Pink mums

“Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.” 

- P. G. Wodehouse

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

I’ve just bought some potted Chrysanthemums from Woolworths, and I don’t know why I do this, because I never have much luck with their potted plants I buy! What I HAVE discovered is that there are Mums and there are HARDY mums, and obviously the potted variety for sale in pots are NOT the hardy variety! So planting them in the garden, like I usually do after they’ve finished flowering, is a useless exercise. This one will therefore just stay in-doors and I’ll enjoy it until it expires!

The chrysanthemum is the November birth flower, which means with love and cheerfulness. The hidden meaning of this beautiful flower is you’re a wonderful friend. Although Chrysanthemums are native to Asia and north-eastern Europe, they are widely grown all over the world.

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Hydrangeas speak of Summer

W&N watercolour on X-pressit 300gsm

Hydrangeas on my kitchen table

To me Hydrangeas speak of Summer and their fading colours speak of Autumn. In winter they are silent and in Spring they shout, “We’re here! We’re back! And Spring has come with us!”

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Enthroned in his earthenware pot

 

Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm – 8″ × 12″
Dried Hydrangeas from my garden (Tarlton, South Africa) standing in my potting shed.

 

From the bottom of the garden,

enthroned in his earthenware pot,
the hydrangea god surveys his minions—
lavender agapanthuses bowing starburst heads,
red begonia calyxes trumpeting his fame,
oleander leaves whispering of his misdeeds.
The central path leads straight to him. Behind,
a stained mirror and mossy wall back up his power.
Thousands of crinkled, tiny, white ideas occur to him
with frilled and overlapping edges. No one else
deploys such Byzantine metaphysics. No one
can read his mind. Only he remembers
the children’s secret fort by the cypress tree
among fraught weeds, rusted buckets, and dumped ash,
and how lost the grown-ups sounded, calling, as night came.
“Hydrangea” By Rosanna Warren

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Here's to a creative 2014!

2013 has been an amazing year, filled with lots of sketching and painting, love joy and inspiration. A brand new year lies at our feet and here's to putting the past behind us, opening a new door, stepping through and experiencing lots of new pleasures, meeting new people, spending time with our loved ones and, above all, being madly creative!

Happy New Year!

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Guinea Fowl in my garden

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we’ll soon be in trouble.


- Roger Tory Peterson

Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

Helmeted guinea fowl (Numida meleagris)

I used to have dozens of guinea fowl pass through our smallholding here in Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa), but these days it’s like Christmas seeing just a few of them. When we moved to Tarlton in the middle 70’s, we were one of a few owners living on the smallholdings and there were large tracts of open land with hundreds of mammals, birds and reptiles that crossed our paths daily. Snakes were rife and regularly had to be removed to a safer place, now we only see a snake a couple of times in the year. I used to have wild hares entering my garden and eating my Marigolds; I haven’t seen an hare for about 7 years. The same with hedgehogs, monitors, tortoises and jackal.

The area is now totally built up and our smallholding is now flanked by people on all sides, property fenced and surrounded by high walls – there are few, if any, empty tracts of of land anymore and I’m just wondering where all the wildlife has managed to find a safe refuge…

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