A corner of the garden – a painting a day
size 6 in x 8 in 15cm x 19cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
It was so quiet this afternoon as I painted, a deafening hush, traffic silent, barbeques on hold. England had begun to lose badly and you could hear it.
I painted the bed with the cotton lavender and the lavender in.
It was very hot too hot for the studio or the house the house went up to 26 degrees Celsius unheard of since we insulated the roof properly.
I picked 3lb 14oz Strawberries today with No1 son who also let me cut his mop of lank hair. I can see him again.
#86 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Sweet Williams and West Dean gardens – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 8 in x 6 in 20cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper.
This was the hottest day of the year so far for me. No1 son and I went to West Dean Gardens in Sussex to meet a friend of mine. He grumbled all the way there and all the way back but I felt it was worth it to see him get a bit of fresh air and slight exercise.
The gardens were (and still are) resplendently worth it. Anything my friend or I had grown they had grown better, bigger and with more flowers. The borders in the fruit tree garden are just dripping with clematis and rose and fantastic herbaceous perennials. Needless to say I did not remember a camera.
I did do a big wet watercolour sketch of one of the lodge houses. I found a daisy from the lawn made a good paint applicator for the flint walls!
The walled vegetable garden is a model of its kind as good or better than the one at Heligan in Cornwall.
The attention to detail there is phenomenal; the clematis on the tall and dramatic pergola has been persuaded to climb upwards in such a way that its stems form a regular mesh on the stone pillars. The pear trees are in neat drum shapes or trained in the shape of lemon squeezers.
We picked over two pounds of strawberries today but I started weighing for jam before working out exactly what today’s haul was. Actually I have to mention the one plant I have anything to do with that was better than West Dean…our strawberries…bigger and more leaves.
I have also done a quick painting of some lovely Sweet Williams a classic allotment flower if ever there was one. And you can’t go wrong with the mixtures with this as they are such a limited palate that they’ll all go.
#85 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Three carrots – a painting a day
Sold size 3 in x 8 in 8cm x 20cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
There are some pretty carrots to be drawn today…they are not home grown but they were picked by my mother in law.
Today was one long extended watering session.
The lavender is coming out and so are the Gazenias, I have yellow ones in a pot and pink ones in a bed, I have a pet hate of many mixtures that are sold either as seed or plants. Gazenia mixtures set my teeth on edge. I’m iffy about mixed antirrhinums and wallflowers too. I think it’s the combination of bright clear yellows with deep pinky reds and brick reds. Especially lemon yellow with a deep red, shudder it’s the visual equivalent of someone scraping a nail down the blackboard.
To get back to Gazenias the yellow and white mixture that I had is good and I have saved some of the plants over winter, they are bigger than the bought pink ones and opened flowers just before the pink. So because they are good plants and free for this year, overwintered Gazenia win. I need to do it better next year and save them all. They were outside but wedged in between the wood store and the house wall.
My new rose opened out, Mrs Oakley Fisher; she is a starlet of some potential. Single apricot with stamens stained scarlet at the base, five big curvaceous petals.
#84 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
The Art Nouveau Allium – a painting a day
size 6 in x7 in 15cm x 17.5cm pencil on cartridge paper
So today I had some old friends to visit, they had had a hot journey and so we all sat in the shade and had some cooling drinks, a bit of lunch and so on. We went round the garden and I explained what we had done to the house in the big building project from which we are emerging. It made a real change to spend time in the garden looking at it and enjoying the bird song…well thrush song mainly. There is a thrush who has a very distinctive song and he is trotting it out over and over from several different perches very loudly. I have begun to wonder if he has lost his mate as I did find quite a few thrush feathers in the back a few days ago. They have reared one brood already so I would have expected them to be busy with the next brood like the blackbirds by the front door.
No1 son had his last GCSE and all he has to do now is find a lost library book and find his Geography teacher to hand back the textbook. This is such a relief for me but the joy has not made it to his facial muscles yet.
