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Showing posts with the label gardening

Mystery and Moaning

Rosie and Jim Discover Snow Rosie and Jim give their Verdict of Snow Here on the Wirral peninsula we've had 2" of snow. Our dogs hadn't seen snow before, and so they were eager to explore the garden. They soon changed their minds, especially little Rosie who rapidly scurried off back to bed. The knitted patchwork blanket in the second photo was a bargain find. The wool it's made from would have cost far more than I paid for the finished item. No sooner had I brought it home and stretched it out on the living room carpet to take a better look than the dogs had claimed it as their own, settling down on it and preparing to snooze. They were quite disgruntled when I put it through the laundry rather than just hand it over to them there and then. On Monday 15th January, I returned to my day job after having been on sick leave for five weeks, having developed a horrible chest infection. I've never been so ill before in my entire life. I've lost almost  stone in weigh

Winter Solstice Garden Tour

One Anniversary, Two Paintings, and Three Flowers

Here are my two my recent paintings. They're both acrylic on canvas.  The smaller, oblong painting is called Into the Trees , while the square canvas is named The Nine Sisters. I feel these show a definite progression in my painting. They form a continuation of my Birkenhead Park series of paintings and sketches, and yet they differ greatly from previous work - less representational, more expressionistic, perhaps.  Anyway, I invite you to let me know what you think of them.   The two photos above show the fuchsias which had seemingly died over winter. Look at them now, in full bloom. Looking at the lower photo reminds me that I must rescue the house leeks which are in the grey Japanese bonsai dish, and which are getting swamped by self-seeded aquilegia. I've had that dish for decades - bought it from The Old Police Station, as it was then called, in Lark Lane, Aigburth, something like 30 years ago, back when Sunday craft fairs were held there. Below is a photo of the lo

Paintings and Plants

Bird bath with Crocosmia Lucifer, July 2023 Yesterday I visited the Wirral Society of Arts' members exhibition at the Williamson Art Gallery in Oxton. Entry is free, while the optional printed brochure costs just £2. The brochure gives each artist's name plus the title of their painting(s), and lists their fee. Most work here is for sale, and prices vary from a modest £65 up to £2,300. When I visit an exhibition, I like to do a quick walk-round to assuage my curiosity as to what's there. Then I'll do a much slower circuit, and take a longer, deeper look at the display. Quite often, with a local exhibition, I'll visit more than once. Looking at the work, I was sometimes able to identify which artist had created it without needed to check the brochure. So I was immediately able to recognise Alla Barkova's detailed tree drawings, Emma Dromgoole's joyously colourful nudes, and Janine Pinion's melodramatic, misty landscapes. But there are 85 artists taking pa

The Arsonist and Gardening

Rosie helping in the garden Earlier this week, at approximately 5am, we were awoken by our dogs barking. The room was full of flashing blue lights and a strong smell of heavy smoke, and we could hear voices outside in the road. We looked out of our bedroom window to see various neighbours in PJs, all looking and pointing in the same direction. Thick black smoke was billowing up the road and one neighbour's dogs were running around in panic, whereas they are usually either in their garden or with their owner. Other neighbours corralled them in one front garden, and a police officer captured a ball of fluffy white fur and carried it over to join its buddies. The fire was quickly extinguished and then all the police suddenly sprinted for their cars and even commandeered an approaching van, or so it seemed, whose driver followed the police vehicles off the scene, all driving very fast. All this took place within a very short time. It turns out that someone threw oil or similar onto our

Solstice Garden Tour, June 2023

Join me on a walk around my small urban garden. Listen to the birdsong, see what's in bloom, watch what my dogs and a neighbour's cats are doing, and generally chill out. No commentary or conversation here, on this video you can simply listen to the calming sounds of nature.

