Archive
Dried cep- a painting a day
size 4″ x 6″ 12cm x 15cm approx.
These are the little slices of dried cep which make the most fantastic soups, sauces and scrambled egg possible. They are such good quality, being home made , that a slice can be crumbled into scrambled egg just before serving or even just eaten as it is. They have none of the stringy dirty look of the commercial dried cep you see in the supermarket and elsewhere. I like their shape too – an angular folded version of the slices which went into the dessicator.
We have collected about eight kilos of cep in the last ten days, most has been dried as the crop can never be guaranteed and I would hate to run out.
#186
Cep with child – a painting a day
SOLD to another mushroom hunter!
size 5in x 5 in, 12cm x 12cm approx
I went with no1 son, who is very fond of mushrooms for breakfast, to see if anything had come up…There was, as the day before, nothing… but on the way out of the woods I nearly trod on this little beauty. The little side one is often pictured in German and Polish illustrations, not to be outdone I painted it.
No2 son has cooked his goose over a stuffed chicken thigh recipe for food DT (that is what they call lessons in cookery at school in the UK now). Having made all the effort to buy his raw ingredients I then spent the evening reminding him to get it all prepared for the morning.” Don’t leave it to eleven o’clock!”, I said, not thinking that he would leave it until 8.15 the following morning…I was out of sorts for everything , late, furious and forgetful. Boning out chicken thighs in the morning hustle when I could have BOUGHT ready boned had I not been told to get them bone in is so far from my idea of fun there will be consequences for this.
#185 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
#185
Lemon yellow and pink, leaves.
detail of ” Lemon yellow and pink, leaves.”
These are the leaves of one of the lacecap hydrangeas , there is something quite surreal about their pink flush on lemon yellow. A painting which is larger than most of those in this blog, it measures :
22cm x 30cm 9″ x 12″ approx.
#183
Pear leaf
This is a tiny picture the leaf is painted at about lifesize.
Summer holidays: life one long round of slogging round Sainsburys and prising children off their electronic boxes. There are nice flowers in the garden but for some reason I am painting the leaves that fall from the little pear tree.
Only two more episodes of the Hour left to run….I could cry. If Hector is to be believed then my dad must have been in MI6 as I swear his raincoat, or gaberdine as he might have called it, looked just like the one worn by the ill-fated Mr Kish. He always seem to wear it with a trilby which is still a good look in my book, but then he was always hopelessly out of date only giving up wearing trourers with turn-ups when Oxford bags came in in the seventies…ie when they revived a look he had finally had enough of it and submitted to modernity…well almost… he wasn’t going to update the shoes or vests you understand.
#178
Blue food and Beetroot a painting a day
These are the best blueberries I have ever grown. The secret is to keep the perishing birds off without netting the birds and perishing them.
A painting!
this painting can be bought from ( apologies for photo on ETSY page there is a glitch):
http://www.etsy.com/listing/88793554/beetroot-in-a-bunch-watercolour-painting
Beetroot in a bunch
22cm x 15cm, 9″ x 6″
There is very little time in the day when there are so many plants to water and crops to pick, I do not try and grow beetroot as I am the only person besides lovely aunt who really likes it, so these are bought and no less pretty for it.
The allotment has peas and beans in astonishing variety at the moment, diy dad has dug out his early carrots and the maincrop carrots are coming up. I have a forest of flat leaved parsley in the salad bed and the first tomatoes are ripening. The first autumn cyclamen is out as well….excuse me but the proms are only just begun, cyclamen???
#177
Beans-a painting a day/week/month
Day 176a
The runner beans and french beans are coming in now, in the mixture are Red and White beans, Jack Edwards, Selma Zebra and some golden mangetout peas.
Lovely aunt thinks that this painting makes the beans look like evil spotted worms! ” Oh . well.” she said,” keep trying someone might like it!” The point being that if I paint on the spur of the moment I paint what is to hand , not a cute cat because it should sell, not a local view which could be of interest to the village dentists waiting room, just whatever is catching my eye in the time available . In doing this the things that end up in the painting follow short threads which break and reform as life tumbles forward. That, if you like, is the philosophy of this blog.
Honeysuckle days – a painting a day
click on the link to get to my Etsy shop for this painting:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/85348208/honeysuckle-showing-its-colours
There really are this many different colours in a honeysuckle flower, and yet it looks modest and subtle unlike the flowers in the photo below:
There are several things I ought to be saying but there is so much
that I really should keep to myself. This is very difficult when there is a
blog to write so I have done no blogging for a long time.
Lovely aunt has a home of her own again but there is still much to be done. She had her work
friends over to visit yesterday and took them to Ockenden Manor. There is no
point booking a Harvester for three women who have been professional caterers (
of a much higher than average standard I might add) and the Manor does a
wonderful set lunch. They had a high old time and came back to mine for coffee
in the garden. They laugh and chatter as long as they can whenever they meet it’s
wonderful to facilitate. May I grow old with such good friends.
Coming soon in the garden morning glory and the yellow lily.
Unable to avoid bragging: there were so many strawberries this year we weighed a total crop of over half a hundredweight thats fifty six pounds I believe.
size 10 in x 6 in, 26cm x 15cm
Tigridia, Ranunculous showing off in front of the origano. These are a trial planting in a pot which is what I do sometimes to work out a bedding scheme. This one is really very easy, into prepared soil plant a bag of ranunculus corms and some tigridia bulbs, allow to grow, buy sunglasses and enjoy. Buy in bulk online and this is a very economical blast of colour.
#175 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Parrotmania- a painting a day
Click here to bid size 10in x 6in, 26cm x 15cm
There is a collision of spring and summer in the garden at the
moment to the joy of anyone who likes a “splash of colour”, and the despair of
the person who is trying to make a colour scheme that works without too much
last minute tweaking. Lovely aunt is enjoying it…but she is moving soon so will have to come and view when she comes over for coffee.
The last of the Narcissi are still clinging to the stems that bore
them like so much paper. The tulips are also over the parrot here the very
last. Most years the artists houses in Brighton’s Festival have a brilliant
display of tulips lined up for May Open Houses…they will have finished before
the first house inspector crosses the threshold, sorry art enthusiast.
In flower now are:
Thyme
Chives
Aquilegia
Roses (mostly hedging and climbers)
Hellebores
Erigeron ,the wall daisy. Many lost in the winter.
Forget-me –not
Viola cornuta
Rhodedendron
Peony
Geranium x6
Foxglove apricot
Bluebell
Bugle
Lilacx2
Euphorbiax2
Hemerocallis
Clematis x3
Iris x2
Pulmonaria
Candelabra primula ( had a hard winter)
Italian Arum
Solanum crispum
Scarlet Honeysuckle
Parrot Tulip
Petunia
Veronica trailing and gentianoides
Jacobs Ladder
Scarlet Geum+++
Delphinium
Thrift or Seapink
Perennial Cornflower
Blueberry
Love lies Bleeding
Tiarellax2
Solomon’s Seal
Vibernum x2
Omphaloides
Saxifragex23
Nigella
I could list the weeds too as they are getting on with it….but it’s
too depressing.
#174 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Tiarella and the new Geranium all grown from seed.
This stuff is mostly self sown.
You could not invent these they are just beyond imagination.
Salad Days-a painting a day
8in x 6in, 20cm x 15cm
The tally of barbeques got to five before colder evening temperatures forced us indoors on Monday. Lovely aunt was having a lovely time sitting out and enjoying the sunshine and flowers; this painting is a quick sketch of her in a silly sunhat. The pear trees and apple blossom are all coming out. The tulips have completely trumped the daffodils now and are magnificent, there are some that are short and tiny, some that are taller and double, I still like my pinkish ‘New Design’ tulips best.
#173
Last night, unbelievably, the first asparagus was ready to cut-twelve small spears which were sweet and delicate.
Rosemary – a painting a day
Day One hundred and seventy two
Click here to bid size 8 in x 6 in, 20cm x 15cm
Written last night :
There’s nothing like being rung up and told that your child was due in school after a bleary breakfast when you dragged yourself out of bed only to be convinced half way through ( too late to enjoy going back to bed of course) that it was actually an inset day. We were sceptical and checked the school website…it was an inset day….I retrieved dinner money and set a revision paper….but the noble souls who teach my son were working through their inset day ( as well as doing the training presumably), in order to sort out the knotty bits that need to be fixed before the exams, they phoned to complain after the event. Damn, blast and double blast. All revision that occurs outside home and doesn’t involve major complaint sessions within earshot is worth real money in my book and today the money just rolled down the drain. I was humiliated and bound to apologise abjectly , as I lowered the receiver I turned to the snivelling brat responsible…….
Last night and the night before we had a barbeque…as it was glorious again today a hat-trick was suggested…it’s that dreaded call, ” I’m on the TRAIN and I think we should have a BARBEQUE!”. I’d run out of ideas and cholesterol capacity so got trout from the supermarket and put them in a fish gadget which holds them together. They looked very enticing with the skins scorched and curled, bread, lemons and salad were all that were needed. The day time temperature on a north facing wall has been up to and above twenty -three days running so it has been warm enough to sit out until dusk.
Last night I saw a pair of bats chasing each other, today I saw an orange tip butterfly the first in a few years. I am trying really hard to catch up on weeding and planting…I made some grim rotting corpse type discoveries in the shed, improper storage/extreme cold has cost me a very fine dahlia and some so so ones and a Colocasia .I will leave the final excavation until I am feeling braver.
There are quite a few losses in the garden from this time last year, the raspberry scented Salvia is all gone, the Dryas colony has died ( calls itself an alpine too), a pretty delicate Hebe is toast or rather kindling and a delicate south African Rhodoxis? has turned to dust ( I am almost sure). I’ve lost all the Siberian wallflowers including a good looking cutting. I also lost most of the seedling Hellebores from last year but that was drought last summer not the cold. More hedge is succumbing to the honey fungus and so are the potentillas…however they are producing insane numbers of seedlings. I can’t believe it when they were so hard to grow from seed originally.
Lovely aunt is enjoying the good weather and the barbeques at which she claims to be an almost complete novice…I can’t believe she has missed everyone of the barbies we have transported to my mothers house in the past and cooked for the extended family; she was always at weekend gatherings there until my cousins whisked her off in a hurry to the cleaner air in Hampshire. Her description of this to the G.P. had the G.P. ‘s eyes doing that “ you are kidding me “ thing at me. I ended up muttering “don’t go there” as it is all very distressing for her still. I can’t tell their side of the story as they refuse to discuss it.
I have tucked some sprigs of rosemary and Siberian Wallflower (taken from mothers magnificent plant…how come…oh never mind) into the cuttings pot to try and get some new plants. The seedlings of Tiarella which I put out in the shady area last year are looking fantastic, fresh green plants which are starting to merge into effective ground cover (effective free groundcover). The apples are starting to come into flower Owen Thomas two days ago and Katy today.
Onwards to the next barbeque day….
#172 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 
