Lemon a day

Sold   size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

There  is a shocking dryness to the ground and there are things looking sick all over the garden. Watering becomes a bit of an obsession at a time like this. An overnight deluge would suit me just fine.

Today I have done a very quick sketch of the beautiful Dropmore Scarlet Honeysuckle. I wanted this for years having seen a beautiful example in a friends garden in Reading, the first one or two I bought died or never grew well. Now however I have a really good healthy plant which is getting bigger every year. Its not in the perfect position though as it was moved from the last garden and put in the ground hurriedly the first autumn.

All the geraniums just about are in flower now and they are a gentle delight.

I know I should list them but some are unknown.

There is Geranium procurrens which is in need of control in one place but doing a good job elsewhere trailing through shrubs. It is said to be one of the parents of G. Anne Folkard and we got it from the garden at Stourton House from Mrs Bullivant .

There is a small reliable geranium which is probably G. endressii but a cooler pink than Wargrave Pink. It came from the remains of a compost heap at the back of the garden of a flat I rented in Reading. I must have given some to a friend with a garden at some point as I know the next place I lived had no outside space at all.

 I love the way good perennials interlace friends and families as they get split up and passed on. I have an Iris which I begged from my mother as I had loved it as a child. She had it from her mother who had it from either her mother or her great aunt direct. I have given a piece of it to a distant cousin who comes from the same family in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Both our mothers had visited the old house where it grew. I never saw it anywhere else until I spotted it in the Botanic Garden at Reading; it’s Iris graminae.

Today I got a punnet of strawberries and there will be at least the same again tomorrow.

Alison

#66 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog