Easter Morning

My next-door neighbor used to have a camellia tree at the corner of her house, that towered over her roof line, splendid with red blossoms.

When the oak tree fell it smashed most of the plant.  It survived, but in a truncated (sorry) state, ending up as a sturdy shrub.

This spring, after a year of rest, it put out a single bud, a single blossom.  I'm taking that as a portent of hope and rebirth.

Construction

I thought that I should document all the construction that going on within sight of my house.  Cause someday, God willing, it'll all be done and quiet on the street again.

The green dumpster is for my next door neighbor.  The structural work is all done now, and the electrical system and plumbing have been repaired.  They still have to re-assemble her kitchen, and repair the plaster and repaint in the rest of the house.

The brown dumpster is for the triplex across the street, which has been vacant for years.  The original plan was to turn it into a five-story building containing three luxury condominiums.  That, thankfully, was scrapped.  It's either going to come back to life as a modest triplex, or have the apartments merged to become a single-family house.

And behind that, where the alternator rebuild shop used to be, a new condo building is going up. 

Virtual sketchcrawl - new media

I'd bought a cheap kid's set of watercolor pencils, months ago, at Freddy's, but had never tried them.  So, with today's theme of trying a different media than you usually use, I dragged them out.

Obviously, I couldn't sketch the pencils themselves, not in their true colors at least, so I let other pencils stand in.  And the highlights didn't work very well.  There was a white pencil in the box, but, wet or dry, it didn't seem to end up in the drawing.

For my second sketch, I dragged everything outside, and huddled under my eaves to do one of the dogwood blossoms.  To make the white stand out, I cut apart one of the multitude of paper grocery sacks that I've brought home during the pandemic.

And, again, the white was pretty pathetic.

Sketching together, apart

Today was our scheduled sketchcrawl.  We can't get together for it while we're in lock-down, so we did a distributed one, in which everyone sketches in and around their own house, all at the same time.

I did my side yard again, with the dogwood tree leafing out, and Barbara's camellia blooming.

And then the cats, separately.

More carpenters

Half the city is shut down, but workers are still coming round to work on my neighbor's house.  For which she's extremely grateful, hoping to be able to get back into it soon.

Camellia

A few buds and flowers of the second new camellia.

I went outside for this one and sat on the wall between my yard and my neighbor's.

New plantings

I'd planned the locations of the new plants specifically so that I'd be able to see them from my bedroom windows.  Which worked out nicely when I want to be able to sketch something from my window.

This is the part of the yard where most of the oak tree landed.  So between that, and the chimney fall and the equipment used to get the oak tree out, there wasn't much of my old landscaping left. 

This is a camellia on the left, and a dogwood on the right, and random rounds of pine tree trunk set up in between, as a sitting area.

Construction

Workers showed up this morning to do some demolition on my next-door neighbor's house!  Spanish-speaking guys, on a Sunday?  Has mass been canceled?  No, but the bishop has offered a dispensation, to those who aren't feeling well, or are at risk, are even the least bit uneasy about going to church.

Masons

Bit by bit, the house is getting put back together.

A Tale of Two Chimneys

Here's what my next-door neighbor's chimney used to look like.  And behind her house, you can see the giant two-century old Oregon white oak that used to dominate her back yard.



And here's what it looks like today.  After the oak came down and smashed its top off.  And the masons scavenged enough of the fallen bricks to rebuild its stubby top.

And  here's what my more humble chimney used to look like, peeking out from behind one of my pine trees.

And what it looks like now, even more humble than before.

The pine trees are gone as well.  They gave their little lives, fending the worst of the damage off of my house.  And will soon be replaced with little slips of trees - a magnolia and a dogwood.  (These were supposed to have been planted on Friday.  But my neighbor's masons needed to plant their scaffolding in my yard, so it's been delayed until this week.)

And my masons are showing up tomorrow morning.