Drawn with a Lamy Al-Star pen, De Atramentis ink.
Backpacks
Silver Birch
Silver birch by the towpath near Broad Cut Top Lock, Calder Grove.
Beetroot and Marigolds
Immediately I start drawing, a hoverfly zooms in and settle on the lime green top of my pen. As I work there’s a continuous chiff chaff and a v. loud blackbird, with house martins chittering overhead.
Despite several overnight frost setbacks our veg is making progress.
Eucalyptus
A eucalyptus with long strips of sloughed bark in a plantation of eucalyptus close to the former Woodhorn Colliery, Ashington, Northumberland.
I find it hard to believe that this is the regular way a eucalyptus would shed its bark, has this tree been struck by a lightning?
Heart Urchin
I photographed this heart urchin, Echinocardium cordatum, on the strandline at Druridge Bay in April.
One reason that I’ve started doing daily drawings again is to make a record of how my tremor effects me in the run up to my physio appointment for my thumb problem in two or three weeks’ time.
When it’s bad the tremor certainly results in a lively drawing but, when I get over my current cold, I look forward to being a little bit more in control!
Knotted Wrack
Knotted wrack, Ascophyllum nodosum, has single bladders in the middle of its fronds.
Broad Bean, Basil and Tomato
The first day of summer, so I thought it was time that I got back to my A5 landscape format sketchbook.
Blaco Hill Cottages
On Monday my sister Linda and cousin Kathleen joined Barbara and I on a short tour of some of our Bell family history locations north of Retford around Sutton-cum-Lound, North Nottinghamshire.
Blaco Hill Cottages, between Lound and Mattersey, was the home of our great grandfather John Bell, a gardener, born 1842, and his wife, our great grandmother, Helena, nee Whitehead, born 1845.
It was the birthplace of my grandfather, Robert Bell, and several of his siblings.
Our thanks to Victoria of Blaco Hill Farm for giving us a guided tour.
The Grade II listed farm house is currently being renovated. During re-roofing they found straw, a form of insulation, stuffed beneath the slates.
Victoria sent me a photograph of an oil-on-canvas painting of the farm.
Groundsel, Fern and Sail Plant
A closer look at some of the uninvited plants which have made themselves at home around the raised bed behind the pond: groundsel in the disturbed soil (we do occasionally dig it) on top of the bed, lungwort at the edge of the wood-chip path and Spanish bluebell in damper soil.
A couple of house plants: a fern and our new sail plant, Spathiphyllum.
Raised Bed
The blackbird is singing from the crab apple, the chiff-chaff more or less continuous from the blackthorn at the edge of the wood. There’s an occasional wood pigeon calling softly in the background and raucous sparrows erupting every now and then in the holly and hawthorn hedge.
It’s sunny with a bit of a breeze; an male orange tip is the only butterfly I spot as I draw.
Spanish bluebell behind the pond has now gone to seed. The lungwort has gone to seed and is wilting in the sun.