Soft Ground

The ruin of a barn on the Kozawyk farm - pastel sketch, 9x12 

The ground was soft today and squishy in places at the Kozawyk farm. I squatted at my easel without a coat or fleecy on. I was on a bit of an incline looking up and kept tipping over from time to time. Then I clumsily spilled some coffee into my tray of pastels, not all of it, thankfully,  there was still some left to drink.

Pat, the artist who lives on the farm and her dog Meg don’t mind if I make a return visit to have a go at the weeping willow, now a mature tree that her mother planted.  I want to draw the tree before it buds – with its limbs fully exposed.

Tonight I went to the Sky Dragon with David to hear him give a talk on the American novelist, Nicholson Baker to a group of local poets, specifically on his novel, The Anthologist. This led him to talk about all the poets who rhyme and those who don’t.  In connection with this he talked about Philip Larkin’s wonderful anthology, The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. Nicholson Baker is also a literary critic, a social critic and a journalist. David has been having a go  at almost everything he’s written for the last two months. I came away thinking what a sweet, thoughtful,  erudite man my husband is. And a whole lot more.