WINTER PROVISIONS

Throughout the summer months Mrs. Trowbridge and her family were busy gathering provisions for the coming winter. In the above page she sketches and describes the basic comestibles that they required to survive the winter. By now their gathering tasks would be complete, and soon they would be using their twig bundles to heat their cottage as the temperatures would begin to drop and fall would turn to winter in the rain forest.

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD DAYS

Mrs. Trowbridge had sweet memories of her childhood in the rain forest. This page from her diary depicts a scene from her youth when she helped her father, working the sow-bug herds on their sow-bug farm. She painted this scene from memory.

Sow-bugs are a common part of the shrew diet which consists of insects, slugs, spiders, worms, and amphibians. Sow-bugs were easy to find in the rain forest under decaying logs, so they were a staple of the shrew diet. The enterprising shrew would go on sow-bug "hunts" to collect them, then build a sow-bug herd. The sow-bugs were then sold to local markets.

Have you seen my other blog, Bron Smith's Flights of Fantasy?