I’m so ready for the crispy mornings and autumn colors. By the time this post is published, we’ll be another week closer to fall. On Wednesday I had the lucky experience observing the morning light hitting a tree just right – and I think that’s going to turn out to be the highlight of my week. Literally. And figuratively. It really was a spectacular thing to observe and much needed, too!

I’m using this weekly blog post as the basis for my weekly podcast. Unless I stray from the script, they’re about the same. The difference is that the podcast is audio, though I do have a YouTube version where I do a voiceover with either slideshows or video. I’ll put links to both once they’re live.

The video you’ll see in the YouTube version of this one is a trip in the side by side from the house, down to the mailbox, stopping at the studio to close the windows and turn off the fan, then up to the pond, over to where the pig trap is waiting, and back down, across the creek, and back up to the house. I have not yet improved my stamina to make that route on foot in any sort of timely manner. If I tried, it could possibly take all day and I’d better have water and lunch in my backpack, hahahaha. There are just entirely too many things I’d need to stop and investigate – so many plants blooming or making seeds right now to look at for one.

Monday

Our pig trap was ready to pick up at Tractor Supply, so that meant a trip out to town. We stopped on the way back for some groceries, so that turned out to be about 4 or 5 hours gone to errands. This is why I just don’t like to go anywhere if I can help it. It takes an hour and a half to go anywhere beyond Huntsville, which is still forty-five minutes one way.

So nothing else got done on Monday.

Tuesday

Rob had a dentist appointment in Branson, so that meant another day gone to travel. It’s about an hour and forty-five minutes to Branson from here. We got home around 1400 (2 pm) but it’s too hot right now to do anything outdoors in the afternoons. It is around 90*F right now at 1500 (3 pm).

But I did have something to do on the computer when we got home. A listener (my podcast) left a comment on the YouTube version to say he enjoyed it but is hearing impaired and would appreciate closed captions on them. That’s something I hadn’t thought about, so I appreciated the feedback and set that up as soon as we got home.

Uggh, I hate the price on building supplies

After that I started pricing materials for the ceiling and walls and floors in my studio. This task put me in a bad mood. Everything costs so much, and it irritates me. To use the materials I’d like to use would cost an arm and a leg. I can use a less expensive approach and only lose a leg. Or an arm. But I’ll never be happy with the end result with that approach unless I put even more money into it to make it how I envision it. Ugggh. I hate it. I have to make a decision soon because I’m almost finished with insulating and it’ll be time to cover the ceiling by this weekend.

I decided to take a break from the irritation and go down the the gate where I’d seen a plant that I didn’t know. With a few photos in my phone I went back to the house to do some research and found out it is Agrimonia rostellata, or Woodland agrimony. So I went to add those to my ‘Herbs and Plants’ file (which I know is a redundant name, lol). Well. Imagine my surprise to find I had already took pictures and identified that plant, and probably the very same plant that was by the gate JUST LAST MONTH. This memory lapse is an obvious sign that I am in too much of a hurry and my brain needs to slow down. Or it is a worrying symptom of something else. For now, I’m going with the being in too much of a hurry explanation.

Wednesday is Floor Day at the Office

This is an entire dawn to dusk day burned during my ordinary week. Except this time I need to go by Huntsville to drop off trash at the recycle center before I head to Berryville, so that means leaving the house around 0700 (7 am) to be there when it opens at 8 and then get to the office by 9.

But here’s the sort of thing that can come up that makes even a routine task-oriented day out of the ordinary for me. On my way down our dirt road I saw something that made me pause. As the sun was coming up over the eastern mountaintops, I noticed the effect of the sunlight on the bark of a tree. So I slowed down to a stop so I could take a closer look. This is something important that I’m trying to learn how to incorporate into my artwork. Even when I’m not actually in the process of creating anything, I’m still absorbing things I will use at some point.

When plein air isn’t an option

The light hit the side of a tree and made all of the bark it hit a lighter color, a yellowish color. But the bark cast shadows on itself where the furrows ran. Those shadows were in the same color scheme as the bark on the dark side of the tree. So the lighter colors were only visible on the parts of the tree that the sunbeam was striking. It wasn’t the entire side of the tree. Parts of it were still in the gloom of pre-dawn light.

Many artists practice plein air painting so they can capture the way something looks in certain lights at certain times of the day. Sometimes a photograph really can’t capture that. Well, I didn’t have time to actually paint, and besides I didn’t have my setup with me anyway. But I did spend some time burning the image of what I saw into my memory. Granted, I’m sort of relying on the same faulty brain that didn’t remember seeing the same plant last month, but hey. I’m writing about the light I saw now and remembering it as I do so and hopefully that helps to cement it in there this time. I want to use this memory whenever I get back to painting on my owl scene. I don’t know if I can describe it in words, but I’ll try.

A mix of references

The entire painting is a mixture of things I’ve seen, but not all at one time. I’m putting them together in a way that pleases the vision of it I have in my mind. It’s kind of hard to explain how I feel confident that I’ll remember the light on the bark of the tree when I couldn’t remember cataloging that plant last month, but it’s a different sort of memory. Kind of like smells from childhood that remind you of places and people? It’s that kind of memory. I don’t usually forget that kind. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Bringing it back around to the day’s summary now… at some point around lunchtime today I’ll go out to the feed store and get hay, feed for the horses, and corn for my husband’s deer feeder. After work I’ll get the rest of the groceries we didn’t get on Monday, so I should get home around 1800 (6pm). Then it’s feed the horses, cook supper, take a bath, and get to bed. Wednesdays are usually exhausting days.

