Find A Piece Of Shade And Draw

It’s hot.  It’s humid.  Too hot for an old man to be out walking, that’s for sure.  So, I put my stool in a shady spot in the yard and drew a small “scene” designed by Chantal.  I thought these little guys were going to be hosta-guarding soldiers (wrote about that), but Chantal had other ideas.  As usual, hers was a better one.

Our New Strawberry Field

Once upon a time, someone got the bright idea to plant a bunch of bamboo as a hedgerow between our house and the one next door.  When done it probably looked like a good idea.  The problem is that over time, the bamboo takes over EVERYTHING because its roots propogate the plant(s) into a persistent monster plant.

So, ever since we bought the place we’ve been fighting it by cutting it back continually.  We seem to be winning the battle as this year we don’t have much of it along our driveway (its last stand), leaving a sort of grassless, bamboo-less area.

What’s happened, though is a big surprise.  We’ve got a “field” of tiny strawberry plants.  There are hundreds of them, most less than two inches high and sporting 3 distinct leaves.  Normally we’d be mowing and/or planting something but I’m going to let things go to see what happens.  I don’t think that these plants are going to get much taller and I could find only a couple flowers.  But I did find one plant that had two microscopic strawberries.  They even tasted like strawberries, though you’d need a couple hundred of them to make a handful.  I had to draw the little guy.  Full size this plant measure just over 1″ high.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6 softcover), Micron 01.