Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
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.
The flower border in June: buttercup seed-head, cornflower, lady’s mantle, marigold, lavender, salvia, annual meadow-grass, seed-pod (lupin?), white clover and red clover.
These are taken on my newly-repaired Olympus OM-D E-M10 II using the 60mm macro lens. Good to have it back. I could have taken very similar photographs on my iPhone but the digital SLR camera gives me more control.
We’ve never needed to sow marigold seeds over the past few years as they seed themselves in the flower border and around the veg beds.
I’ve drawn one of the seed heads from different angles seen in close up through my magnifier desk lamp.
Drawn with my TWSBI Eco-T pen filled with De Atramentis sepia brown ink.
It’s years since we bought any marigolds but they’re good at spreading their seeds around the garden. We’ll have plenty of seedlings next year at the top end of the border.
Also well able to seed itself around, the Welsh poppy. If it just spread by seed that would suit me but, unlike the marigold, it can establish itself as a perennial, building up deep dandelion-like tap roots and crowding out other flowers.
This heron, preening in a quiet corner at Adel Dam became watchful and alert when first a buzzard and then a sparrowhawk flew overhead.
