Friday's Flower

My garden is packed with inspiration at the moment.  Firstly it's buzzing with insect life, loving the settled warm weather.  I can't remember a better year for butterflies.  We started early in the year with cheerful yellow Brimstones, always a good sign and the number of species has just kept growing.  Red Admiral and Peacock are easy to spot, but I'm even beginning to be able to differentiate between the various 'brown' ones like Gatekeeper and Wall.
Secondly there's an abundance of flowers, some newly opened, some already turning to seed.  We did a lot of replanting last autumn and the investment has really paid off.  Time now to use some of this floral inspiration in my stitching.  I'm going to start with this helenium.  For some unaccountable reason I'm drawn to use satin stitch.  I hate satin stitch.  I have a very bad record with satin stitch.  Nevertheless, I'm tempted.  This could end in tears!

St Swithin's Day

St Swithin's Day if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain.

St Swithin's Day if thou be fair,
For forty days twill rain nae mare.










If the old rhyme about the 9th Century Bishop of Winchester is correct we are facing forty days without rain!!

Shades of Pink

 





Rhodys and Roses

Both have been in the garden for over thirty years and their names are lost in the mists of time.

Friday Flowers

A couple of pink flowers I forgot to mention last week, foxgloves and nectaroscordium.  Both beauties with their height and delicate colouring.
Foxgloves seed themselves about quite happily, but I grow a few white ones from saved seed every year to top up the pale colours.  We topped up the nectaroscordium last autumn too and I now have around fifty in my sunniest border.

Floral Friday

My garden goes through phases of colour, at the moment it's mostly the blues and purples of irises and alliums, with spashes of pink from persicaria and dianthus.  Waiting in the wings are the deep, moody reds of rhododendrons, paeonys and poppies.

In other news, I have submitted two pieces for publication in Ink Pantry Publishing's second anthology of work by Open University Creative Writing students.  It will be several weeks before I know if either of them have been accepted!

Sunny Sunday



Grevillia



Globularia



Soldanella



Sitting in my garden, soaking up the sun and recovering from another week at West Dean.

This time it was a really intense, full week course of Creative Development.  A Textile Workshop with two tutors, one a tapestry weaver and one an experimental embroiderer. The idea was to integrate aspects of the work of both tutors.  I've never tried any sort of weaving before so the learning curve was steep.

We had four days of uninterupted studio time - incredibly concentrated work, but hugely enjoyable.  An opportunity to experiment and debate.  I came away with two 'works in progress' which I'm keen to continue with as they are both looking at ways of adding my hand stitching to an assemblage of warps and wefts.