Category: Garden

February Flowers

February garden flowers

Some of the flowers already showing in the garden this weekend. As Storm Eunice has just gone through and Storm Franklin is about to arrive, these were from photographs taken yesterday morning.

drawing a rough outline

With the periwinkle and hellebore, I found that I started in the top left of the drawing intending to keep things fairly small but as I added detail the scale changed so when I started on the lungwort I sketched the outlines roughly in pencil, allowing enough space to add detail.

inking the flower sketch

I think this speeded up the whole process because I was just able to get on with the pen, knowing that I wouldn’t have to start fiddling to fit it all in.

I didn’t pencil in the crocus and the snowdrop. They consist mainly of isolated verticals, so they can be drawn individually. The branching pattern of the first three plants that I’d drawn meant that the relationship of one part to another needed a bit more care. I look for negative shapes between the leaves and when starting a new flower or leaf I look for the angle to points on the plant that I’ve already drawn.

Tennis Ball Fox Cache

Even without the trail cam, I can tell that the foxes are back. I found these two tennis balls cached at the edge of my wild flower bed down by the compost bins this morning.

Maris Peer

Maris Peer

We’re going for Maris Peer second earlies again this year but also trying some ‘ultra early’ Maris Bards. You have to buy them at this time of year as the popular varieties soon get picked over but we won’t be planting them until March or April, depending on the weather, so until then we’ll be chitting them: letting their shoots develop in a cool, light place (the back bedroom window sill).

Night Fox

fox

Caught on my Browning ProXD trail cam last night at 11.30 pm, this fox slinks into view on the path by the veg beds, pauses briefly to take a look at the camera and at something at the opposite side of the garden, then it trots off towards the crab apple.

Tulips

It’s not too early in the year to start some botanical drawings and I’ve learnt something even from drawing florist’s tulips: not all those ‘petals’ are actually petals. Tulips normally have three petals and, surrounding them, three sepals. Sepals are leaflike and enclose the flower.

Night Visitors

The trail cam was still set to British Summertime, so this was 4.47 pm. Sunset was at 4.31 pm.

From the trail cam footage, it looks as if we’ve got a pair of wrens roosting. Last year when there was snow on the ground we estimated somewhere between 7 and 11 wrens roosting, all in the nestbox on the left. The nestboxes don’t connect on the inside.

As they settled down there was a lot of flitting between all three holes and the pair seemed particularly interested in the middle hole but they eventually settled on the hole on the left to roost.

Blue tit arrives at 8.41 am.

The last we see of the wrens on the trail cam is at 7.33 am when one of the wrens appears in the left hand hole and appears to be preparing to leave.

The blue tit arrives an hour later and makes a careful inspection of the first two nest holes, but doesn’t go in.

Gorilla Pod

gorilla pod

The roosting wrens are back, but how many of them are now crowding into the nestbox on the patio each evening? I’ve set up the trail cam, precariously mounted on a gorilla pod attached to Barbara’s dad’s cultivator which is fixed in the patio parasol stand, which itself it standing on the patio table.

Hope it works. At least my camera hasn’t put them off because as I write this just after sunset, Barbara tells me the wrens have already started to appear.

Drawn on my iPad in Clip Studio Paint, colour by the Clip Studio ‘colorize’ option. Not as camouflaged as the actual camera, but the cultivator does have orange prongs.

The Big Dig

Big Dig cartoon

Birthday card for an archaeologist/organic gardener. Based on actual events (no, not the bit where Prof. Roberts identifies the variety of potato).

Moral: always let the guy who’s doing the rotavating where you’ve planted the potatoes.

Teasel

sparrowhawk sketch

3.02 pm: A sparrowhawk swoops around the bird feeder, perches in the crab apple for a moment, then flies off without catching anything.

snow on sedum

Early afternoon snow, an after effect of yesterday’s Storm Arwen, covers the seed heads of the plant formerly known as Sedum, now Hylotelephium spectabile. A female blackbird and dunnock forage beneath the feeders which attract great tits and blue tits, a coal tit and a nuthatch.

cyclamen

The snow soon starts to melt and these cyclamen, in the bed beside the patio beneath the cordon apples, look none the worse for it.

sketchbook page, snow in garden
8×8 inch (20×20 cm approx.) Pink Pig Amelie watercolour paper sketchbook. TWSBI Eco Fountain Pen with De Atramentis brown ink, Winsor and Newton Professional Watercolours.

Howgate Wonder

Howgate Wonder apple branch

We had seven or eight Howgate Wonder cooking apples from our double cordon by the patio this year, enough to stew to add to our porridge for a week or two.