This morning, with its clear blue sky, the completed addition of four new galvanized raised beds stand finished and ready for planting out with spring potatoes. They join another eighteen put in place in another lifetime (it seems).
The installation required placing the beds in place, filling them with dirt (by hand), sinking five upright posts with attached rafters, and lastly, removing the old wire netting and stretching new wire to cover the lot and, thereby, possum proof the garden once again.
It took three working days. The trick was not to undo the old wire netting until everything was in place. To have started and not finished before night fall would have allowed the possums access to the inner sanctuary and they would have run amuck and feasted on all the winter vegetables growing there.
Three days hard work, plus expenses, for just a few extra potatoes? Why am I not in my studio doing the “real” work of being an artist? Perplexing question as to what work is really important. Perhaps, all work?
Lately, I have been spending more of my time around the property on maintenance and other projects than I have in my studio. Also, last week from Tuesday till Friday I had between seven and nine overnight guests. (Went to bed for two days with a 103 degree fever when they all left.)
This doesn’t mean that I am not trying to get to my studio. The above photo shows — with the new garden enclosure in the background — an upright model standing just behind a nine foot long hunk of wood being carved to its shape. With time, it will become ten rounded abdomens with belly buttons in bas relief stacked five on a side. A sort of honouring of all placental mammals.
Some considerable technical issues regarding tensile strength, but fingers crossed. I’ll probably be eating the potatoes before the sculpture gets finished. The “artistic” world will just have to wait until “my” world catches up with all its chores and multiple other passions.
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