Lime

I try to walk Ward to school with Bertus at least once a day (or to pick him up). Bertus loves to play on the playground at school with all the big kids... Next to the school is a church with a lot of Common Lime trees around it. I love these trees. I love it when they flower and I also love their seeds. At this time of the year they start to drop their pretty seeds. They are a bit odd. It looks as if they come growing out of a leaf. But is not a leaf. The leaves have a very different shape. I guess the tree grows this on the seeds to use as some sort of a glider.

Yesterday when we walked Ward to school I found some very nice seeds and, that same afternoon, I made a drawing of it....Here it is:

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Common Lime/Tilia europaea/Hollandse Linde

Plums

It has been a little while since my last post but I have been very busy. A week ago I received a very nice gift over the post. It came from Italy. I met someone on the Internet. We mail about art, mostly botanical art. He started a few years ago painting and drawing plants. I saw his work and I liked it very much. We discuss each others work and also the work of other artists. It is very inspiring and fun. But I was so surprised when the post came and I found Four of my favourite drawings he made. What was this? What do you do in return? I can't just say: “wow, thanks!" So I started thinking about what I should give him in return..... He liked my drawing of Plums and Blueberries but it is one of my first.... This drawing reminded him of Giovanna Garzoni who was his inspiration to start painting botanical subjects. So I thought since it is the time for it, I should get me some plums and just try to draw some... I made two so far. Not quite finished yet but I show them to you anyway.

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I think I'll make a few more, I love the colours and it is going very good so far... I don't know if my new friend will have them all, I'll probably keep some for myself... but I think, I hope, he will be very happy with this.

shades

The last couple of days I’ve been extremely tired. I have tried to draw. But Bertus keeps interrupting. He just won’t let me. This morning however I could do a little bit more drawing.

Bertus does not like sunglasses. Well, he does not like people who wear sunglasses. When I put on my sunglasses, in the car for instance, he gets really upset and scared. So when Bertus is around I don’t wear them. Last week however I gave him an old pair of sunglasses to play with. He could look through them and give them to everyone. Now I have to put the glasses on all the time. When the glasses are on the tip of my nose and look over them he thinks it’s funny. But believe it or not, he always has to push the glasses right up on my nose, so he can’t see my eye’s anymore. The weird thing is that I have to do this all the time. He isn’t scared of it anymore but does not trust me either. He does not want to look at me, but I’m not allowed to take them of. He just turns his head away or even walks away from me. So this morning, when I tried once again to continue on my drawing it was time for Bertus to give me the sunglasses again. So I put them on my nose. And with the glasses on I could do some drawing, ‘cause Bertus would leave me alone, looking at me a little bit suspicious now and then. It gave me some rest, but I can not recommend it, drawing with very dark shades on, when it’s raining outside.
I also tried to let Bertus sit beside me in his chair while I was working.

I gave him a piece of paper and crayons and for the first time he was “drawing”. Well, not exactly drawing of course. It was more like he was trying to kill the piece of paper with his crayons, but it was a start…

self-portrait

On Flickr I've joined the Nederland/The Netherlands Group. A nice way to discover more Dutch people on Flickr. There's a 'dicussion' in this group. The challenge is to send a portrait of yourself. I hate it when people take pictures of me. And I'm not the type that takes pictures of herself a lot. So this was a BIG challenge.

So I combed my hair and had a go at it. Gosh, that was hard! I mean really hard! I didn't know that I could look so worried, tired or just so extremely dope...

So I picked the best one and got rid of most of the colour. Haaa, much better. Everything looks a lot better when there's no colour (at least when it comes to my face :-D). And here's the result:

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playing

So it was my birthday yesterday and my guys gave me a beautiful camera. Its the Panasonic DMC-TZ4. It has 10x optical zoom (wow!). Today I'll be playing with my new toy of course. This morning I already made some nice photo's.
Photo above is Crocosmia 'Lucifer', below you see Hydrangea serrata 'Preziosa', Achillea millefolium 'Lachsschönheit' (already lost most of it's colour) and at the bottom Clematis 'My Angel'.

08-08-08

It's my birthday!!! So here's a short post for you. I was digging through some old photo's from my garden and found these.

The first photo is Knautia macedonica. This white beauty is Geranium sanguineum 'Alba' and the next one is Geranium 'Orion'. The last one was in my garden but isn't anymore. I probably will plant it again in a different spot. It is a really pretty variety.

