New paintings and regular art updates.
These were growing in our garden six years ago. The garden is more overgrown now and we didn’t put in as many tulips this year. I will have to put in more next year. Part of the problem is also the squirrels digging them up. I think they eat them in the winter.
Tulips were precious plants in centuries gone by. Some were more expensive than gold. I can remember the details, but they are beautiful plants. I’m afraid this post is a little lacking in detail. I shall try and add more to it.
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Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent new challenge, a task you love.
I am trying to plant up hanging baskets, but I only have a few plug plants, and a bit of compost to put them in.
Luckily some of my plants overwintered and are regrowing, so I have a few fushia plants, a lobelia, and some trailing plants with pale purple flowers that is in this basket. I’ve put a few begonias in the pot hanging below it.
I put one basket under another to get a tiered effect. Usually these are full of plants, now I’ve done two with tumbler tomatoes which you put in baskets and as they grow they hang down for picking.
Yes these are tasks I love. X
The world is growing fast
But I ache
More things to do,
I ache..
Plants to tend and pot up.
I hurt.
Too much tending,
Too much weeding,
Too much trimming and pruning.
Using sinews I forgot I had.
Back aches,
Shoulder aches.
Hands hurt.
Don’t overdo things?
After years of neglect
My garden is being manicured,
And I ache.
Playing with pattern again, took a photo of the garden on manual exposure and the sky and blossom on the trees was very over exposed, but the darker areas were more defined.
I then did my usual thing of multiplying the image onto four, then turning each square so it lined up into a pattern.
I get a great enjoyment out of creating these semi abstract images. The final result is interesting because of how soe of the foliage seems to float in the centre of the picture.
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.
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Sketch of new cherry blossom and old Ivy. It was black and white, drawn in uni pin 0.1,0.5, and 0.8 fine line black ink pens ( made by mitsubishi). On A4 paper. USK Stoke-on-Trent 30 day challenge. Day 27…. ! Really? Where has that gone?
Once I’d finished I decided to use a couple of green permanent markers to define where the ivy and other vegetation was. This had the effect of making the blossom more visible.
I’m pleased with the result. I hope the blossom all turns into cherries. We get them from the bottom half of the tree, the birds get the top half!
A fellow blogger asked if I used permaculture in the garden, I actually don’t know what that is? We’ve been here about twenty five years and when we moved in the garden was a patch of land fenced off by the woman who used to own the house. It had three lilac bushes a patch of what turned out to be Japanese knotweed and lawn. We rented it off the old owner of our house for twenty years then bought it. I only used weedkiller at the start because of the knotweed. Since then we put in a pond, planted all sorts of trees. Some of its too shady. The walnut tree must be forty foot high. Just put a bit of fertiliser on occasionally. There is rubble and broken pottery under the soil. You get archaeology when you dig it.
I did not believe that we could get mature trees in a little over twenty five years. Some of them seem to grow like weeds. The back of the garden has had a shed and a summerhouse put on it. I’m hoping to do some art in there. We are trying to get perennial plants to grow. I have lots of geraniums but most of all we have a lot of ivy growing everywhere.
It is good to sit in the garden, but I feel sorry for people who don’t have anywhere green to sit.
Stay safe,
Keep well.
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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.
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Mallaband-Brown