still waiting for trees to leaf out!
At our altitude of 7500′ the scrub oak are the natives. They wait to leaf out until there is no possibility of a heavy, wet snow. This is why there are seldom broken branches on the scrub oaks. They are well-adapted to our climate.
I keep photocopies of lots of actual leaves so that I can keep working through the long winter of bare branches. The photocopier is a very good camera for things that are flat.
The sharp division between heartwood (darker) and sapwood in these bowls tempted me to draw zentangles on the sapwood portion. Before I drew in the backgrounds, the leaves seemed a little undersized for the bowls. Usually I like for the leaves to touch the rim in at least 2 places.
The cottonwoods are also native to this region, and they, too, are slower to leaf out than the non-natives.
I took both of these photos before applying the final finish to these bowls. It is an acrylic lacquer with a shiny finish. It looks silky to the eye, but my camera doesn’t like the shiny finishes, even in filtered light.
A woodturner would ask about the wood. These were air-dryed roughed-out blanks that Dennis prepared in 2013. Absolutely bone dry at the time I turned them, and very fine-grained for a Western Ash. These trees are dying from the green ash borer that came to the US on a shipping pallet from China.