Those readers who have been to our garden (or who tune in here regularly) know we have some unusual structures out back, which we call Imagination Stations. I spent much of this morning out there with a block of paper and a big box of charcoal, drawing them.

The Imagination Stations have some structure – broadly speaking they all enclose some space at the bottom – but they have been built up over time with everything from garden clippings to various objects from gates to an old broken mandolin to rotting wood and so on. The overall object has some definition but there is a great deal of randomness built in, often defying my attempts at creating order in the drawings.

The most recent of these structures has the stump of an old shrub as its base. I cut down the shrub to refresh and replant the area and to make room for a modest platform. It turns out the old shrub was ok with this and has begun to grow aggressively from the stump, through the various layers of branches and whatnot piled on top.

I chose my spots simply by staying out of the sun, then simply sat down and drew.