Winter Creek With Cedars

Winter Creek With Cedars (oil on birch panel 6 x 6 in.)

26 December 2018 finds me doing my "Birthday painting" on the ice of the creek that Cooks' lane runs along, while Fred helps Joyce to cut our firewood from standing dead Elms and Ashes. We are at the southeastern corner of Wolford Township, 4 km southwest of our home in Bishops Mills. About 100 metres upstream of Land of Nod Road, the creek is narrow, its current maintaining a stretch of open water. 

As I sit quietly painting, I can hear the water make a deep swallowing noice from beneath the ice just across from me. The slowly rising water must have pushed some air from an under-ice pocket as it creeps infinitesimally up over the softening edges. As I paint, the 'coastline' subtly changes. The weather has been warming, and the snow that is falling now will turn to rain this evening.

In a pause between bouts of sawing I hear scritchy, grating sounds from somewhere behind me as the sharp teeth of a Red Squirrel cut through the hard shell of one of the nuts they have gathered and stored from the row of Black Walnut trees in the Cooks' yard. We have not seen the squirrels themselves, (there are fewer as this is the second winter since the bird feeders were taken down) but there are some biggish tracks that may even be Gray Squirrel in the shallow snow, and a couple of nests ('drays') made of leaves in the tops of trees.

The woodcutting has finished, and Fred comes to rest on the snowy ice beside me. A Red Squirrel chirrs from the edge of the field across the creek, and after a while, we hear the soft "Ank, ank, ank" call of a Nuthatch from the direction of the house. My umbrella, its pole held between my knees as I sit on my painting caddy, is now covered with snow, and it's a good thing that the air is calm. There have been times when breezes have driven snow flakes up under the umbrella to stick to my palette and brushes and even the paintings!

Fred mentions that he's noticed a fair number of Hypsizygus ulmarius (Manitoba Maple Knothole Oyster) frozen, drooping, on Manitoba Maple knotholes. 

Joyce uses her chainsaw to cut the wood, but only does this when someone is with her, so Fred and I  play a big role in forest sanitation in the woods along the creek. This creekside was rough pasture when Cooks bought the place in 1972, but it grew up in Elm and some Manitoba Maple. The Manitoba Maples have been overtopped by Ashes, and the the young Elms have now been mostly killed by Dutch Elm Disease (Elms being most of the trees we cut). The Elm canopy spaces have been filled up by rapidly growing Ashes, which are now threatened by Emerald Ash Borer. When this tiny slim metallic green bark beetle shows up here, the woods will soon be dominated by Black Walnuts from squirrel-borne nuts, a second generation of resistant Elms, and whatever else can germinate among the ground cover of young Frangulus Buckthorn. 

There are a few Sugar Maples, a planted Red Oak, a large Black Cherry very dear to Joyce, and planted Black Locusts (along the edge of the field), so we'll have to see if all of these produce progeny when the Ashes die. Older stems of Cathartic Buckthorn which Joyce has spared because the Bohemian Waxwings eat the fruit in late winter, are scattered through the woods. They are now stunted by the overshadowing Ashes, and today one was cut which had died, astonishing Joyce's saw by how hard the wood was. One big tree/shrub in the centre of the stand, with more berries than most, retained a full crown of green leaves. Most Buckthorn everywhere have very few berries this year. 

As the painting was winding up (16h49), after a lull from the snow when there was no precipitation, a breeze began, and a bit of drizzle began to fall in the barely-below-freezing air. As I folded my umbrella, it dumped its load of snow - partly onto my palette! We are back at home now, getting my paints out to touch up the edges of ice and fill in a bit of Cedar... and I need to get out to help Fred do something about the way the woodshed is now completely filled with uncut lengths of logs. . .

Aleta