Summer night arting.

If you, like me, live closer to the earth's poles than you do to the middle, you'll know the feeling and despair of our short summers. Over the past few years, I've taken to spending my evenings in the garden, doing various crafts; slow things that may take a summer to finish. 

And today, in what could very well be the last throes of summer, I got the camera out to document this.

Two years ago, I made a cat out of a few leftover pieces of timber. He now sits atop a wooden post, forever reaching to jump off.

                                  

The year after, I made a raven. I still had some pieces left from the stash I used for the cat and, again, I cut out the shapes, glued them into a larger figure, and painted it black. The drilled eye is painted light green, and his eye twinkles when the sun shines through it. 

                                         

This summer I was out of the thick planks I'd used previously, so this one had to get a separate base to stand on. I sawed a little piece off a bamboo stick and painted it white. It's not the most elegant of solutions but at a distance, it's barely visible. Perhaps I'll paint it sky coloured next year. 

All these creatures move like wind vanes. I like that.

                                               

One late evening earlier this year, I got the impulse to use up the leftover acrylic paint on my palette. So I spent that warm summer night painting squiggles on some wooden posts. It took me a few evenings and more than just some leftover paint to finish.

These posts give support to the plants, and the one closest to the camera is the one the cat sits on. It's still unpainted, but I'm leaving that for another year. 

And I'm leaving this week with a Sunday selfie. I look so serious, but I feel even stranger smiling for the camera.