Archive
Bat, Dragon, Brimstone and Barbeque – a painting a day
Day One hundred and seventy one
size 6 in x 8 in, 15cm x 21cm
Today was beautiful. There were no appointments to make, the sun shone and I got some weeding done. I bumped into people in town who could do each other good once they were introduced and I had found that one needed to practice Spanish and one needed to practice English. Lovely aunt was happy and to cap it all DIY Dad got to incinerate food outdoors for the first time this year. We sat out in the garden and watched the sun set as we waited for the food to be cooked. A crescent moon emerged among the peachy coloured cirrus clouds and a bat flew high among the oak trees before the light had even half gone.
This morning I saw at least two brimstone butterflies, possibly a holly blue and later a large brown of some sort. I pulled seedling grass from the garden beds and probably thirty seedling of Hypericum , the garden is infested with self sown Linaria, Aquilegia, Geranium pyrenaicum, Prunella, Verbena bonariensis, Salvia, Verbascum, willow, as well as the usual docks, nettles, creeping buttercup, wood avens and forget-me-not. I leave the forget-me-nots and verbena and some of the others but the Hypericums have to go as do the sedges that sprout up everywhere.
The painting is of a strange fruit , I have never eaten it , I will tell you its like next blog. It is certainly colourful.
The photo shows the sky with a tiny moon.
#171 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
Lemon a day 