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Solomon’s seal 2 -a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday size 12inx4.5in 30cmx12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
I decided to go back to the Solomon’s seal and change the background by moving the flowers to a different place. This is a bit lighter and fresher and I think that the stem has got a little bit longer in the two days.
Politics can be fascinating. I have realised that the whole thing is really quite miraculous, because I do believe that the majority of people in this country were appalled by the scandal of MP’s expenses and the arrogance and greed exposed by it. It cannot have been planned but the electorate have managed, without any mechanism at their disposal, election results that have not pleased anyone but the Greens. A bloody nose for all parties pretty much.
There has been comment that yesterdays garden pictures should have had a sunglasses warning …here are some more restful shots. Apple Newton Wonder, Rhododendron no idea.
We’re getting frost and the tomatoes, banana and dahlias are all out there. I don’t remember frost this late in Sussex ever before .
Alison
#45 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Sea holly – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday size 4.5inx4.5in 12cmx12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Well this is how I am feeling …kind of thratchy. It’s very unsettling not knowing what is going to happen, if nothing else it would be nice to know what if anything the pound will be worth against the euro as I might want to take a holiday.
I like the way the concern of the city is being portrayed about the hung Parliament…the city, we are told, is sensitive to the lack of decision and is anxious to know when the dreadful deficits are going to be sorted out. EXCUSE ME they haven’t forgotten their role in forming those deficits have they? Are we now to be lumbered with a jittery market because as well as being amoral the city has selective amnesia and thinks the deficits are a purely political problem?
The sea holly is in pen and wash. The colour is actually quite tricky to get as there is a vibrancy to the blue but it’s not a strong colour.
Yesterday I was complaining about the view out of this window and the awful colour clashes, here is a photo of one of the bits I detest.
I went to the allotment today and found a blobby red fungal disease on the redcurrant leaves. Oh I just looked it up and it’s an aphid that causes it. The odd thing is I had removed some leaves earlier from a young plant which I had been thinking was a peach; these leaves were also swollen and red and distorted but I knew that disease from my training and it is fungal, Taphrina infestans or peach leaf curl. Well at least I know it’s a peach now and it must be quite hardy as it coped with last winter. No knowing if it will produce fruit but the flowers are very pretty (when /if it has some).
Alison
#44 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Solomon’s seal – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday size 12inx4.5in 30cmx12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Or a message in a bottle, someone has to make a wise decision from a difficult set of options. I am very glad I am not Nick Clegg trying to decide who to risk upsetting; should it be the party, the voters who came from Labour or the voters who came from the Conservatives, the voters who cursed both as corrupt? Who does he need to encourage, the voters who are yet to take a risk and vote Liberal or those who always have done? The wisdom to get this right is something that has to be found. Look to Solomon who thought things out, looking behind what people say to what they are really about.
The garden is damp and strangely cold, after we had that warm weather this seems wrong. Outside this window the original planting that came with the house is doing its worst, the clashes are stupendous.
It was mostly planted with shrubs; around the edge of the grass are dwarf azaleas in everything from brick red through scarlet to shocking pink. In and among them are some surviving red and yellow tulips. I should have remembered to pick all the tulips but I forgot this manoeuvre. In case one begins to feel sleepy there are also some bright bright yellow and green euonymus bushes and crowning the whole firework display Berberis davidii with its rusty orange sprays loaded with flowers, not forgetting a small Pieris which has faded to peach. There used to be a purple Magnolia in an island bed but we moved that. The difficulty is to work out what gets the chop.
It’s all very well having a cheerful display but the side garden at this time of year is a headache. I think the problem is that the azaleas and the Berberis are so thick with flower there is no relief to be found from the green of the leaves. The leaves that there are are dark and the contrast adds yet more drama to the crisis.
Round in the front garden I have tried to add colour to a bed of mixed shrubs by underplanting with hardly geraniums and lacing the evergreen clematis Early Sensation through the juniper. Its not been very pleased with this arrangement and has only really flowered this year after four years of sulking. It does look sweet now but it’s not been very early and is not yet a sensation. It will be in full sun the higher it scrambles so I have hopes for it still.
Something took the baby birds from the low down nest , it was a robin not a chaffinch, but the blackbirds and bluetit nests seem fine.
Alison
#43 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
The muscari setting seed – a painting a day
Size 9.5inx7in 25cmx18cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
This is rather botanical in that there is just the plant in the image, I really liked the way it had got all stiff and awkward as seed pods grew, the blue flowers at the top of the stem are sterile so form no seeds.
