Watercolor Redux - An Autumn Leaf Study

I've been playing with my watercolors again!

The watercolor study.

Our front yard is completely carpeted with maple leaves.  I went out, picked up and examined some leaves, looking for color and curl, and finally chose one.

The original leaf.

I sat down with my trusty mechanical pencil and sketched the chosen leaf, then mixed up some watercolors and applied a series of washes over the sketch.  

I'm pretty happy with the result!  

I haven't done any botanicals until now.  I may do some more to see whether this was a fluke.

Plenty of leaves to choose from!

The Mid-Summer Yard and Garden Tour - Something's Growing!

I've spent a LOT of time outside this past week, cleaning up the mess from the recent storms.

Besides the major tree damage to our buckeye and the neighbors' maple last week, some good-sized branches broke off and fell out of the top of the 95-foot tulip poplar in the back yard.  The tree guys didn't mess with them because the branches didn't fall on the neighbors' house, which was why we called them and their giant claw machine. 

I went out and dragged the branches to a relatively convenient spot to cut them up.  We have two gas-powered chainsaws, but they're difficult to start and to keep running (even That Man has to work hard at it).  They make oily messes and are LOUD to boot, so I made the executive decision to buy an electric chainsaw so I could cut up those limbs without a lot of wasted effort.  It's been too hot to suffer that way.  The new saw is easy to start, relatively quiet, and went through the fresh wood like butter.  Because the chainsaw doesn't belch smoke and fumes, I could smell the wood as I cut.  Tulip poplar is super fragrant!

All tulip tree stuff.  Under the rack is a
pile of tulip poplar seeds. Dry, they
make great tinder for starting a fire!

About a week before the storm, I'd taken delivery of a nice new EMPTY firewood rack.  Well, it's not empty anymore. That Man says that's what caused the storm to knock down the trees - nature abhors a vacuum, and the wood rack needed something to fill it up.  My new chainsaw and I obliged.

I heard the storm that caused all the damage may have actually been a tornado that didn't touch down.  I saw the trees on the street behind us blowing in all directions rather than just one, and our buckeye tree appeared to have been twisted when it broke.  The tree guys took it down to the ground and hauled it away with the neighbors' big maple tree, so we didn't get any of its wood.  Poor tree.  We'll miss it.

Here's what a Nut Weasel looks like.

Buckeye trees are notorious for their fertility.  Every year they produce thousands of buckeyes that litter the ground and make it difficult to walk - kind of like walking on a carpet of golf balls.  We used to pay The Girl and The Boy five cents a buckeye to pick them up.  They'd usually fill up a couple of five-gallon buckets each at about $40.00 a bucket.  That's a lot of buckeyes! 

Since there aren't any kids to bribe to gather buckeyes anymore, I looked for a tool to make gathering them easier.  I'd decided to buy a Nut Weasel for this fall, but now it's moot - I don't need it.

Possibly the last living
connection to our buckeye tree.

It's not just the buckeyes themselves that are problematic, but the little seedlings they make!!!  In the spring, there'd be a sea of baby buckeye trees.  The ones in the yard were easy to take care of - you just kept mowing the grass regularly and eventually they give up, but there would always be a bunch hiding in the beds of peonies and daylilies along the side of the house.  I must have done a thorough job of eradicating the stray seedlings that usually crop up in the flower beds because there just aren't any to be found there.  HOWEVER...!  I discovered ONE in the grass under the tulip tree.  It's apparently the only remaining offspring of our late lamented tree.

So...  I've decided to dig it up and move it to the garden, and maybe one day we'll have a sapling to plant in the yard, and it will grow up and make thousands of buckeyes of its own.  THEN I'll buy myself a Nut Weasel!

An INTERESTING Weekend - As in the Ancient Chinese Curse

You're surely familiar with the so-called Ancient Chinese Curse, "May you live in interesting times."  Well, I've had an "interesting" weekend!!!

The Bridgeton covered bridge.

After the irritation of my glasses and sunglasses trying to self-destruct, and the amazing news that That Man had decided to spend the day spectating drag race qualifying in Indianapolis, I thought I'd take a little field trip on Saturday to Parke County, "the covered bridge capital of the world."  I drove to the Bridgeton covered bridge and mill, where I picked up a map of the driving routes that take you to the 31 covered bridges in the county.  I drove the Red Route and visited several of the bridges.
 