We picked four pounds five ounces of strawberries. This has never happened before the crop is phenomenal even the leaves are lush and tall. I think the thing that has made the difference is the black fabric weed suppressant, it must be drawing moisture up from underground, in the winter there is often standing water on the plot and the old chaps say there are springs there.
The redcurrants are ripening by the day too, closely followed by the blackcurrants.
At two days after the date to stop picking the asparagus the biggest and most tempting spears have emerged.
Today there is no painting but I have sketched the Allium bulgaricum which has been changing shape since I painted it. I am sure it must be the inspiration to an Art Nouveau motif that I have seen somewhere.
#83 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Veilchen blau – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 5 in x 4 in 13cm x 11cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
There is a real feel of summer that has built up steadily over the last few days. I however am in no fit state to enjoy it as I have the worst summer cold ever …oh I’m sorry I have moaned about that already on the blog.
The weather is so good that he wants a barbeque after work, his work that is as I do no work, allegedly.
Today I made Melon and Strawberry water-ice, it’s very, very pleasant it has enough bite to get through even to my afflicted tastebuds.
I also had to take No1 son to the Passport and Immigration Office to check that he is who we think he is. They apparently asked him when we, his parents had been born and where. I had a momentary panic thinking of the power of the tick box mentality to disregard the blindingly obvious, because obviously a genuine British teenager will simply snarl if asked a personal question and will be worse when asked about his terminally embarrassing parents. But a convincing “I dunno” should be the answer that shows they are genuine! I hope I am right, we find out if he is the genuine article in four days time. At least if we have to go back I shall know not to park where they recommend as it cost me £4.00 almost £8.00 an hour.
This picture is a climbing rose that I planted it is called Veilchen Blau which translates as Violet Blue. It’s not blue, I haven’t touched a blue pigment yet and it’s nearly finished. I am glad I don’t aspire to true blueness in roses (or anything else except good steak), because ultimately roses don’t do real blue. In Parkers catalogue they used to sell Blue Moon (the nations favourite rose) which whenever I saw a real one was a mucky washed out mauve, however in the catalogue it was always pictured as a true blue. Silliness.
#82 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Red poppies – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
So on Saturday/Sunday I started going down with the worst summer cold I remember having in recent years. Sleep has been almost impossible for two nights.
Yesterday Sussex was bisected by the London to Brighton cycle race, to cross on foot you had to walk past the pelican crossing (cyclists won’t stop for walkers) and find a junction where stewards would allow cars to cross the stream every now and then and run in the wake of a car to get across; my mother in-law says she thought she was going to get mown down by cyclists. At three thirty in the afternoon there were still hoards of them, some injured, some towing children and some with numbers nearly as high as 30,000,by six they had finally finished with Mid Sussex-at least southbound. By the evening you have to remember to avoid the roads coming out of Brighton as there are huge jams of vehicles trying to pack up bikes and riders for the journey home. The problem can stretch all the way to London.
I did a rather pale picture of some field poppies which he (husband) picked for me from the fields on top of Ditchling Beacon. The cyclists will have passed the field in extreme fatigue- if they made it up the Beacon, I hope they noticed the remaining poppies because, what is the point of a visit if you’re too tired to notice the good bits? I have done the poppies in a decorative style as there is such a tangle of them in the vase I couldn’t do it any other way.
I should have said, on Saturday there were over four pounds of strawberries and the same again today.
The blackbirds by the front door have hatched their second brood this blog, there have been young coal tits, chaffinches and thrushes in the garden. On Sunday I saw a nuthatch.
We went back to the Old Farmhouse,Rudgewick and heard some more wonderful music on Sunday. The progress in the garden is really remarkable since (hang on let me look back at the blog…day seventeen April 10th or thereabouts) Whole areas have been finished off with edging, planting and turf. The borders have filled out to magnificent effect in between the barn and the house.
#81 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Red currants and the purple asparagus – a painting a day
this painting is framed and for sale
size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
The time today has flown by , but I had promised to do a picture with the purple asparagus so here it is. Tomorrow is the last day of the season.
#80 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Rose William Morris – a painting a day
size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
I went to the dentist today and had to wait an hour and forty five minutes in a hot waiting room,for the first part of the wait we were told to go away and get a drink (black tea only).
When we eventually found the cafe a gang of young men were beginning a” belly buster challenge”. The cafe is doing this as a special on days when England are playing in the world cup. One of them was served the challenge on two plates on a tray. The job looked impossible but he stuck to it manfully despite looking ill and finding it harder and harder to swallow. The meal consisted of:
3 fried eggs (that would be me out of the running for a start)
3 rashers of bacon,
3 sausages
Black pudding
2 hash browns,
Chips,
Mushrooms
Tomoato mash (not sure what that is),
Bubble and squeak
Toast
And he washed it down with a coke!!! There was a point at which his mates jumped up from the table thinking he was going to spew, but he didn’t. He finished it all.
All the above cost him nothing as the price was refunded if it was eaten and donated to charity if there was anything left. An older customer made a quip across the room about one more wafer thin slice, the reference and the sketch had to be explained round the table. I sipped my black tea and felt my age, the chap who made the Monty Python reference was grey haired and balding. Probably younger than me then.
Here is a painting of a David Austin climbing rose William Morris which I got from Sainsburys for £5.00
I have also added a photo of a bit of flower bed which looks good at the moment. The Campanula perscifolia were skulking further back and didn’t flower. So this spring I dug them up and hauled them forward,result:
#79 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Shirley Poppy III – a painting a day
size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
The Geography is over there is no more to do on that. There remain two Science papers and Citizenship and Food Technology.
Not much of a idea on how to revise Citizenship as I don’t have a clue what it is.
I have continued with the Shirley poppy as it really is very beautiful and it has attracted a lot of attention on e-bay. Today’s version is done without any pencil drawing just freehand paint.
After his exam No1 son said it was the day to make a strawberry pie. There is a family recipe which is really quite special for making pies with the softest of the soft fruits i.e. strawberries and raspberries.
The recipe was taught to my mother by her eldest aunt, Florrie, she was a very keen cook who would turn her hand to everything from breadmaking and potato pie to whole salmon and jugged hare (which I have never eaten ). There is no way of knowing if the recipe comes from a book of the time or if it was handed down in the family. If it is a family recipe then it is a dish from the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Strawberries and raspberries lose a lot of liquid when mixed with sugar, liquid makes pastry soggy. So you make a rich sweet pastry with butter, roll out a bottom, cover with fruit and then place the top on without sealing it with water. Once the pie is cooked you gently( with fishslices and palette knives)loosen and lift the lid onto a clean plate, you scatter six teaspoons of sugar over the fruit and add five small knobs of butter unsalted is best. Slide the lid back into place and serve warm. This stands well on its own without the addition of either custard or cream and is blooming marvellous as Father Christmas would say.
I picked 10 oz of strawberries today but the boys picked 5lb 6oz, making six pounds…I think we need to make more jam. I also picked two ripe berries from the new strawberry plants which are supposed to be late crop. Ideally we will arrange it so that we have half and half of the two next year.
#78 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Shirley Poppy II – a painting a day
Sold and on its way to Austria! size 7 in x 6 in 18cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
What a strange business, I was trying to help my son and his friend with their Geography revision. It seems that of the six questions on the exam paper they have only been taught enough in class to answer three, so if they get a particularly nasty question they are forced to answer it because they won’t have covered the alternative topic. For example they have learnt about rivers but not about volcanoes, they have covered Agriculture but not Development. Call me old-fashioned (no not all at once) but if someone has a GCSE in Geography I would expect them to know a bit about volcanoes. A knowledge of Development meshes with a knowledge of Agriculture; each informs the other.
I had a better session today painting the same poppy which had not dropped its petals; when the weather is hot these poppies barely last a day. It reminds me of the wall paper my grandparents had in their bedroom, which was lush with poppies, there were stripes in the design in a bluish grey and like almost everything in their house, I loved it.
I also made five jars of strawberry jam. My grandmother would have been proud of me (actually she would have quietly approved, she was not given to hyperbole)
I am dissatisfied with the look of yesterdays picture and will re-crop it tomorrow.
#77 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 
