Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was ‘date’ I was going to draw an old mechanical calendar (one that you turn round to change the date) but I can’t find it. So then I decided to sketch a log, cut in half, to represent tree rings (dendrochronology) you can count the rings to find out the age of the tree and as the widths of the rings change with the weather you can also work out the years it was growing.
We are still picking pears from the tree and a quick meal is to chop then up into pieces and stew them up in a bit of water and sweetner. Then I make up some custard to pour over the stewed pears. Its warm and sweet for a cold day. It saves the pears from rotting as if you leave them they can get over ripe and go mushy and brown. It’s not bad for an old crooked pear tree that almost blew over one year!
Pears off our tree and oranges from the supermarket. This shows just how big our pears have grown this year. They needed picking as they won’t ripen on the tree. The tree was a small sapling from a woolworths store in Stoke twenty years ago or so, before the stores went bust. It’s now a tree about fifteen foot high and spreading branches about twenty or twenty five foot across. It grew leaning over because of the weight of the pears. I have to say they are very tasty when they are ripe. I think they are a conference style of pear. We have had around fifty or sixty pears but most of them are too high to reach, the ones in the bowl were low hanging.
View out of a side window, heavy with pears the branches are bending down on our pear tree. The trunk is propped up because its gone over to about a forty five degree angle partly caused by strong winds and partly just from the weight of pears on the branches. This from a tree bought from Woolworths twenty five years ago as a small sapling. Every year I marvel at the productivity of the plant. And looking out the window at them? Makes me proud of what you can do if you let nature take over.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt is ‘straight’. The cat went straight up the tree! It was going to be a straight road but when I started drawing I changed my mind. Felt pens white pencil crayon and black ink fine line pen.
What is Above? Is it only sky? I have a prompt to draw for and I’m trying to think what to do. I can start with tree branches or tall buildings towering over me. They reach up above me. Basically as I’m short anything above 5ft 6 inches is above me, so that includes kitchen cupboards! Upstairs? That too….
Then the blue sky and clouds are above us. The clouds could be white and fluffy or dark and threatening rain…but mountains can also tower above us. Even hills. The Blackpool tower?
Follow that with planes, satellites, space stations….
Asteroids, meteors, comets, planets, the moon, the sun, stars, the Oort cloud, cosmic rays, the milky way, galaxies, the universe.
Our apple trees have got a lot of fruit for a change. I think they are finally maturing and as they have had their branches trained along the fence they are bearing more fruit than if they were growing straight up, some of them are already ripening and turning red. I don’t know their variety but they are tasty.