Trees and Flowers and Chirping Birds

The garden changes rapidly at this time of the year, emerging from near-dormancy to erupt into the fullness of May. We've not altered the garden's layout in the eight years of living here, even though the design is too linear for my taste. Ours is a typical urban garden, a small oblong shape surrounded by high walls and fences, which means each part of the garden gets some shade at different times of the day. I've a pile of unused plant pots waiting for more plants, and at some point I want to create a pond. The one thing I miss about our old house is my beloved pond. I'm no gardening expert, but I've picked up some knowledge along the way. We have introduced a wider range of plants to this garden and aim to continue doing this as, inspired by Claude Monet's example, I plan to turn my back garden into a source of painting ideas. Okay, his garden was on a somewhat larger scale...  If anyone has any bright ideas for the garden then I'd love to hear them.

The Sky Moves Sidewards

  The snowdrops photographed in The Arno have almost finished flowering already. They spiral away from the tree trunk, blurring into a more naturalistic planting style nearer to the hedge. This small urban garden in Oxton is maintained by volunteers. Nobody seems sure why it's named The Arno. Possibly it's a corruption of some old Viking word or phrase meaning "high point" or "eagles nest here" - the jury is out. Most of the garden is given over to a series of tidy beds which, when viewed overall, make a geometric version of a rose. Each bed is filled with roses. At this time of the year, the roses look like a snarl of dormant sticks. Of much greater interest to me is the cottage garden border which runs along one side of the park. This holds a variety of traditional plants such as honesty, hellebores and elephant's ears, and a host of wildflowers which have either been deliberately planted or which have have helped themselves to a patch of unmanicured e

Confused Flowers and Reincarnated Paint

  In-progress oil pastel sketch of Birkenhead Park It has been a very long time - years, in fact - since I had used oil pastels. I'd been tidying up my art studio when I came across them stored away in a wooden box. The photo above shows a nearly-finished piece based on a sketch done on location in Birkenhead Park, where I've been regularly sketching for six years or more. I quite enjoyed using the oil pastels, and so may well turn to them again. The drawing is on dark grey A4 Khadi paper. While tidying the art room I also found two tubes of watercolour so old they'd gone solid. Rather than throw them away, I carefully cut open the tube, scraped the pigment into a large-sized palette, ground it into powder then mixed in some water. This has since dried into two pats of paint, one yellow ochre, the other crimson, which will be put to good use now they've been given a new lease of life.. Our garden seems to be confused. The winter jasmine is now in flower but so are the f

With Silver Bells and Cockle Shells...

  The garden's been enjoying the recent rains following a hot, dry spell. Here's the view from our kitchen window, which is currently home to two baby money plants, and an unidentified succulent which has lovely sculptural, fat spines liberally patterned with raised white dots. I've enjoyed watching this lovely lily come into bloom, with its rich shades of orange and russet. The fuchsia behind was one of Richard's finds; he's especially keen on fuchsias. The log was placed over the tub to stop Emily from burying toys in the soil, after she'd already dug the plant up twice. What a shame that lily flowers don't last long. Here's one of my favourites, the crimson "Lucifer" variety of crocosmia. I have two of these in separate tubs, and I suspect they'd be much happier planted in the ground as one of them hasn't flowered at all this year, while they other, the one in this photo, hasn't spread. When I had them in the ground, prior to mov

Trees, Flowers and Chirping Birds

Sun and Moon; watercolour, A3 size; Sept. 2020.  A lone sunflower burst into bloom on the edge of our patio, probably a spilled seed from the bird feeder. Not much escapes the attentions of resident wood pigeons and blackbirds, but this seed somehow defied the daily regiments of rummaging beaks to seize a foothold and flourish. Good on ya, lil' seed. So there it was in all its golden glory, bobbing madly in the increasing wind and about to be spoiled. So I nipped out with a pair of scissors and set it in a vase - where it looked pretty daft, actually, all alone on its own-e-oh. The solution was obvious. Very soon it was joined by more sunflowers and some tall white lilies. And then hubby suggested I paint them. Flower painting is not an area in which I have much confidence; it's way outside of my comfort zone. Yes, I've done two flower paintings recently but these are - so far as I can recall - the only ones I've ever done, and I only did these due to being subject to

