New paintings and regular art updates.
The sky, bright blue.
Clouds of cherry blossom
float above the ground,
tied down to branches,
so they don’t soar up,
creating pink and white billows,
high up in the cerulean sky.
Blossoming petals,
snowing down in the breeze,
landing on soil and paths,
scattered by the breeze.
Cotton candy flowers,
nourishing the bees.
As I sit quietly at home I’ve realised how good the weather has been, and how much blossom is on the cherry and pear trees. And then, my friends have all been posting photos of blossom near them. Clouds of pink and white.
I will try and get a photo against a blue sky, but I just wanted to share this. The bees have been buzzing so they are happy.
I was thinking how the blossom comes out before the leaves. Is that to make it easier for insects to pollinate the flowers?
Now we need rain, it’s been dry for most of the month. Without it the farmers, who are struggling with lack of workers, will struggle even more. Time will tell…. Cherry’s and pears will ripen, hopefully.
In the meantime the Russian vine we planted a few years ago has started taking over a couple of parts of the garden. It ‘rushes’ along, growing fast, and wrapping itself around everything. My arms hurt after spending a couple of hours trying to cut it back.
X
This is what I was trying to draw. As you can see it’s very complicated. Lots of trees and branches.
Behind me when I took this photo are two greenhouses with green plastic covers, ones got tomatoes in it, the other is waiting for tomato plants that my friend says she will drop off over our gate when they are ready to plant out.
The weather is set to turn, it has been warm and sunny, but the wind whipped up this evening and you could feel the temperature starting to fall.
I took these photos of cherry and pear blossom. As you can see the sky was starting to darken. There have been reports on the weather forecast of thunderstorms nearby. It certainly was getting windy, I hope some of the blossom gets pollenated before it blows away. And then there was a warning of Frost!
Day 25, urban sketchers challenge. Suddenly the blossom has burst in the garden, where there were buds a couple of days ago, now tiny pinky white flowers are sprouting out of the branches and twigs. I’ve seen and heard a very loud bumble bee, and also worker bees and hover flies. Hopefully they will do their job of pollinating the blossom and we will have cherries and pears and plums as the summer progresses.
The garden was hard to draw because of all the details. I can get the branches approximately right, then adding leaves and blossom complicates things. Distinguishing between leaf shapes and colours for instance.
I used two thicknesses of black unipin pens, fine line water and fade proof pigment ink (0.5 and 0.8). I also used a Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen black 199*** S size. Then I shaded in with a 3B graphite pencil and a charcoal pencil. I would have liked to add some dabs of colour, but I think the overall effect is quite good. I’ve taken a picture and used a black and white filter because I took the photo under electric light and one corner, a bit turned up, was reflecting back quite a bright yellow.
X
Never seen so many pears on our pear tree! This year there are over fifty. Sometimes the flowers don’t get pollinated, get caught by a late frost. Or it’s to hot and dry in the summer for them to grow. Sometimes we get too much rain and they swell up too quickly and split. Last year a lot got blown off in June. The tree leans over so we propped it up this year to stop it getting twisted by the wind. Perhaps that’s why we have a bigger crop. Anyway fingers crossed for a bumper harvest. X
Has anyone got a pot of glue? This was the result of heavy rain and strong winds over the last couple of days.
They had looked like this before the weather got involved. 
The beautiful pink blossom is from ornamental cherry trees I think. In the meantime the blossom on my cherry trees in the garden is equally bashed. I hope the insects like bees and hover flies have been able to pollinate them and they have set fruit.
Happy Spring!
May blossom? It erupts in spring, flowering in masses of tiny flowers. The proverb doesn’t mean that you have to wait till the end of May to wear less clothes but just until the May (hawthorn blossoms) are out.
My picture of pink blossom today, photo bombed by pigeons! I might turn the top half of the photo into a painting, the pigeons just add some movement to it. This year the blossom has been amazing. My cherry blossom is starting to fade and blow off the tree. I don’t know if that’s due to cold nights or drought as the weather has been very dry. There are thunder storms due later in the week. I guess that will remove the blossom.
X
It’s been quite a dry and cold April so far so the cherry blossom in the garden has been a bit late coming out but as the weather is due to warm up over the next few days hopefully it will be ok. We are also clearing some of the ivy off the house. We are being careful but the tendrils had got under the weather boarding round the roof and was starting to pull it away.
Meanwhile there is blossom on a couple of self seeded plum trees. We need to cut back an old willow that is snagging on the roof of a neighbours garage and I’d like a limb cutting off from a laurel bush which is overshadowing the garden. The other straighter limb will stay and leave it as a dense tree because all the lower branches were cut off a few years ago.
The tomato and courgette seedlings are still inside because of the cold nights. I want to get them planted outside soon. Also we have a few sweet pea seedlings and morning glory plants.
I will post photos once plants are in
X
My partners been out putting seeds in the garden, pottering with plant pots and sitting in a chair in the sun.
Two magpies are trying to pull twigs off a buddlea Bush, they are building a raggadey nest in the top of one of the trees. They managed to break off 3 or 4 twigs while we watched.
It was so nice I decided to take a few photos. The first is the chair my partner was sitting in. He didn’t want his photo taken second is the cherry tree. With blossom buds about to burst. The third is another tree at the side of the garden, with a great big waving piece of white plastic in the top of it! I don’t know how it got there but I think it must have blown up in a storm. It doesn’t look like a plastic bag, maybe some plastic wrapping? Things are getting green. We need to wash plastic flower pots to reuse them, but I caught my partner burning perfectly good ones! Grr….
