gardening project day 10

When I went to look at the watering can to refresh my memory for painting it, I discovered that bindweed had looped prettily through it! Bindweed has such pretty heart-shaped leaves. However, due to it's strangling of everything else growing behaviour, I spend lots of time pulling out bindweed - no chance of eradicating it completely because it invades from the railway cutting which backs onto my garden.

gardening project day 9

These gorgeous purple tulips are growing in a tub in the front yard. The bulbs were another fab birthday present last autumn: )

gardening project day 8

The hanging basket I can see from kitchen window does have some greenery growing in it: weeds!

gardening project days 6 and 7

Hooray! I've been able to upload these two images : )

The pruners are antique: they came from my Grandad, and I have seen identical pair in a museum of gardening. They are the best: I've had modern pruners, which have not lasted more than a couple of years, unlike Grandad's which still do sterling service in my garden : ).

The flower pot was knocked over sometime during the winter - probably by a squirrel! Fortunately, the geranium, or to be strictly correct, perlagonium, is very forgiving, and will recover now I have replanted it.

Gardening project day 6

Hmm.. Well, I have another image ready to post, and blogger won't let me upload an image at the moment!

gardening project day 5

This is the winter flowering jasmine, which brightens up dull December days with yellow flowers : ). At this time of year it needs to be pruned, and I can never remember how to do it! I'll have to ask gardener and cartoonist Chichi http://chichiparish.blogspot.com/ for some advice.

Gardening project day 4

A lovely facet of tidying my neglected garden is discovering hidden plants like this tiny violet and the muscari hyacinths : ) The violets have arrived on their own, and the tiny hyacinths have migrated from where they were originally planted by me. It is so rewarding seeing them - a definite encouragement to go outside and do more tdying.

Gardening project day 3

Here is today's new illustration: next step in the garden is some serious pruning and weeding! Fortunately, local council collects garden waste separately for turning into compost. (Bonfires are not allowed where I live). I also had another go at tweaking the colour balance from yesterday's illustration: this time using Photoshop's "curves" function, which has worked a lot better.

Gardening project day 2

Well, today's is an experiment in re-sizing the image, etc in Preview instead of iphoto! Anyway, stage two for me in gardening is to dream up what I'd like to grow: basil for sure, and some cornflowers : )

Gardening project day 1

Here is the start of my project for April: gardening! I have a tiny garden, and it is currently in a disgracefully neglected state. I'm hoping that focussing on painting gardening images will focus my mind to taking action in real life out doors. Plus I love painting plants, etc anyway.