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Etching framed,Exhibitions and Xbox
This etching has been framed and is for sale at Burgess Hill Open Houses see blog for June 4th
Day One hundred and seventy six,
Took lovely aunt with me on my trip to Gallery 26, Field Row
Worthing, she visited a friend she has known since she was eighteen and in her
first job outside London, the war was still on. Her friend is in a care home
where they major on the food and fuss made of residents and their guests, they
get a sherry every day before lunch….I should be so civilised!
Gallery 26 are showing some
of my prints for the next week.
Afterwards we stopped for
five minutes to look at the sea but became distracted by the lithe tanned men
working on their kite surfing…lovely aunt was full of questions about this
and was treated with great kindness by one of them who explained how it all
worked to her. She wondered if it was something I would like to take up….I
was very amused…but if it had been invented in the 1970’s I would have been
very tempted ( by the sport I mean), it looked like the next best thing to
being a seagull gliding on the wind. The sea smelt so good and the sun was
strong . We then went on to find a picture framer who also turned out to be
lovely, what a nice place Worthing is!! It was just what I needed after reading
the obituaries of someone I had been a surrogate aunt to when he was a kid. I
really hate it when people die young.
No2 son has sold almost enough modified game controllers with
extra flashing lights to get himself a flying lesson, he seems a bit young to
be soldering and running his own little business but it seemed only sensible to
look for some accounting software for him…..pinch me someone that’s my baby
boy. No 1 son is off to Suffolk for a few days.
Am already beginning to tire of podding broad beans but I still
love my six foot high peas plants. Courgettes doing well and squash, something
‘Toscana’ are overdoing the productivity -will need to thin or they will all
expand and pop each other off the plant.
Here is a picture of a print that missed the exhibition but that I
really like framed up. It is a Hayter print the second pull through the press,
I love it. It’s called Pale Windflower.
Beans
Basket with Salvia patens grown from seed.
#176 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
A Blush Pear – 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
I am going to compile my list of the top ten genera or plant families that form the backbone of the garden for me, then I shall see if there are gardening forums out there who beg to differ.
I think I have to start with the roses:
1) Rosa or roses
2) Geranium
3) Penstemon, important as they take you through from June to October
4) Papaver or poppies these are just such brilliant show offs, but delicate with it
5) Clematis I think I have nine different ones and there are more that I want( like the one in that mans shopping trolley in the supermarket)
6) Lilium or lilies I don’t have many at the moment that that could be changed at the stroke of a key on the computer this autumn,the ones I have I have had for ten years and I love them they are regaining strength again after being dug up three times in four years.
7) Narcissus or daffodils and jonquils etc
8) Tulipa
9) Allium they steal the bed in a way little else can do.
10) Lonicera or honeysuckle this is a canny choice as it can give you hedging plants climbers winter flowering shrubs and summer flowering shrubs.
11) Lavendula sorry I can’t leave this out.
This list will need revising….
We did not go to the allotment today. I went to the market stall in Burgesshill and today I painted this pear, the white peaches will maybe do tomorrow.
Alison
#74 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Dianthus for the Rainbow Nation – a painting a day
this painting is framed and for sale £50
. size 5 in x 8 in 13cm x 20cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
It rained and then it rained some more, but it will be dry for the weekend and it was dry for birthday boy’s barbeque. I am certainly not complaining as the watering was showing up as water on my knee.
It was wonderful to see the winter sunshine in Cape Town and spot how they shifted Gary Linnaker around all the time to get the shots. When No1 son was a baby we went to Cape Town for a long weekend one September (Presidents Day Holiday in Botswana) the queues to get up the mountain on the cable car were huge so we decided to take a stroll up a path, found it went to the top and walked up with the baby in a carrier frame. Amazing place, there’s a different climate on the top even though it’s so close to the town, and the plants…..
The most spectacular things in this garden at the moment are Allium schubertii and the climbing rose William Morris which is heartbreakingly beautiful. It flowers on the corner of the house on the path leading to the front door. I will make an etching from one of the Allium flowers to go with an older steel plate which used an impress of an Allium flower in soft ground (that’s an etching soft ground not boggy flower bed).
I hesitate to mention it but I have not seen a lily beetle here yet this year. The Mina lobata did have a flower which was lily beetle scarlet but something attacked it and it will need to grow back from the base. I have looked for culprits but can find no clear evidence.
One other extraordinary thing, the Nicotianum sylvestris which I neglected to pull up last autumn is sprouting from the base!! I thought it was an annual. The leaves are very strong smelling-tobacco bitter-and no snail has so much as nibbled it. An amazing survivor, it is definitely listed as an annual. It is growing in a bit of a rain shadow so would have been dry for much of the winter and not quite as cold as elsewhere in the garden but I lost things only three foot further out into the same border. N.sylvestris is one of my favourite plants growing about four feet high with hanging flowers of white which perfume the evening air. It is strategically planted near the covered sitting area which can be used for breakfast or a meal on a cooler or even damp evening. Once when some friends were over we sat there drinking coffee in a thunder storm and it was brilliant.
Today we picked three pounds of strawberries. Oh and I slipped and fell over crashing right through the bird netting….damn suffered complete loss of good humour.
Alison
#73 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 