The weather has been fluctuating a lot with high winds for most of the week. If I have learned anything about weather in Oklahoma, it is that the high winds can make it unpredictable. The days have been mostly warm and the nights cold. I made a ham butt with the bone in on Monday. I made a glaze with brown sugar, orange juice, Dijon mustard, and ground cloves that was very tasty. I continued to draw animals this week and I also drew a dragon called a wyvern from a book. I went to the farm yesterday and it was a pretty cold day. I saw a big mushroom that I think is an edible oyster mushroom 🍄. However, I am not an expert in mycology and I am not brave enough to eat wild mushrooms yet. I also saw the first asparagus spear of the year coming up. I was very surprised to see it. After searching online, it seems that it is a few months early for asparagus to come up in my area. I attempted to build a trellis in an obelisk style using some extra tree limbs and branches. It was a lot of work to find suitable straight pieces of wood of similar lengths. We bought some hemp rope to tie everything together but I didn’t finish this step. My boyfriend also prepared four trellises by digging holes and putting cedar posts in the holes. Then, he used nails and hemp rope to make something for the plants to climb. We may put grapes or kiwis over there with some other vines. When I was searching for branches, I came across a large animal burrow. I am not sure what is living in there but the opossum has moved out of the barn for now. Opossums do not dig burrows but I think it could be a skunk or large rabbit in there. I also saw a dandelion in bloom, another of the first signs of spring. I saw many hackberry nipple galls around the hackberry trees. I did a lot of pulling weeds in the bulb garden and I also planted some perennial wildflower seeds around the shrubs on the long hill. Many of the bulbs are popping up early as well. We have decided to move the walnut tree further away from the grapevine area since they don’t grow well together. We did water the garden when we were there and it began to freeze as the sun went down. The cat 🐈⬛ is doing good but she is scratching a bit. We just gave her some flea and tick medicine last week but it doesn’t seem that effective. I’m preparing to make my first sourdough loaf tomorrow using a recipe from a book. It will be a round freeform loaf since I don’t have a dutch oven. I have also finished reading The Complete Artist’s Manual by Simon Jennings. I particularly liked the sections about rendering surface textures and interpreting color and pattern in this book. Next week, I am also going to attempt to make my own yogurt from store bought yogurt. I got a small raise this week and decided to treat myself to a new watercolor set by Mungyo. Unfortunately, the delivery of the set was delayed due to animal interference. I am not sure what happened but hopefully they will try to deliver it again tomorrow. I am really looking forward to trying out these new paints soon 🎨.
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Lisa Ledbetter 