Almost forty days , that does feel like a bit of a milestone, I know looking at the web some people do not make it beyond ten days. However there people who have been going for three years or more and that is truly impressive.
Today we went to see a garden in Surrey not too far away. It was lovely but for us lacked that inspirational buzz. I mean it made me think, “Oh yes I will need to get some lily of the valley for the shady area”, but I already knew about lily of the valley since childhood. Also sadly the cakes were minimal, no mad gestures just neat chocolate cake which looked the part but did not taste it and spray cream on the scones, ah well, efficient but soulless.
It is extraordinarily cold and windy; in fact as we walked through woodland to the entrance we heard and saw a tree crack and fall in the wind. A large piece of hawthorn literally crashed to the ground; if we had been underneath we would have had a second to get clear.
I found some new survivors of the winter a pretty dahlia that survived in the shelter of the porch with the fuchsias. There are loads of shoots coming up so I may propagate it to have more for the summer. It is a deep rich red with dark leaves and about twelve inches high. Last year it was in a pot with deep violet petunias and the scarlet fuchsia Thalia, the pot was lovely for almost all the summer.
Visited the allotment this afternoon where we found weed mayhem in most of it apart from the fruit cage the broad bean bed and the carrot enclosure; I still managed to come back with a bag crammed with leaf beet, rhubarb, and distorted asparagus fit only for soup. Too many slugs and himself too soft hearted to kill them.
Alison
#39 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Yellow tulips – a painting a day
Size 9.5inx7in 25cmx18cm watercolour on fabriano paper
Well I nearly did not get this anywhere near to finished …in fact it might not be finished yet.
This is a go at doing the challenge on Rookie Artist where anyone can do a picture based on a photograph put on the web once every three weeks. The photograph was of yellow tulips growing in a pot which I cropped heavily.
Next I will have to work out how to send the photo over to them, here’s hoping that it’s not too technically challenging. The tulips are quite new so there is only one challenge posted so far. The site can be found at http://rookiepainter.blogspot.com/
I found it a bit strange as I almost never work from photographs as I do not like the results , I think I can tell if I have worked from a photograph and I do not like the look. With this I have played god and moved bits of leaf around to improve the composition. I also added rather more stamens than were in the photo as I felt it gave the picture more focus.
Here is the photograph uncropped:
I missed a trick the shadow of the tulips low down is really striking.
It rained most of today so apart from scragging a few weeds I did very little apart from discussing household renovation with himself (I am trying not to call it DIY anymore ).
#38 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Tulips – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday size 5inx6in 13cmx15cm watercolour on heavyweight rag paper
Today I found three more fuchias that had stayed alive over winter bundled in bubblewrap on the front porch. There were one or two other things that might be alive, if given the luxury of a drop of water. I suppose the point is to be pleased about what has worked rather than think about what could have been saved with a bit more organisation. Sometimes Bacopa survives the winter in the right place but not this year. I also used to keep the grey leaved foliage plant going (helichrysum). Still my mother usually overwinters that by her backdoor so I can borrow some. Next year we might have a greenhouse and all sorts of things will over-winter under the benches.
It makes huge sense to overwinter some of the stock plants for the pots as that way you start with bigger plants that are FREE. Also you have the measure of each of them, will it really trail or will it give up half way through the season? Things like the Erigeron Profusion or Mexican Wall Daisy are good as they fill in and are white with pink which means they go with lots of other colours, they are as happy in pots as in cracks in the pavement or trailing down hot sunny walls. They can be grown from seed and once you have a happy plant, you will be certain to have some new ones come up each spring, it’s then just a question of remembering what they look like when small and not weeding them out. I also keep a clump of stripy grass or Gardeners Gaiters in a pot; it is very invasive in a bed and hard work to remove but in a pot it is fresh and lovely and only needs cutting down once a year in midsummer to stop it going messy. It works well with other stuff planted among it and provides foliage fill for free.
The other bit of the garden that is taking off is the strip of roof garden over the log store, there are buds of Dryas Mountain Avens nodding in the wind and one Lewisia has made it and is getting on with flowering seriously. The dwarf phlox is purple with flower and the night scented phlox is about to open its first flower. I need to go up on a ladder though as I can see weeds getting a grip too in the gaps. It was so seriously dry up there I put water on it today; the top end was looking dessicated.
I have done a painting of some tulips today.
