Lemon a day

SOLD   size 3 in x 4.5 in 8cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

Today I picked two and a half pounds of strawberries with help from No2 son. No1 son was tying himself in knots with quadratic equations. I know I used to be good at these but I can’t remember how without more concentration than I have to spare. Luckily for all of us his father is very good at maths. I had no problems with maths at O level as our teacher got us through the syllabus a year early and then made us do every paper from 1952 to the previous year; the exam was in no way terrifying after that marathon. Miss Delaney was tiny, a reformed nun and so Irish she had had to learn English at school as a second language. Her hero was Pythagoras who, she told us, had been a methodical thinker and she wanted us gels to be like him and think methodically. She had never got her tongue round the’ th’ sound and so what she asked us to do was to” tink metodically” She had a wonderful kind but sharp sense of humour in addition …she did need it with us.

Today’s picture is also tiny- about life size, it’s the lovely round or rather spherical (maths, it gets to you) buds of the Portland Rose. This is an old rose with a very bushy shape. It has a lovely smell and it loves the clay soil here, it has just got fatter and fatter.

I went into Burgess Hill today and visited some open studios, they were very kind and friendly and there was some good work there. I especially liked the felted image of the sky after the planes started flying again in Crescent Road and the lovely wooden bowls that had been turned at another house opposite. The houses had been busy today and yesterday; I only got round four but enjoyed meeting them all. It seems most places near here have open studio events but not here. Could I face having an open studio, could my family? I think on the whole it’s a very noble thing to do and pretty brave.

Alison

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

Geraniums in the half moon bed,in the foreground G.Clarkei Kashmir white and purple,in the middle G.Patricia and all over the place G.pyranaicum.The taller pink flowers are the fluffy heads of Thalitricum aquilegifolium,the maroon is an aquilegia. This bed was dug out and planted up April/May last year.