Minnesota Birch Painting . . . . .

Minnesota birches with a chickadee, a watercolor of mine that I sold to a Californian. The painting reminds me of the weather we are having right now. It is foggy and a lot of our snow has melted. I liked painting this watercolor and I am challenged to start doing a series of these in smaller sizes. My wife has just finished painting a cardinal in pastel and she sold it to a very nice lady who is going to give it away as a gift. I have never painted any other kind of birds so I guess I will have to practice a little.
I have a Minnesota birch tree in my front yard. I planted it in the seventies, I am not sure when, but I dug it from a ditch of a secondary road in Itasca County, near Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Young birch are a dark, purplish red, and don't resemble the color that they develop in a couple of years. The branches in the painting are the color of a young sapling birch. The birch in my yard is very tall now and the leaves are so neat in the fall when they turn yellow. The bay window photo shows the birch leaves in the fall. It has been very fortunate for me that it has never caught the disease that is killing them up in the north country. Thanks for reading