Even while doing sweat-inducing work totally unrelated to being creative, my mind is on art. Look at the color I found while I was digging a ditch 🙂

Sweat & Exhaustion

Today was a day of homestead tasks. Digging ditches was on the list. So was laying conduit and pulling wire. And a lot of sweat, exhaustion and misery. None of these things are on my ‘fun’ list, haha.

But the ditches needed to be dug, the conduit and wire-pulling had to be done, and I didn’t want Rob to have to do it all on his own when this is something I could help with.

Thankfully, the only part that had to be dug by hand was near the existing conduit underground. Rob had dug the rest with the backhoe on the tractor. But with the tractor, if I had been the one digging that part, it would have been harder to do if my mind was on art. I think it’s more accurate to say that my mind is never far from art. I can focus on other things for a while without thinking about it.

Laying conduit & pulling wires

Rob got the first bank of solar panels installed and online last year. But the system isn’t connected to the house, yet. Thankfully, he had planned ahead and laid conduit underneath the solar array before putting up the panels. This way, when we got to the point where he is now with it, he didn’t have to dig a trench down the solar field with panels already installed.

But he did have to dig it the rest of the way on the front end, and the back end to the power pole that will feed the house. My job today was hand-digging the portion from where the backhoe left off to where the existing conduit was buried. And after that, I helped pull the wires.

He made some stands to hold the spools of wire. That made things a lot easier than it would have been with them lying on the ground. I think it might have been impossible to do it the spools weren’t free to spin.

While I was taking a break on the shady spot behind the tractor bucket, I saw a fence lizard on a rock and snapped a pic. Again, my mind is on art thinking what a nice painting of her it would make.

At the end of the day

We got the ditch dug, the conduit laid and wires pulled. And I’ve got a nice handful of rocks to use for making paint later. It doesn’t seem to matter what else it is I’m doing, my mind is on art, always.

What did you do today?