Warm Sun on the Garden Wall, Artist's Garden series, plein air - sold

Click on the images to see the knife work close up!

9"x12" oil on Belgian linen mounted on board

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it."
- Helen Keller

Saturday there was sunshine here in CT! What a delight!! Who could resist being outdoors in it? I'm enjoying recording the development of our new garden- this will be on-going through the year!


So, what's this about a garden consultant?
Last summer when we moved in to our 'new digs' we found it a bit overwhelming to take on everything at once. We knew we wanted to put some real thought into our new place & make the outside as enjoyable as the inside. We had saved pictures from magazines of plantings we liked, ideas from books we had marked with tons of 'peel & stick' markers. After moving around every 2 to 3 years for the last 26 years, we had had our fill of thinking, "If this were our place, we would do.....(you name it)". Finally, after 26 years as a military family, we could stay in one place until (?).

We had definite ideas about what we wanted, our favorite colors...and even our favorite plants. But we didn't grow up in New England, we grew up in the south. Even though we've lived up here off & on for 12 years, we didn't know much at all about specific plant cultivars up here. We knew we wanted to put in hardy things that were right for the location, & soil, etc....did not want to fight a dying battle of sickly plants! Since we were starting from scratch, we had a strong feeling that we would want advice. Especially when we considered the scope of our front yard idea. It's not a big yard by any means, but it had a big sloping drop-off that made me feel like I was falling out the front door down-hill. What we really wanted was to level off the ground in a "room-sized" area, that was enclosed by a picket fence (been wanting one of them forever) and would have climbing roses on the picket fence...along with other varieties of our favorites. This would have to be done by putting in some kind of retaining wall first. We weren't sure if this could be done (we had certainly never tackled a problem of this size).

So we did hire a garden consultant! How did we find one? By word of mouth. My husband heard of this one through another fellow at work. We checked out her previous work on her web-site, and called to meet her. Luckily, it was like meeting a kindred spirit- I knew we had found someone that understood our ideas & could help us get our plans into action. At our first planning meeting last fall, we started talking about all our ideas, using the many magazine pictures of what we really loved as a starting point. As an artist, I wanted a variety of 'vignettes' within the landscaping that I could paint over & again through the seasons. We also talked about some ugly issues of problems we saw with the yard that needed help. The meeting covered a lot of territory - our conversation went on for ( I think) a couple of hours! I'll continue the story in my next blog post - it's late & I'm hoping to paint with a functional brain tomorrow!