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A Sussex Cep – a painting 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
Red apples on the ground – a painting a day
size 10 in x 6 in , 25cmx15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper.
Today was beautiful the grass was sparkling in the sunshine this morning, the heavy dew which makes for ideal fungus hunting weather….yesterday we found about two pounds of bay boletes, today we went back and found three and a half pounds of edible fungi including three ceps, amethyst deceiver, and birch boletes. I will put some pictures in. The dessicator is now full and the Christmas soup is assured….it needs woodpigeon, ceps , cream and brandy in addition to the normal soup making things like stock and onion.
Yesterdays painting still needs to be finished, it is very wishy washy at the moment. I put off cutting the grass to get today’s painting of the early apple tree, it has got to where I can no longer rely on picking the apples that do not show from the view point so it HAD TO BE DONE. I wanted the windfalls to be in the picture too so had to pick them up in a great hurry at six this evening, in order to get the mowing done. It’s hard to believe that we have eaten pounds from the tree already, there are plenty there. The problem is now getting to be that if there is a windfallen Ellisons Orange apple I will eat that in preference.
Yesterday was our duty day at the sailing club, sadly we have been very little this year and it’s a waste of the membership really. Earlier in the summer there was a lot of work on the house to get through-there still is!
The woods where the boletes came from are a lovely mixture there are pine trees, coppiced hazels and sweetchestnuts, heathy bits and a little steep valley (a ghyll they call it in Sussex, but it’s supposed to be a Scottish word). The boys found a rope with a stick hanging from a tree , it swang over a watery hollow full of dead wood and mud. Naturally one of them fell in it.
Alison
#121 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Todays ceps
Yesterdays Bay Boletes
Sunflower and Banana plant in the new flower bed,by tomorrow the Hedychium should be out.
The monastery from Babine Kuce, reworked#2 – a painting a day
size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
There are several things report today DIY Dad has started again in earnest and has told me firmly that I must expect to listen to rambling useless diatribes about plumbing and so on. I thought I was just here to cook the food and do the washing.
Given the weather was actually rather nice I was finding it very hard spending time indoors looking at depressing breezeblock walls with remnants of 1960’s decor peeling in an unromantic fashion.
The solution I came up with was good. I suggested a walk to look at some of my favourite fungus sites. The boys were promised ice cream and a bag of crisps. They complained bitterly but under sufferance they did come, muttering and threatening retribution. In the woods we found that there were no chanterelles or ceps but that the hedgehog mushrooms were beginning to fruit and we found two nice birch boletes and two very small beefsteak fungi. I photographed them before stir frying them.
The boys got their ice creams in a village shop and I got my Saturday paper, their humour improved on the walk until they had got back to being the boys we had on holiday.
On the way home we stopped for a drink in a pub overlooking the village green and then went on to the DIY store . Husband was in seventh heaven, fungi, beer, and a DIY browse all crowned by catching the car getting to 90,000 miles on the way back……and it still keeps going.
I had another go at reworking the picture of the beautiful Benedictine monastery in Mljet this time I put in the boat which takes people out to the island.
No2 son has been very informed and pretty clever, he has found and set up a new web-site on which I can sell work without a time limit. Its being called the lemonaday shop and will feature old pictures from the blog and other work that looks like it fits in.
#120 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Alison
View of monastery at Babine Kuce, Croatia – a painting a day
size 6 in x 5.5 in 15cm x 14cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
This picture was actually done yesterday but what with the swimming and the KFC afterwards I was in no fit state to get it posted, besides which there was rampant DIY going on.
I did not like the tiny canoes in the original painting so left them out in this one.
#119 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Victoria plums – a painting a day
this painting is framed and for sale in the burgess hill open house event see blog June 4th
size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Just so you are not worried by the numbering; I made a mistake on the numbering of paintings while I was away , therefore the picture of the monastery in Croatia has been renumbered as# 117, it was previously #108.
Rain, it just isn’t stopping, it is slowing for a while and then starting up again. There seems to be a chance that there will be some almost dry weather over the weekend…please let that happen as I want to have some time to enjoy the garden again. At the moment I am going out and getting wet and muddy even to pick a handful of tomatoes. I picked six today and we ate the four from yesterday…we are self sufficient in tomatoes!
There are some late flowering treats, the cyclamen are getting started, the relocated ginger lily or Hedychium is in bud, the Canna lily is shredded by the wind and rain, and some late sown morning glory are growing like they mean it and the first beautiful purple trumpet opened today. It is scrambling up with a very vigorous Cobaea Scadens which hasn’t flowered at all yet. Having looked it up to see how to spell it, I see that it is in fact perennial but only half hardy….will it like being cut down and put on a window sill overwinter?
Today’s painting is of the last three Victoria plums which came from A & R’s garden at the weekend. They do actually look Victorian in their colouring all those heady purple and red dyes that they discovered and loved to use). I decided to put them on a little Staffordshire saucer.
#118 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Red Russula – a painting a day
size 6 in x 4 in 15cm x 12.5cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Exhibited and sold at Inspired by Nymans Exhibition
# 115 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Sibenik apples and pears – a painting a day
Sibenik reworked #2 (#116)
size 6 in x6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Sibenik reworked #1 (painting a day #114) with minor alterations
size 6 in x6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Wedding pictures have begun to trickle through on the e-mail, it looks like I habitually turn my back on the camera as there are only pictures of me from behind! The boys are in some shots which is good.
I have spent a lot of time peeling pears and freezing drying and cooking them.
I also made a tasty salad from Blackstick blue cheese and pears diced with a few stems of Chinese cabbage diced to give a little crunch. The pears are now sweet and aromatic with their special pear drop kick. I also poached some sliced pear in a vanilla syrup…..beautiful.
