Birdhouse development.....

Ok, I am in a rut. I want to share with you the small model of birdhouse that I bought at Michaels, a craft store. It is made out of light wood and is intended to be an interior decoration. The mat board model I am working on is at right. I don't like the proportions of it and will probably shorten the two major verticals. If I get it to look visually good design-wise tomorrow, I will start cutting wood pieces. I have a hand problem right now with my joints in my right hand fingers so I bought a smaller screw that I can use to connect the wood together. I just can't be hammering any nails because of the pain it causes. Because of the kind of wood that I am using, I will have to pre-drill holes so the screws will go in easily. My wood is three-fourths of an inch thick and I have decided that the roof pieces will look better if they are a half inch thick. A part of the design problems that are involved include figuring out how to have pieces moveable as to allow me to clean out the houses of bird debris in the fall. The one pattern that I saw in a book of birdhouses, had real shingle material on the roof pieces. I am hoping to pull that off if I can figure out how to do minimal hammering. Enough for now. I will keep you informed on the progress in the future. Thanks for reading.

Bird houses in winter........

As you can see we are not ready to put out any new birdhouses. The bird baths around our house have had a buildup of snow like cool looking whipping cream on desserts. The bottom picture is of one that I did from a design that the shop teacher at school uses to teach kids how to build with wood.
I have a pole that use to have a basketball hoop attached to it and bankboard and hoop has been taken down. I have wanted to put a feeder or birdhouse on for the last few years as it would look great with something on top of it instead of just being a blank black pole in the ground.
So I have been doing research on the internet and found some ideas for the large birdhouse. I did find in one book at the Woodsmith Store a multiplex structure designed to house many birds. It may be intended for Marlins, I don't know, but I will decide that later. When I do decide it will be boring the right size of hole for the specific bird. I bought four pieces of wood, 8 foot long each and 5 and a half inches wide. I also bought a small set of birdhouses as a plan guide from Michael's craft store.
I have narrowed down a plan by making the plan out of mat board ahead of time, using all of the ideas, and I am still working out the roof design for this project. I took photos today and later I will post the monstrosity with it all taped together.
The neat thing is that I don't have to worry about getting it done as we are predicted to have a new layer of snow on Friday. I am excited about seeing this project being finished but I also have learned in my older age that moving slowly and designing correctly will give me a great result. Then this spring, maybe in March, I can put it up and enjoy it. I may save my plan and make a couple more of them if it works out good. Thanks for reading.

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

Photography...

I have always enjoyed photography, and now with digital photography, we are free to shoot so many pictures. From all those pictures, one can find some that are higher quality than just your casual point and shoot. Having been a teacher of good design for many years in the public schools, I find the informal well designed picture is few and far between with out having done a lot of practice of taking pictures.
The top picture was taken of a wonderful, kind man who had attended the graveside services of my mother. When I saw him take off down the hill to view gravestones, I knew that the viewer could see a great story there. The picture reminds me of the work of painter Andrew Wyeth. The photo of tractors was taken at a Great Iowa Tractor Ride rest stop. I was in Minburn, Iowa and large groups of various models and ages of tractors kept coming into town for a pit stop before they were to finish the ride into Adel, then into Des Moines. I like the reflected color and the overlapping shapes of the older tractors.
The last picture is one of an old car that is parked a half a block away from my home. It is a Pontiac with great styling. The hood ornament has this art deco design resembling a water fall coming down the top and down to the front of the car. The Indian glass sculpture is actually a globe to protect a light that one could see when it was dark and the headlights are turned on for viewing. The whole car has remarkable design with a silver streak design on the side and a symbol of a Pontiac Indian's head. The trunk has the same flowing waterfall design running down it to a trunk key latch. The name Sumner Pontiac is on it and that business is still in existence in Des Moines. I have been told that it is a 1947 make but I have not verified that info. At the present time Ramsey Pontiac is running an add on tv telling about their different cars other than Pontiacs, that they have for sale. When the commercial starts out, this model of car is shown in a restored condition sitting in their showroom.
Thanks for reading

The making of my garden shed.......

