container to dry out and you put a wee “potato!” label on it. And all winter you walk past it on a shelf. And then when you start your seeds in early spring, maybe you crack that now dried up potato berry open. And though you don’t know what you’re doing, and you can’t really tell, maybe, maybe, you see seeds in there?? And you pop the potato berry pieces into soil and cross your fingers and then on THE BEST EARLY SPRING DAY EVER you see li’l baby potato plants!!
It is an awfully long way from sprouts to spuds. So I don’t know if these little potato bebes are going to survive all the way to the garden. But holy potato berries am I excited to try!
❄️🌱: Happy up and down and round and round start to spring folks! // For more info: Since we refer to the tubers we plant as “seed potatoes”, it’s dang hard to google this subject. (Search engines lump “potato seed” and “seed potatoes” as one). If you want to learn more, try potato apples, potato tomatoes or TPS (True Potato Seed). But not “TPS Report”, because you’ll need the right cover sheet for that.
There is that beautiful quote that society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.
🍐👵: I don’t think there is an equivalent explanation for what happens when a middle-aged woman plants fruit trees whose pears she hopes to eat sooner rather than later. Though I’m hoping for neutral or better.
🤹⏳: We’re stretched here between the poles of permaculture and practicality. We try to pay attention, and gather good data before making changes to this scrappy scrap of land. With its spring flooding and summer droughts and rocks for soil and shade for days. But it’s always mixed with the urgency of needing to get things in the ground. So they can either start growing, or start failing so we have time to start again.
🤸🌳: Because we’re learning, so one thing we know perfectly is that we have a lot of failing ahead of us. So we try to fail on a worthwhile path, and fail forwards. That way, even when we stumble and fall, we’re still moving a little further in a good direction. 😉
Red-bellied woodpecker feasting on sumac…or the bugs therein?
The red-bellied woodpecker. I’m not ragging on the folks who assigned woodpeckers their common names, but… okay, maybe a little. Because if I was going to describe this woodpecker to someone, “look for its red belly” would be way way way down the list.
“Neil! Come see this red-bellied woodpecker! No don’t look for a bird with a red belly. The belly looks bright white from here. I mean I can get you a close up reference photo where you can see it’s actually a bit ruddy… Ahhhh there’s no time for this, it’s that bird with the BRIGHT RED HEAD.”
It’s the same deal with the yellow-bellied sapsucker, with its brilliant red cap and (in males) equally bright red throat. And belly that if you are about five feet away from one, and happen to have a pantone deck with you, you *might* describe as the colour of watery butter.
I said I’m not actually ragging on those woodpecker namers though, and I do mean it. Because when you see the bird who scored the name “red-headed woodpecker” you can’t help but think — alright, fair enough.
