Beginnings - November'25

It is now almost a year since I made my major move north to the East Riding of Yorkshire, leaving behind a London allotment where I happily tended my plot for over twenty years.

My wish was to walk out of a door into a garden and part of the motivation for getting things growing this summer was to have flowers to paint. It took more work than I expected, as much of the space was covered in artificial grass with sublayers of sand, granite rock and tarpaulin. Once that was cleared and eighteen bags of horse manure added to the soil, the scene was set for a surprising amount of growth in the first year.

As I write, I have a memory of being in the garden at the start of summer and hearing a sound that I couldn’t identify at first. It was quite rapidly becoming louder and more voluminous. On looking up, I realised that a swarm of bees must be on the move. I hurried inside to shut the windows and by the time I had done this, the swarm had already made off to its new location.

As for the birds, I would like to have more of them, but I do now get frequent visits and I love to see them hop along a central path, as if it had been there forever.

I have just completed a commission for a little wren painting and coincidentally one has been coming into the garden lately. In my nature diary from when I was at school, I have written that wrens move about in a mouse-like manner, which I think is a good description of how speedily they can appear and then disappear amongst the foliage.

Next up is a commission for a puffin painting, and a couple of half-finished flower paintings to complete that are now a reminder of the warmer summer months.

Prints & Winter Wanderings

We had a covering of snow a couple of weeks ago, which made everything look pretty for a while but it has now melted and the landscape is looking mostly brown again.

There are, however, a few dots of light in my garden in the form of snowdrops. These are from bulbs I planted last winter and I am very happy to see them, since I never managed to grow snowdrops at my allotment in London.

The run up to Christmas was a little busier in The Gallery in Hornsea with ‘Lights Night’ being the main event, when the Christmas lights are turned on in the town and the shops stay open late. I sold a couple of prints; one each of my blackbird and owl paintings.

As I cycle to the farm shop and back, there is an almost constant flurry of birds that emerge from the hawthorn hedges along the way. They have been feasting on the berries of what were heavily laden branches in the autumn for a few months now. I mainly see finches and blackbirds, but one time I caught sight of some long-tailed tits joining in the meal.

It was a song thrush that I chose to paint for this year’s Christmas card. I watched when one came to have a drink from my small pond towards the end of the summer and, since I don’t yet have many birds in the garden, it was especially enchanting to see it.

The cards can also be used blank for any occasion. Both prints and greetings cards are available in my Etsy shop – https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElspethScottArt?ref=seller-platform-mcnav