MAKING A NEW START

     I got start late this morning, so it was already getting hot. I found a shady spot and then looked for something to paint. I really felt motivated to slap some paint around today.
     This tree is growing in a location that will shade my studio some day. I spotted this one when he was about 3' tall down in the desert riverbed. I went down after a big rain thinking that the ground would be soft and easy to dig up. In the process, I fell into some quicksand. It wasn't life threatening, but I was covered in mud and sand before I got the tree dug up. I had to ask for my neighbor to come down with his ATV to haul it back up to my yard. When he answered my knock at his door he start laughing at the mud man standing there. We got it back up and I got it back into the ground. We got a freak freeze a couple days later, and all the leaves fell off. I figured it was dead. A few months later I noticed a couple little leave coming back out again. Almost a year later it's about 8' tall.