A Celebration and a Giveaway.

We recently returned from a family holiday in The Lake District where we did a little walking and visited old haunts. The weather had finally turned from bitingly cold to warmer and wetter, more typically bright and breezy days. The fells were dotted with newborn lambs and daffodils dutifully danced in the breeze.



It was my first time to climb to the top of Orrest Head; that is me in the photograph, hanging on for dear life as it was extremely windy and head staggeringly high, although the image looks deceptive. The view from the top is wonderful and you can see for miles in all directions. Hills, mountains, lakes and valleys with Lake Windermere being the closest. Wainwright said of this place “Those few hours on Orrest Head cast a spell that changed my life forever”.



I have always loved the Lake District and have fond memories of childhood visits with my parents and later as a pupil. Our school had a house on the shores of Lake Coniston and we would stay there on field trips. Years later we went as students and visited Dove Cottage. It was the garden at Dove Cottage that made a lasting impression on me, so much so that I was reluctant to visit again in case the spell was broken. It was the home of the poet Wordsworth where he lived with his sister Dorothy and it was here that she wrote her now famous journal and shared the delights of her beloved garden.



I particularly loved the view of the garden from the little kitchen window. The garden is very steep and climbs up the hillside in such a way as to present the viewer with a green tapestry, filling the window frame with layer upon layer of lush vegetation. This time it was daffodils but the first time I went the entire garden seemed to have been embroidered with wild strawberries. When you climb to the top of the garden path you can see way above the rooftops to Grassmere and the surrounding mountains. Wordsworth loved this place and referred to it as “a love within a love”.



I wonder if Dorothy would have kept a blog had she been alive today? She certainly had many interests; her love of nature, her garden and poetry would have been well suited to the medium of the blog. All of which brings me to my little celebration; on the 25th of this month this little blog will be five years old! I have never been very good at journal keeping and any diary I have attempted to write has been short lived, so it has been interesting to look back on the past five years via these posts. I thought it called for something of a celebration and so I am having a little give away. On offer is a “Little Lamb” (see above) print of an illustration I did for “A Book of Days” which was first published in 1984. Goodness how time flies, my work is now vintage!
You can read a little more about the print here in my Etsy shop.

If you wish to take part in the giveaway, please leave me a comment indicating your wish to do so. If you have a special place that you hold dear maybe you would like to share it with us? I will choose a winner on Sunday May 5th.

A is for Apple.

It’s that time of year again, when apples hang ripe on the bough and children return to school. My garden is not big enough to accommodate a full size apple tree but I have an ornamental crab apple, which is laden with fruit at the moment, later this will provide the birds with some food when the weather turns colder.



My memories of starting school and apples are inextricably linked, maybe because my old-fashioned Victorian style classroom had a wall frieze showing all the letters of the alphabet accompanied with a simple illustration. Every day we would recite, “A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cat….” whilst the teacher pointed to the appropriate place on the wall. I was fortunate enough to be able to go home for my “dinner” at midday. My father would be home also, he worked in a nearby paper mill, mum would have spent the morning cooking and baking to prepare a two-course meal and home made apple pie was often on the menu.

My apple illustration is taken from “An Illustrated Address Book” published by Blackie and Son Ltd. The other illustrations are by Walter Crane and can be found here, a marvelous treasure trove on the web.




We no longer have anyone in our household who will be returning to school this term, instead we are planning something very exciting, so until then I hope you all enjoy what is left of the summer and help yourself to another slice of apple pie.

In and out of the garden.

It has been a busy time here, family visits from afar being the main focus of our bank holiday weekend, so not much time for work or updates. We have had some sunny days and a little rain and everything in the garden is growing at an alarming pace, weeds included. Some plants seem happy to be left to their own devices and are therefore more than welcome, one such resident is what I call “London Pride”, a small, rather old-fashioned little plant with rosettes of glossy leaves which has established itself around the base of an old chimney pot in my tiny front garden. The lovely thing about it, apart from its very pretty little flowers, is the fact that it is very hardy and makes good ground cover. The clusters can be easily separated and planted in new areas or given way to gardening friends. (I think that is how I came by mine!)

Now, if you will forgive me I will get back to tidying away the toys, I am so glad I hung onto this box of treasures, which have provided many happy and constructive hours of fun for my children and now are being enjoyed by the next generation. "Billy and his Barrels" are still more or less intact but are missing the smallest barrel containing Billy, the culprit is pictured below.

Taking time to smell the roses.

July in my garden always induces a mild panic attack, especially when the weather is rainy and warm. These conditions make everything grow twice as fast as they should or so it seems. I try very hard to keep on top of things but somehow nature overwhelms me and all I can see are jobs to do, ivy to trim, weeds to deal with, roses to dead head, the list goes on.

We have had quite a few people to stay recently and they see things through very different eyes, most of them see a small but beautiful garden and are oblivious to the effort it takes to keep it at least halfway under control. I am now trying to enjoy my garden a little bit more and to let the weeds and black spot and overgrown hedges etc. etc., matter less!

The rose is one of my David Austin roses, which seem to thrive despite my neglect. I love their old fashioned, cabbage like appearance and wonderful smell. This one is named after the gardener “Geoff Hamilton”. The image is a photograph which has had filters applied to make it look like a painting. If you click on it you will see it in more detail.I think that it still looks like a photograph but the filter has softened it a little. Does it look like a photograph to you?

Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore was an Irish poet who lived from 1779 to 1852, not to be confused with the other Thomas More who became a saint. I came across this poem and decided to incorporate the first few lines into a design, I thought that it expressed a simple truth about the pleasure of sharing. I have always found that gardeners are generous people who enjoy exchanging plants, cuttings, advice and most of all delight in sharing their gardens with others.

I planned the design and carefully arranged the elements around the text and proceeded to paint the design in watercolour. Only when it was finished did I realize that I had misspelt Moore, you guessed it, I gave it one "O" instead of two.

All was not lost however, Photoshop came to my rescue and not for the first time!