Archive
Maple leaves – a painting a day
This painting has been framed and is for sale at Burgess Hill Open Houses see blog for June 4th
size 5 in x 4.5 in, 13cm x 12cm
These are leaves which I picked up the day the car went for repair last week. They are starting to curl and dry out indoors.
No1 son came home looking cheerful and well although the journey home had taken three hours longer than it was supposed to because the sea was too rough for the ferry to take them off Arran. His clothes washing requirements were remarkably light as it seemed he had spent most of the week in the one outfit. In fairness he had changed his socks more than twice! He had obviously enjoyed the chocolate brownies as there were chocolate cake crumbs scattered throughout his day bag.
The decorator arrived this morning as arranged and DIY Dad has been in a frenzy of activity involving his latest tool the mighty mitre saw. The decorator would obviously prefer it if the skirting boards are in place before he gets to them.
The garden is looking very dismal, things are collapsing in dark rotting heaps; looking for some flowers the other day was very depressing the roses that have been visible through the back door look tatty close up, I found one stem in a more sheltered area, a single decent stem of snowberry and one of Shizostylis which has left it rather too late to flower.
#154 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Sheffield park – a painting a day
size 6 in x 8 in 15cm x 21cm artists soft pastels on cartridge paper
Today I looked at the devastation the frost had produced in the garden and the devastation that the boys had produced in the kitchen and in disgust I went out with a neighbour to Sheffield Park. No way to run a household I know but sometimes you need to get out. There was morning glory in the sunshine but morning misery hung resentfully on the house wall it had been – 3 degrees centigrade.
The frost had clearly caught the gardeners out at Sheffield Park too, the Gunnera was not ready for winter, the giant stems stood still but the enormous leaves hung like umbrellas broken and half melted. At first in a frost when the temperature is still low the tender plants look fine, then the sun gets to them or it warms up and the frozen leaves turn to seaweed and darken like so much wilted spinach.
I took a small sketch pad and did a pastel of one corner of the top lake. It was a mess but it held the memory of the scene long enough for me to make this version when I got home. I also sketched my neighbour and that sketch was pitiful. The patches of colour on the water were great rafts of brightly coloured leaves which had fallen with the frost. Many trees had dropped a carpet of leaves the Ginko had not got its full autumn colour but many of the leaves were down on the path.
When I got back I rescued a few more plants and checked to see what we are due tonight, nothing quite so dreadful, the dahlias can wait a day or two. We have got used to damp mild autumns that stretch beyond Bonfire Night but this is not going to be one of them. Luckily DIY Dad has finished the heating.
#146 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
A Vase of late flowers – a painting a day
Click here to purchase approx. A4 watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Inspiration for the painting goes to ejorrs twitter pic of the last garden flowers of the year in a vase. The photographs are autumn jewels in the garden.
Today’s blog will be mainly dedicated to a large moan about the education system. However I wanted to start by rubbishing an idea, an urban myth of sorts which is thought to occur in many family homes. It is said by many that mothers put on weight when they have children because they hoover up the leftovers on their children’s plates. They are really just being tidy it is implied and therefore virtuous (sort of); next they say “oh dear, I’m 14 stone (200lb, 90 +kg) “. You feel sorry…until you do a reality check, how many chips would you have to put on a child’s plate to get any leftovers to scoff? How fat can you get on the normally rejected cabbage, onions, salad, and brown bead crusts? It’s the healthy non-fattening foods that kids leave. Mothers are not getting fat on the kids leavings, no, they are getting fat on the treats hidden from the kids at the back of the cupboard, the pizza bought for the kids but eaten by all, the chocolate chip cookies left in the packet after it has been snatched from hungry offspring (what did the dentist say darling?), or the treat of a chocolate bar to enliven a regular journey. It’s a brave woman who owns up to this but as my (deceased ) diabetic friend said when her doctor told her that it was fine to have one or two biscuits, ”I’m not a one or two biscuit sort of woman, I’m a one or two packet sort of woman”. She can’t have been the only one. I know for myself that it’s the eating what I enjoy that keeps me over the weight I should be but that’s my problem and it doesn’t help me to push the blame towards my kids. This thought came to me last night as I was gloomily surveying what they had left on their plates …100% healthy….I binned it.
Mina lobata finally finds its form,the Aconitum is a deeper blue in real life.
Now education: we could all be forgiven for thinking that a child who has a good grade in a GCSE would have a reasonable balanced knowledge of the subject and be well placed to take the subject on to’ A’ level. Not necessarily I have discovered.
Every year there are reports in the press where industry laments the sorry state of school leavers and complains about their meagre knowledge, poor writing skills and general capacity for employment.
