Dig it

Digging trenches for water drainage today uncovered a wealth of pigments. The backyard of an upscale home is at the top of a forest ravine. You can hear the creek down below; you can catch at times the faint waftings of the skunk cabbages - a wonderful smell.

The strata we uncovered was like a sort of dream: ambers, orange reds, pink purples, honey yellows, deep ochres, russets, deep rusty reds, and each of them in pure solid chunks that would crumble apart in the hands, just waiting to be levigated and ground down and put into labelled glass jars later to be mixed with linseed oil or egg.

The dirt of the top layer onto which we shoveled the strata was a black. With each shovelful we painted that black surface. Along the trenches were the winding mounds of changing hues.

I keep telling myself I will go and collect pigments from the earth.

Anyways, then the Boss hit a glass bottle - the kind of bottle you know is old by the style of it and the fact that it was that deep down in the earth.

Then we hit a plastic children's Scooby-Doo pool.

It had a very 70's vibe to it.