Alison
#36 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Three strawberries – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday size 5inx6in 13cmx15cm watercolour on heavyweight rag paper
The strawberry theme continues although there is some background here. I have made this very loose and applied the paint wet on wet and then in some places flooded it with oxgall.
Today I put out a big group of Tiarella seedlings in the shady area that got flattened recently following the build. The soil is very patchy; there are areas where I was digging holes and then throwing into the hedge base the yellow lumps of clay that I dug out. At least if I scrape around there are bits of soil to be found in places. I watered all the young plants very well and top dressed with a mixture of mulch and chicken manure pellets. There were one or two little seedlings of some species geranium that had emerged from the compost after I pricked out the baby Tiarellas. I hope they don’t mind shade.
I also went looking for patio pot survivors from last year , this was quite productive, I have four white fuchia Annabel, four fuchia in shades of pink trailing which made it indoors overwinter, several Erigeron Profusion which is trying to flower, two diascias, several rooted cuttings of Pelagonium on the kitchen window sill plus three parent plants and lots of trailing nepeta which is also starting to flower. In addition there are two good plants of fuchia Thalia indoors still. One or two pots that I have dragged out from shelter have some interesting looking seedlings too. I only really need to buy some lobelia as I have one e-bay pack of mixed hanging basket plants being brought on.
Things are really moving fast in the garden, lots of big hitters are out or ready to go any minute . The clematis Montana is almost out , the honeysuckle Dropmore Scarlet likewise. There is a delicate bush honey suckle opening with pink flowers L. tartarica I think .
My star bit of permanent planting is at its peak, here is a sequence of photographs. First shows the tulips still in bud and yeaterday there they are open in the sun. You can just make out the striped leaves.
The art exhibition was better than expected although it was clear that another class had had one really good project that exhibited very well and looked like they had enjoyed it.
Alison
#35 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Cherry blossom – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday 6 inches by 5.5 inches, 15cmx13cm, charcoal and wash on heavy weight rag paper
This was a difficult day, wanted to go to London to see hospitalised relative but there was no decision to be had until 4.00pm on whether they were to be discharged. I ended up waiting for phone calls and faffing around in the garden inbetween times. They have been discharged now.
I did get two plants out of containers and into the ground; had to dig through six inches of pure clay left by the builders in one places. The plant I put in the shady area is called Kirengeshoma( I just had to look that up in the Chiltern Seeds catalogue). It really is a beauty for damper shady corners or along hedges or walls. It grows in the walled garden at Nymans and in the higher garden at Great Dixter. It copes with sun as it was in the sun most of last year in a pot. It dies down to nothing but now feisty nettle like shoots are reaching up. It should be ok as I found topsoil six inches down and I gave it a good mixture in its planting hole , plenty of water and some slow release fertilizer. Look it up, its a gem.
#32 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Primulas and muscari – a painting a day
this painting is framed and NFS
6”x6”, 15cmx15cm,
watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
This is a funny kind of grape hyacinth with two colours, I love the inky dark lower flower and the way it contrasts with the delicate blue on the top half. If you think these are strange then you should see the wild grape hyacinth in old fields in Greece and Cyprus, they are not even all blue and strangely spiky. I picked the primula from the front where they froth up among the Pulmonaria or lungwort; tomorrow in the sun I will take a picture as that corner of the garden looks good at the moment. The primulas smelt nice in the studio, as soon as you walk out however you catch the whiff of the pear tree…its horrid a chemical doggy sort of smell. The first apple blossom opened today ,now that does have a sweet and fresh smell. This will have to do for today ,as the Geography course work is back again like a bad penny. Alison
#30 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Scarlet and yellow tulips on the bedroom window sill – a painting a day
11 inches by 6 inches, 27cmx15cm, watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
This is one of those, let’s get a fast impression of what the colours and the light are doing, paintings.
I always like to get these flame coloured tulips and sit them against a turquoise painted wall. The colours really start to zing. They are not quite opposites but close to the opposite. Then when the evening sun shines on them….
The jug came from my aunt’s house, it may have come from her mother’s it’s a little eccentric- like all of us who have not been cloned for average features and personalities.
I got called into the school and told that the GCSE course work was being worked on all the time my son and I thought it had disappeared; apologies were proffered for the distress and the delay that was admitted to…mmm I’m thinking.
The ground in the garden is already hard and baked in the worst beds, in fact one has already cracked. I am half way down the water butt and there seems to be no possibility of rain until the weekend.
However there are bits of the garden which are taking off the red leaves on the pieris have suddenly eclipsed its flowers.
Alison
#27 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 