The start of Yellow Gate In The Snow.
Outside the studio - a heatwave!
Outside the studio - a heatwave!
 Sweet peas with dill.  Sweet peas with ammi majus.  We are having a spell of wonderful weather, which the Mother of Pearl poppies and I are loving. I hope you are too. I am taking a bit of a blog break while I try and establish a work routine in the studio. It's a long time since I worked full-time! If you are one of the millions who have been working all through the pandemic, keeping the world functioning I want to take this chance to say a huge thank you. THANK YOU SO MUCH.     A ten minute bus ride to the next village along the shore today to meet a friend at a new cafe which has opened next to the village hall and the phone booth gallery, and across the road from the pier (the ticket office is available for holidays...) and a good view of the Waverley. Perfect.    Have just taken delivery of three large canvases, which will become Japanese Snow (diptych and my largest painting yet), Yellow Gate In The Snow, and on another 1m x 1m canvas Snow On Snow. When an idea comes for a painting, it comes with a size! It's as if it is a given, and not negotiable. These canvases are quite heavy and my studio quite small (so am I) so you will understand when I sometimes wish I painted miniatures! The poster for the exhibition is being designed. Gulp. Better get back to work...   I grow several kinds and love them all. These are Mother of Pearl, subtle colours and delicate veining..    ..of power-hosing! A decades-old Habitat bench repaired and restored. I am so pleased with it, and it has been fixed in exchange for a petrol strimmer which was sitting in my shed, too heavy for me to use.   It's not often I see thIe beauty of the dawn, but awake at 5 I noticed the first rays of the sun lighting up the yellow gate and I just had to go out and try and get a photograph. Unfortunately I also got a big insect bite on my leg. :-( But I did get the best part of the day.,,   I love the way the meadows change each year. (They are just areas where I stopped mowing.) Cat's ear, hypochaeris radicata, is dominant this year. The flowers don't open until about 8 o'clock but then the garden is ablaze with their brilliant yellow. More orchids are still appearing, and I have put in wild cornflowers which I grew in plugs So vibrant beside the yellow!.
 Makes me smile every day.   I love he brilliant leaves of the golden hop, humulus lupus aureus against the black walls of the house. It grows quickly to about 10 feet or more every year, and tries to get into the house! You cut it to the ground at the end of summer and the bines are useful for making wreaths. I also grow it on a wigwam of blue painted canes, where this year it has been joined by clematis 'Dark Eyes'. (£1 from the supermarket.)    I can recommend raspberry with white chocolate topped with fresh mint. This cute little building on the shore, not five minutes walk from my house, has just opened as an ice cream shack. Sooo tempting! And for a village without a shop it is a big event.     I sowed this pretty annual in pots but they got straggly and leggy as I didn't pot them on or pinch them out at the right time. However they are flowering profusely n spite of my neglect and I was puszzling how to support them when I remembered some white painted twigs from Christmas. Just tje thing. These are Schizanthus x wisetonensis Dr Badger's Mix from Chiltern Seeds.     What a wonderful expression Sheena (see yesterday's comments). It's why we drink tea from our special cup and saucer rather than a chipped mug, wear lipstick under our mask (loved that one), spend time looking at Instagram or Pinterest, or Country Living magazine, and play dreamy music at breakfast. Did anyone enjoy Kylie Flavell's channel by the way? It's why I prettied up the greenhouse again (I know at least one of you has a new greenshouse. I hope you are having fun with it!) A little bit of frivolity or escapism ..lovely. Especially in summer. Especially this summer.  What would your blissful breakfast look like? Can you make it happen this weekend? Kylie Flavell, pragmatic dreamer, makes her dreams come true. You can too..  Funny how one thing leads to another. I chanced upon Kylie Flavell's channel. She calls herself a pragmatc dreamer (I guess this is where the floaty dress notion came from!) and she mentioned Tim Ferriss who was interesting on Stoicism, and he mentioned Music in the minor keys, which I played while having a delicious very early breakfast outside in the warm sunshine. So much better than the news! I love the unusual colouring of this viola..and the excitement of a trip to a garden centre!   We had our famly mid summer beach barbecue yesterday, in gorgeous sunshiine and with the beach to ourselves. My husband used to say that if the weather waas this good al the time it would be crowded here, so we savour each beautiful day and count our blessings. So happy!  More of a roar as the Argyll Rally came through the village today!      My neighbour's rowan tree, sorbus Sargentiana, is smothered with flowers this year, and filled with thousands and thousands of bees. The noise of them when you stand underneath it is amazing! 
I picked a huge bunch of buttercups from the road verge, and felt vaguely guilty (you're not supposed to pck wild flowers, right?)  Next mornng the council came along.......I wonder if the man with the machine felt guilty?  I would never pick flowerss which are raare, but it is so easy to make us feel guilty, don't you think? About evereything! Are you feeling guilty about anything right now? Is it really warranted? Guilt is a fascinating topic.. ..came to stay for Midsummer. We had not seen each other for 17 months, during which she had gone through some terrible times. The weather was gogeous. We hugged, we talked, we ate, we drank. We decorated the greenhouse, we snoozed in the sun..       The moon came up.. We talked tlll mdnight It was relaxing and restorative and healing and fun!! ..Until death, it's all life..  yay moment in Venice I am celebrating Midsummer and the fact that I am alive! Happy Midsummer Day.X |
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