Garden as Muse- She Sings With Color! (Come tour this artist's garden!)

This artist's heart is in the garden. I've been enjoying the blooms and the gorgeous days in-between the ones that Mother Nature throws in to give us New Englanders a little humility. Or perhaps a sense of humor? or is it to develop patience? Whatever!  :-)  I'm still smiling!  Every so often I'll get out there with my garden journal....rather than the oil paints.  Certain days the muse calls for certain things. 

Since May we've been busting out in color here at Steed Studio Gardens- when one flower fades, another variety is ready to go on with the show! We never get tired of it. Let me show you what's been going on over the last many weeks:

  Pull up a seat in the front garden, I'll share some fun from  my garden journal and some from my photo album as well. 

Sometimes I like to makes little vignettes of the current flowers, and leave space for notes about what's going on in the garden at that time.

My garden notes will sometimes compare this years blossoms with last years, and dates when they show up. This year they are late (shame on Mother Nature for her games!).

When the tulips finally show up winter is finally over (at least in our minds!). The work that we undertake in the fall really pays off with this blast of color! This year we chose a more intense variety of orangey-coral and pink-fuchsia colored tulips. If you plant them in a solid mass, they can be oh-so-breath-taking! 

It's always a nice thing to see the bumble bees making their way from flower to flower. Humming-birds find their way here, too - and delight in the flowers. They returned this year even though there are no "feeders". There's plenty to keep them occupied and happy. The hummers are particularly in love with the hot red honeysuckle vine on the side garden trellis.

  The lavender buds are ready to open soon! This will keep the bees happy and humming...and dancing their tumbling little lazy bee dance as they roll through all this....as well as the Eden roses on the fence above them!

The Eden roses have a nice soft fragrance, but others we've planted since then are more fragrant. I can hardly wait until they open!! Just a few more days! The anticipation keeps me running back out there to check, "are they here yet? how 'bout now?"...

Peonies are poppin'! By this weekend, they'll be big and fluffy. Most are a big pink variety, but one shrub is a creamy white, with yellow stamens inside...and it is fragrant- oh to have a perfume made of it would be divine! I would certainly bathe in the stuff!

Sometimes a simple lunch of salad and bread-sticks is enhanced by 'the atmosphere' of being in the garden.  

 I paint every day, whether it is "just a sketch" or be it an oil painting, small or large. The muse can lead me in a few different directions

But color- oh she always sings with color! and texture, and oh yes, fragrance...and here and there, some for taste! I hope that each day you remember to include the things that make your heart sing!  

"The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring". - Bern Williams

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." - Margaret Atwood

  

Thanks for coming along on my garden tour. My next two "Mentoring Mondays" will be plein air in my garden (weather permitting).  Contact me for more information. Last week was quite fun! I'm gearing up for my workshop in Ireland at the end of this month- but have no fear, hubby will be tending the garden solo while I'm gone. If you've enjoyed the tour, please share this post with a friend, or follow me on Facebook, or sign up for my "Cheer Factor - Thoughts on Art & Life" newsletter.  You can check out the last edition here.

You'll want to be first to get information about next year's workshop in France! 

Autumn Peegee Hydrangeas - Watercolor Sketchbook Journal

So, here they are in all their autumn glory, Peegee Hydrangeas, which has now grown to a nice 'droop' over the corner of the fence in this part of the garden.  The nice thing is this- in that corner is a little rounded 'Monet' bench. That wonderful mound of flowering hydrangeas gives a nice bit of privacy, yet doesn't block out the street view. I can have my nice bit of quiet, or hail the neighbors walking by for a chat! 

This shrub is one of those interesting ones that changes a lot through the growing season. In mid August it has wonderful cream colored blossoms.

 

And just going back to July 4th, it had no blossoms at all!

I'm truly fortunate to be married to my "Garden Guru"! 

I've had many folks asking about the variety of zinnias from yesterday's blog post.  

They are called "Art Deco" and are from Renee's Seeds.

Even their packaging is wonderful. When we open our order it's like receiving a mini-art collection! 

 

 

It's been a good bit of work to get the corner office with the view, but it has certainly been worth the effort! 

 

Thanks for all your kind comments on the recent blog posts! I always love hearing from you!

 

 

Empress of India Nasturtiums - Garden Sketchbook Journal

Another favorite little plant in our garden is this particular variety of nasturtium, "Empress of India".  We grow several varieties each year. They seem to like growing on or near our rock wall in the front yard. Certain varieties trail down the wall nicely and other mound up nicely in the flower bed. These mound up beautifully. It did seem to sort of split into two colors though, one being a deeper blue green leaf and a slightly cooler, deeper ruby red blossom. The other part of the plant went sort of paler yellow green leaf, and deep orange blossom. I painted this a little over a week ago, and it is still putting out blooms! 

This past weekend we did a lot of 'fall maintenance' in the garden. It's time to cut the last of the zinnias,

So we did....which leads to this:

and this:

and this!

So you can see where this is leading! Lots of flowers means lots of flower paintings. I love to paint from life, but these are likely to have a short life...they only hang on for so long. In the mean time, I'm working on some color sketches for a rather LARGE landscape commission! Exciting stuff going on this fall!

Weekends tend to be filled with garden chores, while making art and all that the business entails fills my week. Other garden chores that we got completed over the weekend were saving seeds, pulling out old pumpkin vines, old annuals that were looking raggedy, tilling up the soil (hubby does that part!) and.....finally....we did it again...PLANTED 600 TULIP BULBS! whew! and actually, it was much easier this year! Not sure why it nearly killed me last year. Maybe we're getting smarter about this?! It's gonna be a hum-dinger of a Spring garden! woohoo!