Foxglove: A Thimble Stall for Fingers

Finger-sized foxglove blooms

Foxglove arrangement

“Though the corolla dangles upside down,
Nothing ever falls out, neither nectar
Nor loosening pollen grains: a thimble
Stall for the little finger and the bee.”
– Michael Longley, from “Botany”

The foxgloves are blooming.  They are rather difficult to photograph because they are so tall and I can’t frame the whole flower in my shot and still show the detail I want.  I also find them incredibly difficult to paint. . . but I try, and try again.

Foxglove in the morning light

Glowing like a miniature lantern

Foxglove with posterized effect. This helped me to simplify the flower for painting.

Foxglove with posterized effect

They’d make scratchy thimbles!

Watercolor sketch of foxglove blossoms

Another watercolor sketch of foxglove — I’m getting closer to the kind of painting I want!

 

 

White Iris

“The white iris beautifies me.”
– Wallace Stevens, from “In The Carolinas”

White iris in the morning light

Detail, white iris

White iris, like white flounces

White iris after rain

More Iris Buds

Too beautiful not to try to capture in photos, paintings, and bouquets.

Sword-like iris buds

Iris buds with cross-process effect

Iris in the parking strip with posterized effect

Watercolor sketch of iris buds

Another watercolor sketch of iris buds

Wisteria, Golden Chain and Impressionism

Wisteria in a Seattle alley

Purple wisteria

Dangling blossoms

Cascading veil of white wisteria

Detail of white wisteria in bloom

Looking down the street under a canopy of white blossoms

I pass this blooming golden chain on my walk to work.

Cheerful, yellow golden chain

There have been so many different flowers coming into bloom these past couple of weeks.  I feel compelled to jump from one bloom to another.  And for sure I had to do a post on wisteria and golden chain before they fade.  I lump them together not only because they bloom at about the same time, but because each glory under the prodigious weight of hundreds of dangling blossoms — a living curtain.  If I squint my eyes as I look at them, they remind me of impressionist paintings.

Among the impressionist painters, Claude Monet is perhaps most famous for his paintings of wisteria, which grew over the foot bridge in his gardens at Giverny.

Wisteria (Glycines) 1919-20 by Claude Monet from the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College

Monet Refuses The Operation
by Lisa Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Making a Perfectly Wonderful Thing Out of Nothing Much

Spanish lavender

“My aim is to take familiar things and make
Poetry of them, and do it in such a way
That it looks as if it was easy as could be
For anybody to do it (although he’d sweat
And strain and work his head off, all in vain).
Such is the power of judgment, of knowing what
It means to put elements together
In just the right way; such is the power of making
A perfectly wonderful thing out of nothing much.”
– Horace, translated by David Ferry

I love this quote, and I take its message as a personal challenge . . . to find the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of my day, to find the poetry in the commonplace, and to make wonderful things out of nothing much.

This week, for example, my eyes are drawn to the rabbit-ears topping Spanish lavender.  I am seeing this lavender in bloom now in borders, parking strips, and gardens.  Our lavender festivals in Washington and Oregon are not held until mid-July, and those fields feature other, later-blooming kinds of lavender, like Grosso lavender.

My watercolor sketches are my attempt to make something wonderful out of this common plant.

Watercolor sketch of lavender

Watercolor sketch of lavender arranged in a wreath

Irises: the Smallest, Tectonic Quintessence of Architecture

Watercolor sketch of irises

“Each spring when the irises begin to flower, I find myself drawing them — as if obeying an order.  There’s no other flower so commanding. And this may have something to do with the way they open their petals already printed.  Irises open like books.  At the same time, they are the smallest, tectonic quintessence of architecture.  I think of the Mosque Suleiman in Istanbul.  Irises are like prophesies: simultaneously astounding and clear.”
– John Berger, Bento’s Sketchbook:  How Does the Impulse to Draw Something Begin?

(Here is a photo of the interior of the Mosque of Suleiman with its ceilings like arched petals.)

Interior, Mosque of Suleiman from the Brooklyn Museum Archives. Goodyear Archival Collection.Visual materials [6.1.003]: 1903 survey expedition photographs. Mosque of Soliman, Istanbul, Turkey.

Like John Berger, I too, love to draw and paint and photograph irises.  The watercolor sketch in this post is my first attempt at painting them this year.

Lovely iris

Iris after spring rain

Iris bloom and buds

My work table

The Common Daisy Observed

“When you observe common things closely they have an emphatic quality, a thusness that is like a charge around them and which is both beautiful and satisfying.”
– John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros and Other Zen Koans to Bring You Joy

“Every entity and pattern and iota of Nature, witnessed with care, can refresh and transform us.”
– Peter Loudon, Drawing Closer to Nature:  Art in Dialogue with the Natural World

Patch of daisies on my lawn

Ant’s eye view of daisies

I love this little patch of daisies so much that I mow around it for a few weeks.

Little daisies turned toward the sun

Daisies striving for the sun

Daisies with zoom focus

 

Flowers as Heralds of the Seasons

“All things keep time with the seasons.”
Thomas Carew, “The Spring”

“The ephemeral nature of flowers whose blooms come fleetingly once a year to claim our admiration only adds to their enchantment.  Flowers and plants are dulcet emblems of the natural world — messengers from the landscape to herald the seasons.  They are points of light that sustain us with their beauty.”
– Ngoc Minh Ngo, Bringing Nature Home:  Floral Arrangements Inspired by Nature

Fallen camellias on my front steps

Stages of decay

Spent blossoms

The end of the camellia season. Time for something new.

A Grower’s Tips for Lilac Bouquets

“I shall not be likely to go to town while the lilacs bloom.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lilac bouquet

Lilac bouquet on the kitchen windowsill

Lilac

Have you ever noticed the thin purple edge on a lilac leaf?

The scent of lilacs is such an ephemeral gift.  The lilac bloom in Seattle is in its last days, and I just cut another fresh bouquet while I had the chance.

Here are some tips for cutting lilac bouquets from Gretchen Hoyt of Alm Hill Gardens, who was featured in The 50 Mile Bouquet:

• “Harvest lilacs when most of the florets are open, perhaps with a few closed florets at the top of the bloom.  They never open past the stage when you pick them.”
• “Using a sharp knife, ‘shave’ the cut stem as if you are shaving a pencil.  This exposes the under bark, which creates more area for water to be absorbed by the flower.”

Bleeding Heart

I’ve been watching the bleeding heart in my neighbor’s parking strip since March.  The fat, little hearts are now in bloom and sway like pink pantaloons on a slender clothesline.

Back in March the pink flowers were just starting to form.

March foliage, tiny flower buds

Fast-forward to mid-April. . . slender branch bowed with bleeding hearts

Graceful arch

Graduated sizes

Bleeding heart and the book, Bringing Nature Home

Stalk of bleeding heart with the book, Bringing Nature Home

Watercolor sketch of bleeding heart

Circle of bleeding hearts

Another view

Watercolor sketch of bleeding hearts