7/20/12        Bonanza Street Maple

         If you have been to our house you have been under this old Maple. This is the view from our front window. It was not a young tree when we came here 30+ years ago now. You can see the 2 stumps only a little exaggerated from low branches the kids used for climbing. Even the stumps are gone now, but grandkids still do climb it some, but it takes a little more effort. The wall was started at the time- added to from time to time, and now mostly covered with ivy.  The concentration here was in the angles of the branches and negative spaces they create against the backdrop. What do you call this style? It has a graphic flavor, and is a little change not only in style, but also subject. One of these days one of these chunks of tree will fall, and put a big crease in the house or a vehicle... so I guess some day soon it will have to go. 

'ol K-10

       This is the house Dave Penny called the "Brouse House" I think after the man who lived and farmed there. It is also I think some of the trees of which Dave was speaking in his introduction one recent Sunday morning during Family Bible Hour at LBC.  Maybe Dave can clarify some of this...  This drawing was done from the road going into Dave's shop and finished in the mid to late '90's. Just to the south of this property is old K-10, now 83rd street, as you pass through the bottoms east of DeSoto.  The house and barn are now gone, and maybe the other structures as well; some as an act of God, some of man.  Shannon may have a watercolor done from the same property. The house and outbuildings in this setting follow a pattern often seen in hill country. They were lined up along a narrow strip of ground suitable for building that gives you level and easy access to everything. There is a road to one side and rough and hilly ground to the other; or as in the case of the Brouse place, floodplain.  Old K-10 is the road we made many trips down heading to KU Medical Center in the early '70's when Kimberly was there often. That is another story...