Floral Miscellany with ICAD

Hello Friends!

As lockdown continues, and for some it's still more rigorous than for others, I am still confining myself to my garden, so I apologise for yet another post with little else other than pictures of flowers.  Even so, I do hope you will take a peek at them, for the flowers of my cottage garden are very special to me, and most come with a little history or back story, some of which I share from time to time.

It's beautiful weather for most of us, although I think that nagging thought of two dreaded words to any gardener, "Hosepipe Ban" are looming closer each day.  My water butts are empty!  I will soon be starting to save bath water for the potted plants, but always use fresh for anything that will be eaten. The promised rain in the coming days will be sporadic and localised, so depending on how you look at it, you will be lucky or not lucky.

A few weeks ago I shared photos of a Libertina Perigranins here, and later discovered a possible flower bud with alienesque attributes.

~~~ which this week opened, and it is a miniature delight of white!  I bought this little plant two summers ago while on a local open gardens weekend in aid of charity.  I think I paid £1.50, as I was captivated by the leaf shape and colouring.  I had no idea it would give such a sweet flower too!

A few days on and it looks as if it will open up with a succession of flowers up the stem, and I hope to get a better photo when our weather settles, if the poor flowers survive.

In the same blog {link above} I shared images of the fir tree I thought was dead, which surprised me by coming slowly back to life.  I am now pleased to say that the green is increasing daily, and while I don't think it will ever fully recover, it is showing just how resilient nature is under pressure.  There is always hope!

The wonder of nature never fails to amaze me.  Isn't it incredible how it fights back and flourishes?  I don't normally buy potted fir trees, but the year Mum died it was so close to Christmas I didn't feel up to decorating but needed to do something, so I bought this and decorated it with edible garlands and seed baubles for the birds outside my window.

See, I told you many things in my garden have a back story.

The lovely, warm days mean I plan where I work in the garden so that I am in the coolest spots that can be managed.  I find this helps me focus more too, I am less likely to put off a particular job as I know in a few hours it might be too hot in that area.

The other afternoon I found my sun lounger.  I am not one for sitting in the garden for any length of time, so goodness only knows why I bought it in the first place.  I must have bought it five or six summers ago now.   Mum was starting to fail and I had hoped I could use it to encourage her to sit out with me for half an hour of a lovely afternoon or evening, but she did not care to.  I struggled with the lounger, even though it is a very nice one, good and robust, that converts from a sitting position to horizontal, but I could never master the art of doing so.  Eventually, I put it away in the back of the garage.  When I found it last week, I had visions of it having rotted away, but it's fine.  Then I thought I would be giving it away.  I put it on the lawn and set it up to check it over.  As soon as I sat down, something clicked and suddenly it slid easily from sitting to horizontal and back again as I am sure it is meant to do! It's a keeper!   My only problem is I am not one for sitting doing nothing and I feel rather like a fish out of water, but I will adjust to it in time.  It is most pleasant just listening to birdsong, and the other morning I actually heard a cuckoo for the first time in years, which shows how unpolluted the sound quality of the air is now without endless traffic going by.

Still, I am trying harder than you can imagine to enjoy my garden as a beholder rather than a worker. This, I think, will take me some time to perfect.

June is underway, and that brings us around, once more, to the annual Daisy Yellow ICAD art challenge.  I will not be posting on here, just this once to remind anyone who wants to see what I am doing this year, you can follow my daily shares on my Instagram account, @welshdebsart.  I hope you'll check it out, I am not following prompts this year, and here's a little taste of the first card, on day one, to whet your appetite.   Oh! look, more flowers!

I did a pencil sketch of what I wanted, it took ages with endless rubbing out of lines, and then I coloured it in using my new travel box of Inktense paint pans.  I am not sure if I have finished it or not, but sometimes you have to just walk away.

The concept of working on something as disposable as an index card challenges me.  For the record, this does not mean I throw the art cards away, I have boxes of hundreds from previous years.  What I am saying is that it puts into perspective the amount of work that goes into creating something, all the time you may, or may not spend on it only to be using a disposable scrap of card, rather than proper water colour paper, canvas, or other more durable, less disposable type of surface.  It opens up thought and discussion.  This piece took me a good two hours on a piece of paper that cost a penny.

After days and days of glorious sunshine, the weather has taken a turn and it is quite wintry again.  I confess, I am shocked that the evenings have been so cold I have had heating on.  As I look out my window, the lawn is covered in pink, yellow and white were the petals are ripped before their time from the roses and poppies.

Many of you know I grow a Frances E Lester near my front door, and this time of year the wonderful, rich rose fragrance fills my cottage.   The blooms start out a sugary pink before turning white.

Clusters of blooms open in succession, giving big, bold bright white, dinner plate sized and larger bouquets of fragrance.  You can see the bloom yet to open on this cluster

The more that open, the more stunning the plant becomes, both visually and olfactorily.

As gardeners, may of us will be disappointed, not only in the potential undoing of so much of our efforts, but the lack of rainfall.  It's damped the surface and that is all.  Hosepipe ban loom ever nearer!

Yesterday afternoon, I picked my first strawberries. Just five, but I feared they may come to grief if left any longer, especially with the weather coming in bad.

Slim pickings, but a start and more will follow.  They are sweet and juicy, and I wished I had some cream.

I don't have many indoor plants now, but do have a couple of cacti.  I bought them as part of a set, lost one over the winter, but find I particularly like the round, barrel one.  I recently repotted the two survivors and hope they do not need repotting for some time as I am still finding spines in my fingers!

I hope your weekend goes well, and you have fun, whatever you do.  Like many fellow gardeners I shall be fretting over lack of water and wind damage, but calming myself with some art and creative work indoors, and some baking, oh! and copious amounts of tea.

Until next time
Stay safe, stay well
Deborah xoxo