Late Summer Colour

It’s been such a difficult time. For everyone. So it wasn’t a huge surprise to me when I saw that it’s been well over a year since I wrote on here, or even looked at it.

Summer’s gone, but there’s still some colour left, and I want to record it.

Our garden has always been a spring garden with loads of colour. Late summer has been more of a problem though. So I made an effort this year to plant some Busy Lizzies and some begonias. I don’t know enough about flowers to know exactly what varieties I have here. Perhaps someone will be able to tell me from the photographs?

I actually didn’t mean to buy the big frilly ones with the large leaves. I thought they were a smaller variety when I sent for them. I’d always associated them with that type of regimented planting you see in municipal gardens. But these are gorgeous, extravagant blowzy beauties. Opulent red, fiery vermilion, rippled peach, bubblegum pink, lemon bonbon yellow and wedding white. I love them, and my only regret is not realising what they were – and planting them too close together.

The smaller variety of begonia, along with some petunias and pelargoniums, were rescued: bought for next to nothing from a supermarket where they had nearly dried out. They have repaid me handsomely, although half the petunias were eaten by slugs.

April

Another little booklet, this time made from four old Christmas card envelopes.  I used scraps of paper from around the house and cuttings from newspapers. The William Morris scraps are from a V&A diary my son bought me for Christmas in 2017, and the cat picture is just a print from a photo I took a few years ago.

The butterfly picture on the back didn’t quite work, I know. I’m just learning 🙂

Distractions

I’ve posted this on my other blog, but I don’t think anyone has seen it! I want to share it more widely if I can, because I know I’ve been finding it helpful.

So, like many others, I am in the house a lot of the time now. I spend quite a lot of time awake in the middle of the night, and I find that the internet helps to take my mind off everything that’s going on in the world.

Somehow I stumbled upon some excellent junk journal tutorials on YouTube, by Nik the Booksmith and Tracie Fox, among others. They were so good that I felt inspired to make some journals for myself. I’ve scoured the house for scraps of paper and I’m gradually assembling them into something resembling a journal.

I find it calming to do something creative in such troubled times, and I can spend as little or as long a time as I have available, which fits in well with my caring responsibilities.

Here’s what I’ve done so far. It’s made from three envelopes and different types of paper – some old, some made to look old. Don’t judge me too harshly – it’s only a first attempt and it’s nowhere near finished. I haven’t got many images to put in it, or on the cover, but I am hoping to get hold of a basic printer so that I can use some of my own photographs.

Of course, the real fun will come when I try to sew them together!

The Only Iris

Well, the only iris in my garden, anyway. One of a handful of plants bought a few years ago, and which have never flowered. Until now. Most disappeared without trace; this one survived though, in a dark, shaded corner, and graced us with its long-bladed leaves. It added green structure, but no flowers arrived.

I was hanging some washing on the line when I noticed it. The dark purple buds had been there for some time, but I was unprepared for the silent presence of the flower and it caught me by surprise. Those blowsy sail-like petals; that rich, deep colour. What is it? Burgundy? Plum? Garnet? It depends on the light and photographs don’t quite do it justice.

The flower at the top is now starting to fade away, but there are, fortunately, some more buds left. The mystery of the moment, though, is what (or more ominously who) has removed one of the buds, snapping or biting it off cleanly, just as if it had been snipped with scissors. What would Agatha Christie have made of it?

Miniature World

Moss growing in a plant pot. The most ordinary thing in the world, you might think. You might even want get rid of it, to make the pot look tidier.

Please don’t! Not before you’ve had a careful look at it anyway.

Moss green. Green moss. With the sun shining on it. It’s beautiful, calming, cool and soothing.

If you look very closely at it, you could almost imagine yourself in a primeval forest.

Change your focus…

A miniature world right there in your garden!