Peanut & A Lily...

It was a wet and blustery day today, the kind of day you stay in and get on with some painting!  Here is the bear 902 aka Peanut/Fifi when she was a cub.  I've painted her a few times, mainly because she was just so cute but also because she defied the odds and despite being the tiny, skinny runt of the litter, survived and thrived to adulthood.  Last seen in the autumn of 2018 at Brooks Falls, Katmai National Park, looking very fat and ready for hibernation.  I can;t wait to see her return in the Spring!

I have also re-vamped the lily painting - I like using paint dribbles on my paintings but this time it didn't work at all.  So I painted the whole background gold and am happy with it now.  Once I can photograph it in the daylight (there was not much of that today) it will go up for sale in my Etsy shop.

Summer Holidays.......

......and it is raining, of course! Even though I was busy and exhausted last week, I managed to find the time to knit up a little pink shrug - this is it drying in the sun (on Saturday!) after being blocked. It is knitted in some gorgeous Adriafil flat cotton yarn called Papua, which is sadly now discontinued. I bought a load of it straight from the manufacturer in Italy when I was commissioned to crochet a floral wedding corsage as the lady thought she might want a matching scarf later on. She didn't, but I don't mind using this yarn for myself - better than it languishing in a box for years!

Now that I am officially on holiday for 6 weeks, I thought I would get on with some of the jobs which have been left undone over the past term. One of these was to scoop the duck-weed out of the pond. However, on going down there this morning I was greeted by these little faces -



I didn't have the heart to send their little world into turmoil by poking around with nets and sticks, so that job can wait for another day.


I know I live in rural Hampshire, but looking at the garden this year you'd think it was somewhere closer to the Mediterranean. The grapevine has gone mad and spread over the whole pergola and we have more grapes developing that I have ever seen. I think last year we had three meagre bunches - this year we have about fifty. Perhaps it's time to re-think brewing....a nice Chateau le Retour de Jardin.......


I've probably bored everyone on many occasions with lily pictures - sorry, but I just can't resist them. I love the shapes & colours, just crying out to be painted.


Talking of painting, I might even get back to doing some now that I have the time....those poor flamingoes have been on hold for far too long!

Unidentified.........

I'm not a very organised gardener - most of the time it's more by luck than judgement. Every Autumn I visit the garden centre and get mesmerized by the vast array of bulbs and the gloriously coloured photographs of the flowers I could be growing in my garden by Spring and come out with bag loads of the things. I merrily plant them in every nook and cranny in our pocket-handkerchief of a plot...then promptly forget what I put where until I am surprised by an unfamiliar bloom come April. I think a lot of bulbs must be eaten by squirrels as I am sure I have planted many flag irises over the years but have only ever had two come up.....



Last year I bought a bulb that could be kept inside the house to bloom during the winter - don't ask me what it was, that was last year. I faithfully nurtured it, kept it warm and watered and watched it put out straggly thin and pale leaves, about one a month over the winter period. Spring came and went and so did my patience, so I jammed the pot in a corner of the patio and left it to the elements. Summer came and went (I think that was the two weeks of sunshine we had in June.....) and still nothing. However, a few weeks ago I noticed a sprout from the centre of the sad leaf collection and resisted the temptation to bring the pot indoors, although I did put it by the window so I could watch it's progress. Today it finally opened - I think it is some kind of lily - quite small and delicate, a lovely deep pink. Certainly a case of better late than never!

Today will be potato number 79 up for it's portrait.......I'm hoping to crack on over the weekend and go past the 80 mark, bringing the number of potatoes left to paint into the teens - psychologically that sounds really good to me, a definite light at the end of the tunnel.