I needed a shed for my garden stuff and it worked out well to have the Industrial Arts class build it for me. I like to build myself but I didn't have the time when I was working full time. So in the fall of the school year, four years ago, the class started to work. The instructor, who is a friend of mine, took my cute little plans and change them, turning it into a large taller building. They had started nailing the sides together at school and the instructor said that he couldn't cut down those standard stud length boards to a six and a half length. He thought it would be silly to waste the wood. The planned small shed now was standing there with almost 8 foot walls, making it look like an over-sized bird house on a base of a seven by twelve foot floor.
Something had to be changed, as it was not what I wanted to be sitting on my property, a mis-proportioned, badly designed shed. So when the foundation was put in and the walls were brought to my property, I said that a lean-to side shed roof had to be added on to the long side of the building to bring it in to a shape of a farm building in a smaller scale or looking like a small carriage house. Having that added was a gfeat solution. It also got me in trouble with the then zoning board for changing the plans. I told the zoning board that my head carpenter screwed up the plan and that I was just salvaging the look of my shed. They scolded me, and I might have to pay another fifty dollars more for a new zone permit to add a roof to be put on the side of it. They finally admitted that would be ridiculous and they walked away and let it be.
The building was started in the fall and the crew worked slowly, so they did get snowed out until early April of the next year. They finished it by the end of the school year, leaving me to do the paint job and putting in the window. I also made the cupola myself, during the winter in our art studio, cutting the boards on the porch and assembling it inside the art studio. I even shingled inside during a snow storm. I added a loft to the shed to store lumber and lawn chairs. I still need to add more shelving but it works great for a garden shed. This spring I plan to add a back roof to shed water from an outside workbench area. It won't stick out more than two feet but it will add more protection of outside things that are parked back there and for shade plants on the workbench.
The appearance around the shed has changed a lot as it is planted in now with a large rose bush on one end and trellis on the other. It has enhanced the look of my property a great deal I did get a lot of garden stuff out of my basement. Thanks for reading.

A Garden Gate...

The backyard has evolved in the past 30 years from a bare yard to one with many functions. Years ago I planted a row of honeysuckle plants to created some privacy from the road. The neighbor lady, who passed away years ago, asked why I was doing such an unusual thing. My vision was a hedge and not eight small eleven inch tall plants in a row. They grew inspite of the shade of two large silver maple trees. When our two boys were younger, we put in a large concrete slab for a basketball court. I can remember being in such bad shape that helping put that court in about destroyed my life. As the boys grew older and graduated from college, the basket was given away to a young boy who lives in Lamoni, Iowa. The pole is standing bare waiting for me to build the bird house to put on it. That will be another story. It really makes a great patio. When we acquired a six week old puppy, our neighbors at the time had a large dog, chained, a big heavy chain, to their front porch stairs. We felt our little puppy would not live long if that dog ever got loose, so we added a children's wire fence around the back yard. Little did we know years later when we acquired a rescued dog, a border collie, that the fence would prove necessary to keep our dog in the yard. As the honeysuckle hedge matured, our oldest son found used wooden fencing for me. We added it to the west end of the yard. It joined an already installed grape arbor. Did I say the fence sections, eight of them were all free and were weathered from age, so they look rustic? Also one can also find a fish pond and large old mock orange bush that smells wonderful in spring at the west end.
So I have always admired Japanese gates, and I have studied the need for grand entrances to your garden space, and I finally had to build one. I tried to use as much old lumber that I had around in the garden shed and old shingles for the roof left over from shingling of the house. Through spontaneous design and two different years of work, the gate is now complete. The winter has made the gate impassible as the snow and ice froze at the base of the gate keeping the gate locked up by natural causes of an ice jam. I know now that I will have to raise the gate a few inches higher and this spring the gate gets a coat of paint. Just the gate not the rest of the structure. I am thinking green paint to match the shutters of the house, or a blue that matches the color values of the house. I really like the gate and have been caught under there with the dog during a rain storm. I like that I recycled a lot of material, and I like that through patience and perseverance the gate has become a part of the honeysuckle hedge on one side and a very large forsythia bush on the other side. The old sidewalk has been there for many years maybe poured during the 3o's as that was when the WPA put in the street sidewalks of the town.
I have rambled, but I like the way a garden can evolve and grow, and instant building really isn't as satisfying as the gradual designing and construction. I look forward to someday adding a wooden fence in front of the honeysuckle hedge and to tie it in to the Japanese gate. Thanks for reading.
An added footnote. People who have had two or three cups of coffee from Panera Bread, shouldn't be allowed loose on a blog site. Too much material!!!!!! Sorry!

An old painting of mine....

I am originally a farm boy from Southern Iowa and I grew up with a red, rustic barn. It was a sheep barn in style. This is an oil painting that I created fifteen years ago. I sketched the structure from an old magazine picture of a barn and silo. The painting never sold from out of our gallery, I really don't understand why, but I really never wanted it to be sold anyway. One person was interested in it but the cows were the wrong breed of cows. It is an image that I like to have around the house but I think I will put a new frame on it and see what happens to it.
Red is one of my favorite colors and architecture of any building interests me. I am interested in the solid shapes that form buildings. I can appreciate modern architecture just as much as traditional, historical buildings. In fact, our own house is 104 years old. It is a traditional T-shaped farm house in style. Even though it is old, I like living in a piece of history. I blogged earlier about a porch that I just recently built on the front of the house. A few years ago I had a garden shed built with a shed roof to look like a old carriage house. It goes well with the house.
I was asked the other day if I painted, and I guess you will see me digging out some of my paintings and showing them off. My style of painting varies from time to time but I guess you would call me a semi-realistic painter. I do some impressionistic work as well. My subject matters is diverse. I do have a large body of work from plein air painting in Minnesota. You will have to wait and see what will be seen next.
Thanks for reading my blog.