The truth, the hole truth…

We quickly became impatient, waiting for the company we contracted with to do the heavy lifting. So we decided to dig the 24 holes all on our own. They each needed to be 2’x2′ and 3′ deep. We rented this a very impressive skid steer…

 

with this massive auger attachment.
We quickly realized this wasn’t the right kind of digging equipment for our soil. Hah! Soil in only the loosest sense of the word! What we have is rocks, rocks and more rocks. With a bit of gravel mixed in to make things interesting. Lots of banging, bouncing and chattering occurred, but little actual digging. I spent the better part of the day alternating between running the skid steer and auger, (my first time and super nervous) and jumping down into the holes to break loose yet another boulder. Hubby had to use the back hoe to lift said boulders up and out. After struggling in the blazing heat for over six hours, we only had three holes to show for our efforts. At this rate we would be digging until frost! That’s when we realized we had miscounted and needed 28 holes, not 24. That was down right demoralizing. I even smashed my finger …I admit, I cried.

But we soldiered on and at the end of four grueling days, we were done! Four rows of seven holes all lined up and ready for posts and concrete. We called for an inspection, which amounted to the building inspector driving out, looking at the holes and saying, “Yep, those are holes.” So glad we established that!

And because this is also meant to be a artist blog about living a creative life, I will share the tiny bit of art I have been able to do over the course of the last few weeks. Please be patient, creativity requires energy, which I am sadly lacking at the moment. I have been trying to work in more portable mediums lately, with all the moving, building and waiting, it seemed the smart way to go. I have no space to set up a studio, so an easel and totes full of paints and brushes are out of the question.

Both these drawings are done on watercolor paper using a permanent pen. I did this so I could play with the next step, color. The street scene colors were filled in loosely using Tombow Dual Brush Pens. After I went over each color using a Niji Waterbrush. (I love the convenience of this brush with it’s own water reservoir). I found I could create some lovely watercolor effects this way, but have the preciseness of a marker. I intend to color the cat drawing as well, but thought I would scan it in to my computer first as is, so I can try a bit of computer painting in GIMP or Art Rage. Both drawings are influenced by my recent interest in Zentangle, an art form I highly recommend you look into. It’s portable, soothing and fun!

http://www.zentangle.com/

Next up; Forget the ten foot pole, try twenty six…