For a few weeks in early spring, sugarbushes (maple woods) are busy places, with tree after tree either festooned the old-fashioned way with metal buckets hanging from hammered spigots, or beribboned in the modern style by lines of hosing running to collecting barrels. Either way the precious sap will be carefully collected, trucked in a pickup down a muddy back road, and boiled for hours by closely watching families in many a small, steamy sugarhouse.
2 comments:
Susan,
I was really, really, really moved to comment when I opened this post. For a Texas flatlander that has only been exposed to Maple sap gathering through pictures (the old method only); you have both informed me of the new method, plus you have done it in such a delightful manor. Such a great concept and very modern composition. I know how you do love color, so please tell me the lines were all black and the colored lines was your idea. Although that does not really matter because it is so good in the future all paintings of Maple sugaring will be held to the high standard of Susan Abbott's "Forrest, Spring".
?(In Progress) ? I can't imagine what more you would do to this.
Thanks for commenting, William! Well, actually the lines really were orange and blue. I've rearranged everything, but it was the colored lines running through the patterns of trees that struck me when I was driving by here last March. (This sugarbush is down the hill from my house.) I also have neighbors who collect sap the old-fashioned way, nailing in taps and hanging buckets on hundreds of trees, and I always prefered looking at their operation to the new-fangled labor-saving mode. But painting makes me see things in an entirely new way!
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