I had to paint vetch after the lupines:
equal time for Pa after Mimi!

After my memory jog in California Lupines,
I kept wondering why Pa warned me
not to feed the horses vetch whenever I visited the ranch.
There was some vetch around the ranch, but not much,
and mostly in the lane leading to their Oregon House ranch.
I’ve seen much more of it in Southern Oregon hills,
where the hills around the valley are streaked with green and violet.

Watercolor

I looked it up!

Seems vetch contains nitroglycosides, which cattle and
any animal that chews their cud can process, but for horses, it is poisonous.
Weight loss, depression (how can they tell this? something else for me to inquire about…),
loss of muscle coordination, and eventually death of the horse.
All good reasons!  Seems horses don’t care for it much (okay, they are smart)
but if there is nothing else around they will go for it.

Tom Philpott, one of my favorite writers at Mother Jones,
wrote an article a few years aback about hairy vetch used as a cover crop
and how it was an amazing way to up the nitrogen in the soil.
It is also an excellent companion plant for tomatoes, as it provides both nitrogen
and an instant mulch that preserves moisture and keeps weeds from sprouting.
If you are a gardener and do not know about companion planting, google it.
John Jeavons introduced me to French bio-intensive gardening in his book How to Grow More Vegetables, and my little organic plot put out TONS of the sweetest strawberries, along with vast quantities of onions, garlic, tomatoes, carrots,
basil, lettuce (unless the Italian rabbit ate the last two).
I cut the number of pests in half, and my yield became nearly unmanageable.

I continue to churn out watercolors
for World Watercolor Month,
loosening my thoughts to a “just do it” mentality.
I played again with Opera Pink and various purples.
The blue you see above is the Fineline
masking fluid when it is on the piece.
Once removed, the blue areas stay white.
At the very end I came in with a bit of lavender-grey.

Pentalic Aqua Journal, Platinum Carbon pen,
Lamy Al-Star, De Atramentis Document black ink;
Fineline masking fluid and Holbein, QoR, and Daniel Smith watercolors.

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