#spring planting

   Last year I dug the grassweeds on either side of the steps at my father’s house and established a flower bed that he could appreciate while he was sitting on the porch. One of my biggest concerns was that an old bleeding heart that my mother had planted when I was a kid had been ‘built over’ and imprisoned behind lattice when the porch was renovated. I felt awful seeing it trying to survive without enough light and very little water, so I removed the lower lattice and dug it up early in the spring.  I didn’t know if it would survive, but it did ok last summer. And this year . .

it is full sized and full of flowers! Surrounded by daffodils, iris, and bluebells, ready for another 40 years of life.

Gabrielle Nowicki 2016: An acre in the country. 18″x24″ Graphite on paper

As farming operations become bigger, smaller, old fashioned farms are severed, the house is sold separately, and farmers buy the land surrounding them. The effect is much like little mirages or oases scattered throughout a vast landscape of corn, beans and wheat. During spring planting and harvest times, it suddenly gets very busy and noisy when crops are planted and harvested. The rest of the year is pretty quiet.   

If you look at satellite imagery of farm land, you will often see lines that look very similar to the ones I’ve drawn here.       

Gabrielle Nowicki 2016 - Details of a drawing in progress part 4.

Graphite on paper

Drawing the planter marks 

I taped together some 2mm pencil leads. They are 4B so I don’t have to press hard to make the lines, and they have a soft quality to them as the graphite catches on the tooth of the paper’s surface. The effect reminds me of warm, friable soil that’s ready to be planted.

Drawing the lines takes planning, If you have ever planted a field, this part would be familiar to you. You must plan your headlands, turnarounds and the direction of the rows. You must also plant as straight as you can, and space each pass so the row spacings are as equal as possible. 

The lines I’m drawing are records of the movement of my hand pulling the pencil leads. You can look at them and get a sense of the action involved in drawing them.  I think they look a bit like zen garden raking patterns.