Yet every year there are articles in the press saying that it is incredible but grades have gone up once again and school websites puff with pride about the ever upward trend. However when I take a look at the work being done I worry about its quality, I get told that I don’t understand and the copy of the mark scheme is waved at me as the thing that matters today. My notion of learning a subject, I am told by my son, is outmoded. I thought that it was only my sons Geography department that was being so skimpy with the teaching that they only taught two out of four questions that could come up on the exam. Now I have discovered by talking more generally to teachers at another school that this is so widespread that it has a name. The name I would give it is cramming, the modern name for it is “teaching to the exam”.
This means that if you are doing Geography and the syllabus covers say mountains, rivers, urban planning and rural landuse , the exam offers a question on each topic from which two must be answered; an educator would teach all four subjects and advise the pupil to choose the subjects to answer in the exam according to how the question looks and their own strength in the topic. A crammer checks past papers, judges which topics are easier to teach and answer questions on (out goes anything with a tricky concept at this stage) and sticks to these two subjects. So rivers are studied but not mountains, Urban Geography but not Rural; the problem for me here is that the formation of rivers and the formation of mountainous landscapes interlink.
Now, this has been hard to understand for me because I am sure that when I was slogging through my exam years there was no real certainty about what would come up on the exam paper. Therefore you revised everything only leaving out Dr Drennan’s incomprehensible (to me) Plant Physiology. Things must have changed. If the exam papers were still unpredictable the teachers who’ teach to the exam’ (i.e. cram) would come spectacularly unstuck some years. We all know that is not happening so we have to accept that exam papers are very predictable. Possibly they vary a little in their predictability, and it is at this stage I remember that the schools are able to pick and choose their exam boards and will change them at will. I will come back to this subject after I have checked a few things with other teachers and schools etc.
#142 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
These Cobeas are unreal in theirslightly mad perfection
Morning Glory in a pot – a painting a day
NFS size 6 in x 5 in 15cm x 13cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
The morning came wet and dull; I took my boys to the station and to school and parped the in-laws on their way down to the station.
Then I had a very mixed day of cooking and shopping for food, trying to light my bonfire again and cutting down Berberis bushes which are getting too crowded. This isn’t as therapeutic as it could have been as it revealed a lot of scrawny brambles that had been sheltering underneath. I also started pruning out grotty branches on the pear tree. More air for next years crop.
I painted some fresh morning glory as yesterday’s had shrivelled up, and had a look at some other painting a day blogs. I started to key the apple I was sure was a Cox and it came out as a Christmas Pearmain, I think. Or a Manningtons Pearmain whatever that is. It tastes very nice quite sharp and Coxish.
Tonight after some protracted arguments with No2 son about the exact meaning of current and resistance and whether the central heating analogy was worth thinking about (plumbing is still on DIY Dads mind),we decided to bite the bullet and start moving stuff from the room where everything went during the build project. I found among other things an Art Nouveau vase from my grandmothers (I remember her bringing it back from a jumble sale coated in black muck) and four sable brushes along with a steel rule, a boxwood rule and some Indian ink. I consolidated DIY Dads kimberlite collection (as in a bit of every kimberlite pipe he ever found). This released two big cardboard boxes but the place still looks like a bomb hit it. It needs to be clear so that the ceiling can be skimmed. Although the builders did not work in that room they managed to trash the ceiling, mainly by falling through it, and we are sick of looking at the patch.
#136 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Two more mystery apples
Amanita – a painting a day
size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
The day started groggy and foggy, the fog was outside the groggy was in me.
I don’t think the smell of plumbing solder agrees with me for one thing.
The installation of a better radiator in this room has meant that some of the junk has been moved out the way which is nice and I have a better view into the side garden. This is the time of year for that patch as it had masses of Sedum ‘Autumn Glory’, which is a very simple undemanding plant but it peaks quietly now when lots of other stuff is heading for Tatty Town. There is also a large shaggy white dahlia which survived the winter in the ground; it’s remarkable what did survive, in fact I am almost sure that I have lost more things to the drought this year than to the hard frost in January.
I spent the morning collecting apples from the trees in the community orchard to identify. There are an awful lot more trees there than seemed possible when the undergrowth of nettles and brambles was untamed. An old pear is dripping with hard green fruit and there are some trees that have shed their crop. We found what we thought must be there, a Cox, almost hidden under ash trees which have grown up in the area since the orchard was abandoned, it has barely fruited. I think there is a D’Arcy Spice apple and a Reverend Wilkes (named for the horticultural stalwart who bred the Shirley poppy, see earlier blogs). There is also honey fungus fruiting on the roots of several trees which is very bad news indeed.
We went for a different walk today, if we had been there a couple of days ago there had been some very fine ceps, as it was they were huge and home to millions of tiny maggots.. In fact on the way back from the community orchard I saw a cep by the pavement only a few minutes walk from here. They really are everywhere. Instead of edible fungi we picked paintable fungi and here is my first effort. I don’t think I have drawn one of these since I was at school. Amanita’s are classics of the fungi world, tall, well formed and successful they are in the main poisonous or very dubious, some will kill you, this could make you pretty ill with the possibility of some hallucinations depending on the weather…..the suggestion is that the toxin/hallucinogen varies in strength according to the type of year it has been.
