Art Week

22 - 26 Feb 2016

Every year in the quiet season Amanda, Jessica and I try to have a week of mornings for a painting intensive.  With the pressure on to plant trees, it wasn't too well timed this year, but it worked out okay - quiet concentration for four hours in the morning, followed by afternoons of pickaxing and shovelling to break ground for the trees.

 Dave continued whitewashing round the house (with a couple of breaks to go fishing)

 Afternoons digging holes, creating small watering circles filled with manure, built up on the downhill side.

 Art Party creative clutter in a corner of MammaMia restaurant (closed for the winter)

 Not quite finished, my little painting of Bella, Jonathan and the eternal city.

 More trees going in, about 4 a day, lots of hard work breaking the ground, clearing big clumps of grass, sorting out stones, building a little terrace wall to hold water, carting 30k bags of manure, wrestling the trees out of their overgrown pots ... phew, worn out just thinking about it!

 A good feeling, as the planted start to outnumber the unplanted.  I think it's going to be a lovely place as they all come into leaf (if we don't kill them first).  In this picture, from front to back: Flax (for tying up other plants), Sea Buckthorn (edible berries, nitrogen-fixing), Tilia Tormentosa (silver Linden tree with edible leaves), Nepalese Pepper bush (spice berries), Mimosa (nitrogen-fixing and bee attracting) and off to the left, Tilia Cordata (small leaved Linden, edible leaves).

And to round off a very busy month - Dave had a gig at Desperadoes, wearing the very silly Vietnamese hat that Robbie and Sue brought back as a pressie for looking after the dog.