Waiting for Spring (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) Sold

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3 March finds me in Bishops Mills, walking between our Natural History Centre to the house, casting my eye across the old snow drift in our neighbour's driveway and thinking that he'll soon be coming to putter about his country place again. Then I noticed the old red truck parked between the Cedar and Spruce that mingle their branches over the path to the door. It must have been there for some time, unnoticed by us. Now it looks to me like an old red dragon sleeping, waiting for spring to arrive and the man to return with work to do.

The only sounds are the rushing tires of commuters coming home for supper, growing and fading, carrying far across the leafless landscape. This morning's clamour of Crows chasing nest-hunting Ravens from Bruce Starling's woods is long forgotten in the stillness of early evening. The Chickadees that hunted hidden insects in the high sunny branches of our Maples, singing their late winter "Fee-bee" songs, have all gone to find shelter for the night.

The slowly melting snow in our neighbour's lane glows in the final moments of sunshine, and I'll be checking the forecast, hoping for that special combination of warm sunny days and frosty nights -  "sugaring" weather that raises the pressure of sap in the Maples.

Comments

  1. Fred SchuelerMarch 5, 2011 at 10:42 PM

    And notice, just as there was a stand of Knotweed behind the house in Halifax painting, that there's a slowly expanding stand of Miscanthus grass behind this truck. Aliens are everywhere, and there's a homesite on the nearby Pioneer Road where Miscanthus has spread widely though a similar grassy oldfield.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fred SchuelerMarch 6, 2011 at 10:10 AM

    You can even see the Miscanthus from space, about a 12x6m stand at 44.872194N 75.700133W in google maps, which also gives nice streetview shots of the adjacent barn/former-church/residence, and another truck.

    ReplyDelete

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