Blog

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.