Contrary Flowers

Bee, Happy; watercolour; May 2020. When we moved here five years ago I sprinkled some poppy seeds, poppies being one of my favourite flowers. Typically, the poppies did not grow where I'd cast the seeds. They migrated to the opposite side of the garden where, rather than thrive in the sensible flower bed chosen for them, they opted to cling precariously onto life by plunging their delicate roots between the foundations of a brick wall and a concrete path. Every year they've come up more plentiful so they must like it there. Besides, they enliven an otherwise boring wall. Flowers aren't my go-to choice of subject, as regular readers of this blog will know. However, there they were, bobbing in the spring breeze and looking gorgeous. So I thought why not give it a go? And here's the result, which I've called B ee, Happy.  The painting is on A3 Daler Rowney Aquafine, cold pressed, 300lbs, and I've used a combination of Daler Rowney watercolours with Winsor &am

Grotty Bits, Dodgy Doings and A Skull

Bride of Dreams by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; oil on canvas; 2019. My most recent oil painting, Bride of Dreams , is a radical departure from the seascapes and shoreline landscapes which I've been creating over the last two or three years. While  Bride of Dreams  depicts a domestic interior, it also has a strong narrative quality and is laced with symbolism. I won't explain this symbolism to others; I'll leave each viewer to interpret it for themselves. The bride was modelled by Rose Mairs, and the drawings for this came from a themed session for the Oxton life drawing group which I attend. Rose won the photography section of last year's Williamson Art Gallery's Open Exhibition. The cat, Bob, belongs to Janine Pinion, who won the painting section of the same exhibition. I enjoyed a lovely narrowboat cruise along the Shropshire Union Canal recently, on a day which turned out to be the hottest on record. Top speed seemed to be 3 mph, which made a refreshing change

Trips Down Lanes and Exhibitions.

How's this for a spider plant? It had only five or six baby leaves when I brought it home. It's grown a bit since then. My so-called Easter cactus flowered in June, which is not exactly Easter. It's not exactly a cactus either, seeming more of a succulent in character; and despite a prevailing belief that it is difficult to get these plants to flower again, it really isn't just so long as you don't change their position around or water them to death. Well-drained soil, feeds few and far between, sunlight and, quite simply, leave it alone , and it'll flower every year without fail. This year's flowers were the most abundant for three years. Three years ago we moved house. Remember the bit about not altering this plant's position. Birkenhead Park rapid sketches series, 2018. My series of rapid sketches done in Birkenhead Park is now in its third year. They're done as I'm walking my dogs, hence the small size of the pads chosen so they fi

Climbing Ladders, Brush in Hand, Nose in Books.

Estuary Moon by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; watercolour; 2018. I've been busy decorating my art studio, stripping off old wallpaper, mending dents and holes with Polyfiller, (one and a half tubes' worth!), and then climbing up and down an ancient step-ladder in order to paint the walls with three layers of plain, pristine white. The job is not quite finished; one small wall needs a final coat of paint and its skirting board doing with white gloss, and the door frame needs white gloss too, but the end is in sight. Photos to follow once it's completely done! I've also been pulling out armfuls of forget-me-nots from our garden. There are supposed to be 74 official species of forget-me-nots, some of which are very pretty. Unfortunately, we're lumbered with horrible hairy things which self-seed prolifically and swamp all the other flowers and, once they've bloomed, flop over, turn brown and go brittle. Pull them out then and the spiny hairs cause a nasty rash.

Daftness, Dogs and Drawing.

Life drawing; pencil on A4 paper; 2018. First take a look at this interesting and diverse series of photos which depict womens' jobs from around the world , then have a good chuckle over the absurd descriptions of women by some male writers. The contrast between the two is quite telling. I am reminded of a conversation, which took place years ago, between an ex-boyfriend and myself.  He remarked that it must be marvellous to be a woman as we have breasts. I looked at him in bewilderment, and then pointed out that we also have knees and elbows but don't pay them much attention most of the time. "Oh," he said, crestfallen. "You disappoint me." "Really? You're the one with the delusions about female anatomy." It is no co-incidence that he became an ex. Life drawing class, March 2018. Photo credit: Marie Mairs. Here's a photo of my hands holding a pencil. The A4 sketchpad I'm using here is nearly full, mostly of life dr