Harvesting today: 9 baby broccoli

Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes and thanksgiving greetings!

This week I have to fly south and I have no choice but to harvest my fall crops today. I have to be here to cover them to protect from freezing temps and then open them back up so they don't bake in the sun during the day. Sad, because they really aren't mature, but they should have been by now. The sun is so low in the south the trees block a lot of the light making progress slow.

Normally, I would not choose to fly. But the trip is quick and it is the only way V will go; not being willing to spend two full days on the road. I've designed a T-shirt for my travel; I will model it later this week, but it reads TSA: Training Submissive Americans. I might add some other choice words and/or graphics. This homeland security situation is just a total joke; its meant to train us to accept an increasingly evident police state. Im not walking through their radiation booth -so I guess I will be receiving a pat down. It's insane and I am disgusted by it, but I dont for a second believe the scanner is safe. They take a picture of your tooth at the dentist and they cover you with an iron blanket for crikey's sake. What does that tell you?

The red cabbage will be left to weather the frost

Also in the garden are red cabbage, onions, herbs and asparagus. We had our first tender shoots of the asparagus on Thanksgiving day. I think the unusual warm weather may have prompted that. I think that next year we will have much better asparagus because this is their first fall and I think it takes a few years to really get the nice big shoots.

I can't pretend this doesn't hurt

I lost another bird to the studio window. I hung my older paper garlands over the studio windows thinking it would alert the birds that they weren't flying into sky. The garlands moved in the wind and reflected light and I hoped that would be enough, but it clearly was not. So I have relocated my feeder to be far from any structure and hope there will be no more accidents. 

Double Cola: the fat black lab

Lately I've been making smaller dog paintings on plywood. These are 7x10".  I call these "folk art" because of the simplicity and rawness of them, and the fact that I dont spend more than 2 hours on each. They are very different from what I would call the "A" level work. Its fun and liberating to make this kind of work. Some of them are in a show down in ATL called "Little Things Mean a Lot" which is a show of small and inexpensive work made especially for Christmas gifting.  The next two dogs are loosely based on Moi's two dogs:

Chill - the dog that looks like Maddie

Cocoa: the brindle pit-bull

Have a great day everyone. I've got to drive down to ATL in a major rainstorm with 4 fussy hens. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.