Five Birches

10/2/14 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, colored pencils, Zig marker, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

After I had posted on Facebook a recent sketch of a maple that had been chopped up for power lines, my friend Laura told me about a stand of nearby birch trees that had been freshly and badly whacked. This afternoon I drove over to the Crown Hill neighborhood to see them for myself.

Indeed, they were as bad as she had said. Sight-sizing the five birches with a pen, I could see that they were easily as wide as they are tall – except in the middle, where a large wedge had been cut out of them to accommodate the mass of power lines running through them.

Growing in line with them on the same parking strip were a few tiny young trees. “Run, little trees,” I felt like shouting, “run while you can!”

MiataGrrl's portable taboret.

Technical note: Every now and then the day is warm enough and I can park in just the right place that I can use the back of my car as a taboret.