traveling ....

I drove to south GA on Wednesday afternoon. It was a beauty-full spring day, and a joy to be out traveling through the countryside, observing things begin to show signs of renewing life after a cold drab season of winter. There were many places where wooded areas had been logged over, with scraggly brightly whitely blooming dogwoods pretty much the only thing left standing. When they are  not blooming, hardly noticeable, and likely left as trash. Only to struggle, survive, and come back to put on a show in the early spring. Tiny white blooms brightly spotting the landscape, long after the earth-eating heavy yellow equipment of the logging company has moved on to pillage another peaceful forest.

Lots of places along the wooded roadsides where wisteria had gotten a toe-hold, taken over acres of rural property and running rampant in the trees. With hundreds of lavender blooms hanging from tree limbs and fences, looking like wrongly colored clumps of dangling grapes.  Pretty little bright yellow wild flowers blooming along the right of way, on tall stems, looking like an untamed version of yarrow. Scattered white blooms of  rain lily in low lying ditches, tempting me to pull over for a bit of surreptitious digging. Gloriously cascading tiny yellow trumpet shaped yellow blooms of vining Carolina jasmine, twining up in to the tippy-tops of trees, or enveloping fence posts and utility poles, trying to reach the sun.

I got to Q. about 5:00, and spent a couple of hours puttering in the yard, digging up weeds, picking up a gazillion pine cones, and tree trash. (With no one there to offer to pay me a penny per for that onerous task!) Had to quit when it got too dark to see - and was so tired bed time came remarkably early.  Got up early this morning and spent several more hours doing clean up - not nearly enough time, but ample work for me to be ready to quit by mid-morn., when I stopped and went to Valdosta.

I think there is a comparison easily drawn between yard work and trying to stay ahead of kids when doing laundry. You really can't let your guard down. If you turn your back, let it get ahead of you, you will feel like you are playing a loosing game of 'catch-up' far into the foreseeable future.

Got back to Col. about 5:00 to attend the ribbon cutting for new studio space as part of the CSU Art. Dept. The entire building that was built in 1902-03 by the Seaboard RR as their staging space for shipping cotton and iron products from Columbus. Beautifully renovated, as you would expect a product of 'your tax dollars at work' to provide.  Really nice... reaaalllly nicer than the two rooms the department had for studio space when I was a student there.