Loads of apples are tumbling off the trees with the wind and rain, they are also being slowly peeled and frozen or cooked.
There are more and more fungi in the grass, I might collect the red cracking boletes as I have eaten them before and they are OK- not as good as ceps, but then nothing is.
The tomatoes have started to turn so I have picked eight slightly plum shaped ones which are a bit mushy but tasty cooked. The smaller ones are refusing to ripen…next thing the blight will be in there.
I have altered the last reworking of the Sibenik sketch and here is another.
No1 son got his required grades and we are all so happy for him, after all the teachers and life threw at him he has managed to get there. He hates me talking like this so I’ll stop.
#116 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Autumn growth, a Bolete – a painting a day
size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Eyelashes, I never had many and never very dark or very long, all that has changed now- they are simply evaporating. I have possibly hit upon a solution…stick on individual fakes, my good friend B came round and we had a real laugh…it looks slightly mad and the children say they prefer me without…”Honest Mum you look fine as you are normally…” Sweet, but easy to say from behind a fortress of lush thick lashes which they both got from their (smug) father. I will have to have a second go after this trial…in the meantime dare I leave the house?
Nails, another of my filings (get it?). I have only ever painted my toe nails as my finger nails are weak and never grow long…(and they are also inky and grubby from weeding ) My dress is green and navy and white so red toe nails would be OK…but I thought metallic green would be funkier and it is. The nails were done by my friend B. who also helped with the technicalities of the dress….now I just have to relay her skills to my husband who will have to do and do it up on the day.
Toadstools are coming up in all sorts of places, here is the biggest so far in a pencil and paint depiction of autumn. Grim but true, it is autumnal. I need to check out what this fungus is, obviously it is a bolete but this garden has a variety of weird and dodgy looking Boletus species and they are not at all easy to nail. This looks like the iodine bolete but it does not have the right smell. It stains blue so I would not try and eat it. I have scattered the spores of Sussex ceps in the woody bit but no home grown porcini yet. Blewits and Chanterelles I may have introduced however, I will let you know if they reappear this year.
#112 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Across the lake, evening light – a painting a day
size 7 in x 9 in 18cm x23cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
The time today has flown by, it tends to when you are having a spectacularly rotten time. The nasty bug has been coming and going for some of us, which means it’s impossible to know from one meal to the next who will be able to eat or what they might manage.
This was all, fortunately in a way, broken up with my brother’s belated fiftieth birthday celebration. He came south and so did my sister which was lovely. We spent some time discussing exactly how we used to break into the house when we didn’t have a key…it involved shinning up a pipe above some hard looking concrete…I’d read the riot act if I caught my kids doing it- which just goes to show I’ve turned into an old hypocrite. The window’s changed now so even a child couldn’t get through it.
In the middle of the mass vomiting outbreak I noticed that the pears were ready to pick and that the birds had also noticed this fact. I started picking last Thursday and got some help by Friday. There are about 35 pounds of good pears and another eight or so of damaged fruit. The pears have to sit inside until suddenly the yellow tone brightens under the red streaks and they sweeten and soften. We can’t possibly eat them all; so some get given away and some go in the fridge to delay their ripening. Some I will dry in the dessicator as they have a very strong flavour and are good dried. The damaged fruit have almost all been cooked either in a crumble or stewed in red wine with cinnamon, sugar and cloves . I will freeze some for future crumbles and/ or my own favourite chocolate pear pudding, an upside down sponge pudding. We think the variety is French, Precoce de Trevoux, it is the strongest pear I have ever tasted having a real affinity with the yellow and red pear drops we all adored as children. The apples are ripening very fast so lots of them need distributing to relatives, friends and neighbours as well.
This picture is of the view across the sea lagoon from Babine Kuce in Croatia, the house is rented out in the summer we were told. I have only just remembered to make the final changes to this painting so it has not been blogged before. I started it on the same day as the view across the lake to the monastery, it is the view looking the other direction from the view of the village and moored boats.
We have a wedding coming up …clothes shopping with teenagers oh horror horror horror.
111 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Karbuni: Abroad thoughts from home – a painting a day
NFS Watercolour, size 30cm x 15cm
This is the view from the second place we stayed. The sea really was this colour, I am not putting this picture on eBay as I want to keep it for myself. I may even try and work it into an etched image, it would be a companion piece to an old set of plates which are pigs to print but give a lovely image of the seaside. However I am going to put some of the other pictures from the holiday on eBay to start the ball rolling again.
This painting makes me think of the people at Karbuni, little Prijam with his astute questions, Darka and Mary who were so kind.
I have my little bouquet of wild rosemary and other flowers which was a parting gift. It’s about thirty years since a friend told me how beautiful his home island was and now I know what he was talking about.
In the meantime I am going round removing dead stuff from the garden, I have a wheelbarrow full of deadheading and weeds piled high.
The fruit trees have filled out massively and are now drooping down with the weight of the apples and pears. The early apples are ready and the pears are almost ready to pick.
I am amazed at how well the flowers have survived but I have a very good neighbour, who has watered the pots and the beds.
The dahlias are good, the potentillas are making a fluffy bank of deep red. My best surprise is the Eucryphia which has a mass of white poppy like flowers. Next year when it grows beyond the damage caused by the snow last January it will be magnificent.
Some things have struggled but on the whole things are great. The first flower has come on the herbaceous clematis I grew from seed…… It’s only taken three years, I reckon it should be grateful that I have an occasional patient streak.
Getting back to a garden after a while away is fascinating things may well improve, houses merely get dustier and fusty.
#109
Lemon a day 