Little Nell

No bark this time. I'm having the day off. Or maybe this evening... But I'm very tired. This afternoon I have to take the children to Groningen to meet Jeroen. We'll be looking for a birthday present for me. I would like to have a small compact digital camera that I can take with me in my handbag. Now I use an enormous camera. It takes wonderful photo's but is also very heavy. I hope the children will be a little bit cooperative. Ward was very grumpy when I told him we had to go to Groningen. It makes me sad... But I guess that's also because I'm tired of all the drawing, the running around to keep an eye on Bertus, doing the laundry, the washing up and prevent the house from getting one big mess.
So, to cheer me up a bit I thought I should post a photo that makes me happy. I took this one last week. It's Clematis viticella 'Little Nell'.


This Clematis is always doing great, every year it's full of flowers. But this year it is absolutely amazing. It has never flowered this good before. My Wisteria is having some late flowers too and the colours complement each other very nicely.

Bark, bark, bark!

Today I've been working on my bark again. More and more layers are added again. It's starting to look like it's going somewhere now...

quick bark update

My second post today but I thought I'd let you know how my bark is doing. Well, I'm still adding more layers of colour. More shading, more detailing, more sharpening of the edges.

Roses

I love roses. I haven't counted my roses but I have a few in my garden. Shall I name them? Oh well, why not :~)

There is of course 'New Dawn'. That's the first rose I ever bought. Strong and survives everything (hot summers, hard pruning, dry grounds, shadow gardens). And she is still very nice.
Rosa Glauca, I mentioned her in an earlier post. One of my favorites. Nice foliage, lovely small pink flowers, beautiful hips in autumn and winter.
I've also mentioned 'Heritage' before. This is one of three Austin roses I have. The other two are 'Abraham Darby' and 'the Squire'.

'Abraham Darby' (photo above) is a beauty and has a great scent. 'the Squire' (which is no longer available I think) is a difficult one. The colour is very deep dark red, almost black sometimes. It smells wonderful, but it hardly has any leaves, it has a lot of thorns and it just looks like it's going to die any moment. Not a very happy rose.
Is that it? Nooooo! I'm just getting started. I also have a lady called 'Mme. Alfred Carrière'.

Actually I have two of her. Perfect climber, flowers all summer long and very healthy green foliage.
Another strong and beautiful climber is 'Lykkefund', maybe this is my favorite. Lot of small creamy white flowers with warm yellow centres. It has no thorns but it has very nice orange rose hips in the autumn. Oh, and very nice scented too!

But... I have also 'Moonlight'. Maybe that's my favorite...

The young foliage is red, so are the new branches. Later on the foliage gets dark green, not too big and looks very healthy. The flowers are very nice too. Creamy white. Lightly scented. But the foliage.... just wonderful!
Then there is 'Desprez a Fleur Jaunes'. Sadly this one doesn't seem to like it very much in my garden. It hardly gets any flowers and it looks a bit ill to me. Maybe I should try it somewhere else.
'Paul's Scarlet Climber' is in my front garden. Since two years a blackbird nests in it. Very wise decision to nest in that rose with our cat Murkje wandering about. This rose is... Scarlet, how did you guess? Not a good colour for the back garden but very good for the front.
Finally there is Rosa moyesii 'Geranium' in the front garden. Very fine feathery leaves, beautiful red flowers and big orange bottle shaped hips.
I said finally but I remember now that there are two more roses in my garden. They both belonged to my grandfather. They are both pink and both have very large flowers. My grandfather liked roses like that. And I must admit that they look like roses should: like roses ;~D

I think that's it. If I've counted correctly that makes 13 different kinds of roses. Maybe there are even more, I guess there are...

Birds of prey

Today my parents visited us. We went to a bird show. There where all kinds of birds of prey. A tiny fluffy owl, a falcon, two kinds of vultures and this big eagle owl.

It's magnificent to see these birds up close and in flight. Very impressive. It was mostly a show for the kids. The man who owned the birds told some things about them, but it was obvious that he had told the same jokes for years. They weren't funny anymore. But hey, we came to see the birds and they where great... ;~)
Oh, before he gets mad at me... Ward took this photo and allowed me to share it with you. Nice Wardie!