The Bridgeton Mill

The Zacke Cox covered bridge.

The Harry Evans covered bridge.

It was a bright, clear, sunny, mild day.  While I wandered the back roads of Parke county, always on the lookout for wildlife, I encountered a white-tailed deer, a bald eagle, loads of turkey vultures, and a tree full of eastern bluebirds.  I ate a little snacky lunch at a picnic table by one of the bridges.

The Rosedale covered bridge.

The Mecca covered bridge.

It was a perfect day, exactly what I needed.  All good things must end, though.  As I got closer and closer to home, the sky clouded up, and eventually, rain spattered the windshield and then it started raining for real.  And blowing!

Pulling into the garage, I saw our neighbor on our front porch talking to That Man.  She was telling him one of our trees had split and was about to fall, and to be careful around it.  Once inside, we watched the rain wind whip the trees on the street behind us into a frenzy.

After the storm passed, we went outside to see what was what, and sure enough, our buckeye tree had been totally decapitated, the missing top on our neighbors' roof and gazebo.  Plus, their big sugar maple had split and blocked the street.  I called a tree service, and that's how we spent all of Sunday - supervising the removal of those two trees with our neighbors and picking up leaf litter and moving "smaller" branches around.  We had several branches blown out of the top of our 90-foot tulip tree, too, and they ended up scattered around the back yard - knocking down our cable TV connection, hitting my boat, and landing on the tomato plants in my garden. 

 And then the cherry on the top - when we woke up Sunday, we had no power.  A tree down the street had been struck by lightning Saturday, caught fire, and during a second storm that night fell and took down the power lines.  We didn't get power back until nearly 5:00 Sunday afternoon. 

In the meantime, we got out a generator for us and another for our neighbors so our refrigerators and freezers would stay cold.  It was a mild day again, so we just opened the windows to keep from suffocating in the house.  It could have been much worse - the temperature could have climbed into the 90s like it did earlier in the week.

The tree guys brought a truck with a grappling arm to remove the top of our buckeye tree from the neighbors' roof.  It was fascinating to watch, as attested by the number of rubberneckers driving by, slowing down, and taking pictures, but I'd really rather not have that kind of activity in our yard again soon. 

Here's the pile from the neighbors'
tree, after the street had been cleared.

Here's the pile from our
buckeye tree.

Maple Glazed Salmon (A Sheet Pan Recipe)

When it was difficult to find chicken at the grocery store, I grabbed a couple of packages of wild-caught salmon.  I put them in the freezer until I could decide what to do with them.  That Girl had told me about a salmon sheet pan dinner, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I'd like to give it a try.

I'd never made a sheet pan dinner.  They got really popular a couple of years ago and there were sheet pan dinner recipes in magazines and on the internet, and people shared them like mad!  I never got into the craze then, but last week I was ready to take the plunge.

I started with oven roasted potatoes (click here for the recipe) on my sheet pan.  While they were cooking, I opened a package of frozen green beans and dumped them into the bowl I had used for tossing the potatoes in olive oil and seasonings.  I added a tablespoon of oil and some more salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

After the potatoes had been in the oven for 20 minutes, I took them out, turned on the broiler, shoved them to one side of the pan, dumped the beans on the other side of the pan, and put the salmon in the middle.  It all went under the broiler for 9 minutes.  Done!  Here's the recipe for the salmon itself.  You can substitute sweet potatoes, broccoli, carrots, or whatever you want for the potatoes and green beans, but you'll have to adjust the roasting time depending on what you're cooking.  Just make sure to put the salmon in at the point where there's about 10 minutes left of the typical roasting time.

If you want, you can cook the salmon alone and use other cooking methods for your sides.


Maple-Glazed Salmon (A Sheet Pan Recipe)

1 1/2 to 2 pounds salmon fillets (4-5 fillets)
1/4 c maple syrup
3 T Dijon or coarse-ground mustard (I had neither, so I used horseradish mustard instead)
1/2 t salt
1/4 t pepper

Take the fillets out of the package, rinse them, then dry them off with a paper towel.

Turn the broiler on high.  Mix the remaining ingredients together, place the fillets at least 1/2 inch apart in a sheet pan sprayed with non-stick spray, spread the glaze evenly over each fillet.

Broil 7-10 minutes about 4-5 inches from the broiler element.  The glaze will caramelize and the salmon will be pink and opaque and will flake easily with a fork.