Thursday

This morning we got up before sunrise, I cooked breakfast and ate my yogurt. Unfortunately I have not gotten my walks or jogs in since last week. I have excuses, but none of them are really good enough. Mostly it’s because we have had to go somewhere every morning, and then this morning Rob wanted me to go with him to check his pig trap. No pigs, by the way. I guess they’ll need some time to get used to seeing the trap there.

After that I got one of the last two strips of insulation hung in my studio. Then I went to help Rob on his deer blind. And for the rest of the day I’ve been working with a real estate client doing research and trying to find a piece of land that checks their boxes. Now it’s time to start supper, so my day is about done here today.

Friday

This morning I managed to get up at 0500, which was nice because I’m a slow morning person normally and don’t like to feel rushed. Ever. I hate feeling rushed in general, and especially when the need to be somewhere quicker than my own timeline dictates causes me to miss out on my usual mosying around. I’m very much a mosier, wanderer, and absolutely love when I am free to explore things that make me curious.

So, my morning walks do offer me this opportunity to do just that. As long as I don’t get hung up on the ‘exercise’ part of things. Here is an example of the kinds of things that make me stop. Again, it’s a rock. But it’s not a fossil this time.

My rock find deserved an entire post to itself, so click here to read it.

Rob picked me up on his way out to see if there were pigs in the trap, so I rode with him up there. No pigs, again. He’s going to be pretty disappointed if it turns out that these pigs are too smart to get in his trap.

Studio Update

After that I put up the final strip of insulation in my studio. Yay! I am so sick of working with insulation I never want to do that particular type of task again.

Now I can finally move on to the next phase. I think that will be the ceiling cover… whatever I decide to go with. So really, the next phase is pricing and ordering whatever it is I end up going with. I’m tired of working on this, so I think I’ll spend more money than I’d first intended and find something that looks nice unpainted. That would cut out a lot more work. And I’m tired of working on the building and want to get back to working on my art.

Just now while dropping Rob off at his deer blind so he could bring the tractor back down, we saw a fat little chipmunk by the waterfall. It looked injured but it ran off and hid in the ledges so I couldn’t get a closer look or try to help.

Saturday

I’m so glad to be finished with insulation. This morning I cleaned up the studio, moved all of the tools and the table to one end. Now I have a fan running with the windows open to help ventilate the floaty insulation particles out of the air. Tomorrow I’ll cover the insulation with plastic to keep that out of the air in the future, and then next is the flooring. It may be a while before I finish the walls and ceiling, so the plastic will be temporary but possibly ugly in the meantime. But once the floors are done, I’ll start working on my art in there again and plan for a celebration First Open Studio date.

Using local resources

Eventually I’ll use some of our native wood to cover the walls with planks. Rob will mill them for me. So rather than re-do them later with the wood, I’ll just not do them at all until he’s able to start on that. This will save quite a large chunk of cash. And I know it’ll be green wood, and they will shrink to leave gaps. I have a plan for that and will start getting materials ready for it when they’re needed. You know how log cabins have chinking between the logs once they shrink? Well, I have a similar idea for my walls and am looking forward to trying it out.

On the way down to bring hay to the horses I found the most gorgeous red sandstone cracked open and spilling pigment. I picked it up and can’t wait to see what the paint from this will look like. For now the rock is in my color stash by the house. All of that is moving down to the studio in the next couple of weeks. I’ll be making paint in October.

After supper I cut up the oak limb that had fallen into the sweet potato end of my garden a few weeks ago. Tomorrow I’ll take down the short netting fence holding in all the oat straw mulch and see if there’s any potatoes left underneath it all.

Sunday- Yay! Another week closer to fall

Today is usually laundry and housework day, but I did most of the laundry earlier in the week this time, so there’s not a whole lot left. It’s also the day of editing my blog post and podcast, and whatever else needs to be done on the back end of my website. And since we’re approaching the end of the month now, I will also begin working on my print and email newsletter.

This morning I took all the mulch off of the sweet potato bed and wow! Not a whole lot of potatoes, but it’s amazing how nice the soil has changed since I planted them.

A big improvement

When I first put the slips down, I put them on top of hard-pack clay and rocks. Then I covered that with some soil mix I made with coconut coir and earthworm castings, layered with straw.

Now I can actually turn over the soil with my garden fork. It’s still full of rocks, but I took most of those out while turning the soil over. I used the rocks to add to my retaining wall and fertilized everything real good. Next month I’ll plant garlic here and add some tomato plants in late spring.

I’m going to wrap this post and hit publish once I get some photos added.

See you next week! If you landed here and managed to read all the way through, leave a comment and share how your week went with me 🙂

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Author/Artist Info
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In the summer of 2018 I began making watercolor paints from the rocks, clay, and other resources of our land here in the Ozarks. In 2023 I began experimenting with the same pigments in oils. I call them Wild Ozark Paleo Paints, because they’re made in a way very close to the same way paints were made when man (or woman) first put a hand-print on the wall of a cave. I use very small amounts of outsourced pigment for blue, white, and sometimes yellow to offer a greater range of hues built upon the earthy local pigments. My specialty is painting nature, specifically the nature that surrounds me here in the remote hills of northwest Arkansas.

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Madison Woods
@wildozark (Instagram, Twitter, Threads and FB)
madison@wildozark.com

Want to join me for workshops or see my art?

Coming soon! I have a new Studio in the Works 🙂
The building is here and I’m finishing out the interior. I hope to begin offering classes/workshops by the end of September 2026 and host Open Studio days regularly right here at Wild Ozark, where the possibilities for nature experiences (including nature art) run rampant.

The best way to stay informed is to sign up for my newsletter and check off the box ‘Studio News’ (or whatever is closest to that description). I’m updating there as I meet the goalposts and will announce anything planned as soon as I get firm dates.