Lemon a day

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

Ceps ready for slicing and drying

The end of the summer holidays –

The what? It can’t be , that means uniform and packed lunches, No2 son is in a decline just thinking about it.

However before he went into his decline (i.e. lying in bed- hard to see the difference on normal existence over the summer really),the clever little sprat found a way to sell paintings over the internet in a site of one’s own using Paypal. It’s a BT government initiative so I got a call from a pleasant young Scotsman asking if I was planning to sell bulk quantities of paintings..”.ah, um, I could try, but honestly not very likely”. He was very nice about this in fact I think he used the word groovy which always makes me laugh (fresh young thing using jaded old hippy words).

 Anyway, No2 and I have set it up as the Lemonaday Shop http://www.lemonaday-shop.co.uk/gallery-shop . On this you will find some of my older blog pieces and some other paintings that make an attractive addition to the site. The prices reflect that there is no chance of competitive bidding and include postage for simplicity at the moment. The prices also reflect my own attachment to the painting, some pictures fit into groups that could be exhibited together so may not appear.

There were a few more outings to the woods in the last week. (understatement,  we went nearly every day) In the last two days we have picked over ten pounds of ceps, this is one of my favourite edible fungi, one which I didn’t find when I was a teenager and started collecting fungi to eat. Some years we find two or three in a season, even when you know where it grows, you have to get there on the day it produces its fruit or toadstool, before someone else takes it or kicks it over. This year is phenomenal and we have found a quiet wood where, it seems, no-one else collects. They will be sliced and dried and stored for winter soups and rissottos for years possibly. We are going to have a lot at the end of this year, the season could go on to November.

In the garden the red apples are finishing and the Ellison’s Orange is ripening. Ellisons orange is a fantastic apple when you get it just ripe and before it goes grainy. The official line is that it has a spicy taste: to me it tastes just like the ice lollies that ice cream vans used to sell called cyder ices. The tomatoes are showing some sign of blight but not much, they are ripening up fast now.

I  am very pleased to see the creamy flowers of the Hedychium opening out in its new position and in its original site.

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