New paintings and regular art updates.
Magnolia blossom about to open, the ones with the dark pink/purple outer petals and pale pink insides. They are expensive to buy, so this one stayed at the garden centre last weekend. We do have a small magnolia stellata in the garden, but as its been cold here it is yet to flower.
Now’s the time to order our hanging baskets for the year. The lady that puts them together asks me what colours I would like. Usually I don’t specify what theme I want but I’m definitely going for a rainbow theme this year. I think because there are so many different flowers and shapes and colours that would really brighten the yard. Last year was mainly red white and green so I bought in other flowers to broaden the spectrum.
Going out of the back door and seeing all this colour lifts my spirits. I usually order them and then collect them 6 to 8 weeks later. It’s a bit expensive but I have never been able to grow baskets as beautiful as hers. The summer arrives and I bring the baskets home. Then we have a riot of colour until late Autumn.
To flowers
And plants
Geranium, poppy, fushias
Petunias and surfinias
Mounds of green leaves
Hidden tomato plants
Surrounded by scent
Wild and cultivated
Hanging baskets blooming
Like overflowing fountains
I hope summer is here soon.
One of the plants that appears in Spring, this is lesser Celandine. It has mid green shiny leaves and yellow and white daisy like flowers. This plant is one of the things that used to be on a website where people recorded when things appeared in the Spring, like butterflies, moths, flowers, tree blossom for example. It was a citizen science project. I don’t remember what it was called.
Lesser Celandine spreads by little bulbs (bulbils) that can stick to shoes or animals feet. It’s pretty, but if you get it in your garden it can spread like mad. I’m not sure if animals van eat it, it just looks cheery in Spring.
I think of daffodils and crocuses at this time of year, or snowdrops and later tulips. But an often overlooked plant is the Helibore. The flowers tend to droop their faces towards the ground and they have larder five lobed leaves. There colours can be a mottled grey green, white with green splotches or a greyish pink. This is a manipulated image to show how interesting they can be. Lift up a flower and be captivated by its hidden subtle beauty.
A previous digital drawing of a fence against a colourful background. My Sketch app on my phone has silhouettes of trees and plants that I rarely use. I also added extra texture and overlays in Photodirector. These are a couple of the art apps I have on my phone that I use frequently and don’t want to remove if I have to get the Jetpack app. Am I irritated? Yes. Must stop going on about it. Creativity isn’t important after all is it (sulks)…. Sorry!
A triffids in a glass jar, up on the windowledge, a bit damp and mucky, but it still grows and twirls. Red stems. Dark green leaves, bought from a supermarket and still surviving after eighteen months. OK not a triffids, but a strange ugly plant that needs me to love it? Feed me Seymour?
Magenta or pink
What do you think?
A pompom dahlia
Beauty not failure
A garden delight
A lovely sight
Meditation in mauve?
I must be in love!
Apparently reflected (using the layout, symmetry app on my phone). These Cyclamen are flowering really well. As they fade the stems curl over and the flower heads start growing seeds that are then deposited in the soil to grow into new plants. This is a large indoor version but we have small groups of cyclamen growing in the garden. The colours go well with the Christmas cactii next to them. OK I think that’s enough about my kitchen window ledge!
Pink and red flowers popping open like fireworks, following the curve of the leaves as they sprout. Some of them have flowered, some are open now and some are in bud… How do they know to flower? Day length. Apparently if you move a Christmas cactus about too much it may drop its flowers. I’m not sure if that’s true or a gardening myth. I do know you can break a few leaves off and put it in water and it will send out water roots, you can plant them up. Some of these (cactuses cactii?) were propogated from my grandmother’s plants forty years ago. X Nrxt- Easter Cactuses.
Mallaband-Brown