Global warming can't come soon enough.

Winter's back is broken and not a moment too soon. Sure there will be more snow and some bitter cold, but the red-winged blackbirds are back in force. They perch in the upper branches and trill out their claims to territory and that means that there is no going back.

Went down to the beachworks to spend some time. A pretty stiff wind was blowing off the lake ice, keeping things chilly. About a mile off shore you could see some pretty impressive breakers hammering at the ice sheet. By next week I'll bet the shore shakes off its lace collar. I spent about 2 hours with the new project and these are some of the photos. I apologize for the lackluster imagery, but the sun was buried under a slate grey blanket of clouds, so brown was the color of the day.

I levelled off the stack of stones on the right side of the bench and then raised the left stack by about 5 courses of stone. I'm still not entirely sure where this is going. I'm open to ideas from the stone, but at this point I'm getting too many options, so nothing is particularly convincing as of yet. I'll just play along until it becomes obvious.

These two pictures of the left stack turned out kind of nice. I didn't take into consideration the background when I was shooting the picture, but when I saw it I was struck by the beauty of the tree in the background in relation to the stones. Serendipity.

I had some additional time to work on a small piece right in front of the bench. I did a little window and took some of the sticks that have been uncovered as the ice dunes melt and played with a little diagonal pattern.

If it survives the week I have some derivations to work off of this window. The problem is remembering. I didn't have my sketchbook with me at the time so I didn't jot down the ideas, so I'm at the mercy of my sieve of a memory. The beach snow is slowly disappearing and I am looking forward to seeing what treasures lie beneath.