#131 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Fly Agarics in Ashdown Forest
Turkish figs with Serrano ham – a painting a day
size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Day One hundred and twenty eight – a painting a day
The figs are very pretty cut in half and lovely with some Serrano ham.
A few leaves of curly endive or fancy lettuce in a strong but slightly sweet dressing would be perfect with this. Not that I can get the endive easily here. I should try and grow it.
The ceps are moving around the woodland or rather the pattern of fruiting is changing. The best area previously was very sparse but we found another which was in full production. The drying routine is getting to be just that, a night-time routine, an easy mindless chore.
The quality of the ceps is phenomenal some days. They dry a pale creamy white and are good enough to eat like that, also the thin dry slices will crumble into scrambled egg and soften without soaking to make the most delicious scrambled egg imaginable.
I looked at the Tigridia plant and it is doing what they almost always do- producing a second flower, I will try and get a picture of this next time.
#128 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Three purple figs in a bowl – a painting a day
size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Yesterday was a very strange day indeed, the world wobbled a bit and everything seemed less sure and less pleasant.
No.1 son did not seem keen on going to school. This was a worrying change. In the car park I saw a letter in his bag which he tried to hide. Snatching it I found it was a handwritten note with a derogatory comment about him. It had been used as the name for a quiz team by somebody he knows from his previous school. I started to steam from the ears at this point. However the school seemed willing to deal with it. Later waiting for him to come out of the school I saw two boys knock another off his bike so that one of them could pummel him with his fists and then the kicking started…I can’t abide this sort of thing so went and broke up the fight, it’s amazing what shouting really loudly does…it worked on huge vicious baboons in the Okavango Delta, it works on teenagers. Later in the Co-op the staff were all in a twitter as there was a drunk returning for a second confrontation. At least there seemed to be some will on the part of the school to deal with issues and find out what was happening- I was spoken to by two members of staff.
I am shortly going to drown in apples , the wind is starting to bring down the cookers and the delicious but shortlived Ellison’s Orange are also blowing off. The last apples on the early tree are now bright red and shiny, I picked them all. They are very sweet. It was cold enough in the garden that a jacket was necessary; I suspect that if the dessicator wasn’t pumping out a little heat all the time the house would start to feel cold. I need things to cool a bit so that the cooking apples will get cool in their storage boxes in the shed.
The market had these plump sweet figs so with a little Serrano ham I had a simple starter which pleased me (if no-one else). As a still life I thought they would be set off by the welsh bowl with wild drippy glaze. I think that did work. It would be good to have the bowl at eye level to show off its glazing in another composition.
#127 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Birthday flowers – a painting a day
size 9 in x 9 in 21cm x 21cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
I have gone back to the lovely bouquet, but cannot decide whether this is chaos or partial abstraction.
Weeds are different wherever you go, a change of soil or a new garden means that the eye has to be retrained, the unfamiliar seedlings can be confusing when they first emerge. I have been in this garden with its horrendous heavy clay for five years now; there are weeds that I did not get in other gardens. Lately I have spent quite a bit of time on the areas that were levelled with a minidigger in the spring, I have noticed some new invading weeds germinating in the areas reworked. There is plenty of Hypericum or St John’s Wort to get rid of as usual but there are also masses of nettle seedlings and horror of horrors Lesser Bindweed, which I do not get in this garden. I have reason to believe that these seeds came in on the caterpillar tracks of the mini digger. My reason being that the seedlings of pale blue lobelia have popped up in the same area and the seedlings of bedding begonia ….this time last year it had a full cover of scrappy leylandii so the opportunities for annuals weren’t great over there, and anyway I don’t generally buy pale lobelias as I love the dark blue ones. There are also plenty of thistles that are new to the garden; it just goes to show you shouldn’t let a mini digger in if you don’t know where it’s been. I have also got a stand of Verbena bonariensis mixed with bronze fennel which have come from some inadequately heated homemade mulch, that and the camomile daisies that pop up everywhere are my fault.
I have had to attack a useful hedge in the front garden as I am afraid that the honey fungus which attacked the crabapple in the road has moved on to the cotoneasters. There are signs of die back and I think it is best to remove even healthy looking bushes to reduce the food stores available to the ceps’ psychotic axe murderer cousin Armillaria. I do not want it to get to the apple trees. I was very annoyed with the council as they did not cut the infected tree down quickly. I wish now that we had done it ourselves after discussion with the neighbours…how long would it have been before the council noticed, would they ever have noticed?. Luckily yew is fairly immune to honey fungus so I can transplant some seedlings to start to get a bit of cover back. Hebe is also less likely to be attacked and I have a couple in pots which were free to a good home and one which I could transplant.
The Tigridia flowered today and I forgot to get out there and take a photo, also forgot to pick up son from school which is a bit serious. I have apologised to him here is a picture of the Hedychium instead of theTigridia promised on Twitter.
#126 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
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
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 
