New paintings and regular art updates.
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….
I’ve just visited Berryhill fields in the centre of Stoke-on-Trent. It’s one of the green lungs of our City, a country park between Fenton, Longton, Bentilee, Sandford Hill and Bucknall.
I took some lovely photos of the view, including the TV mast that dominates the skyline. The white blossom along the pathway up from Arbourfield drive is floating like a pure white cloud alongside the path.
I’m worried that this green lung of the city could disappear. The local Conservative and Independant council wants to build 1300 houses on the site, this despite there being a covenant on the land to prevent this. In fact there have been protests over its use in the past. I know we need new housing but why destroy the environment. Yes there are industrial patches around the site. Why not build on brownfield sites in the city instead?
In a world where pollution and environmental degradation are on the increase we should preserve what we have left of our green spaces.
I was up there with Labour councellors and candidates. We were filming and taking photos of the parkland to raise the issue with the voters in the upcoming local elections
