May
...as in the merry month of
Hello,
I’m so glad you’re here. Spring in the Pacific Northwest is fitful -- mud-lucious and puddle-wonderful as e.e. cummings put it so vividly. The sun breaks through the clouds just often enough to convince us of lengthening days. The backyard smells like crabapple blossoms and this year’s (somewhat garish) tulips fill containers begging to be harvested for indoor bouquets.
My recent daffodil crush continues -- ask me again next month as I count down the days until I can remove the slightly slimy ripening foliage. The fava beans are up, the strawberries are blooming, and the first garden anemones are blooming.
Amid all this burgeoning and new growth, I found a nest with a single duck egg tucked under the skirts of the Stipa gigantea while working in the front garden. Sadly, but probably for the best, we think the egg is from a nest that was abandoned last year after a certain flushing incident ensued, instigated by my favorite canine. I think it’s a wonder that the garden has sheltered and protected the egg all this time. I can’t bring myself to remove it. My garden holds me as well.
xo Lorene
Shop update
small*batch*handmade
Artifacts of my daily color study practice
Each hand-bound accordion folio (#20 pictured above) contains 4 original color studies within a protective binding wrapped in vintage gardening text. Other originals in the collection include unframed color studies. Limited quantities -- newsletter subscribers get first dibs.
Enter the code: MAYDAY at checkout and get 15% off your purchase of anything in my online store from today until 5/17/23
Recent writing: Crabapples for the win, These all-season flowering, fruiting and colorful beauties do it all, in any garden, in The Seattle Times
Recent reading: Blue, In Search of Nature’s Rarest Color, by Kai Kupferschmidt Just getting started but love it so far!
Creativebug: Color In and Out of the Garden, a daily practice streaming on Creativebug is now live, with a new segment every day throughout the month of May.
It’s a colorful world
April 26, 2023
Some plants you grow for the flowers or the foliage or the flavor. Others you grow because you have established a relationship.
I purchased this common florist cyclamen at a nursery around Thanksgiving in 2019. Curious about what would happen if I followed its natural rhythm, I allowed it to go dormant and then gentled it back into active growth.
Some years I get a bounty of pink blooms, others just a few. The corm has grown enormously. I feel like we understand each other.
April 27, 2023
And so it begins. It appears that spring is well and truly here with warming temps and new growth, which of course is what I’ve been waiting for. But this same wave of budding and blossoming and new shoots also signals the start of keeping-up-with-the-crabapples season.
Years ago when we renovated the back garden to be more wildlife and people friendly, one of my goals was to reduce seasonal maintenance — that is except for my dream of having a pleached crabapple hedge. Essentially an elevated formal (semi-formal in this instance) hedge on stilts, a graphic element that along with my clipped boxwood forms would anchor all the rest of the relative wildness. Now 10 years on, I love my sorta-pleached hedge of four crabapples. Blossoms in spring, an (almost) solid green hedge in summer, fall color and ripening fruit that hangs on all winter—bright cherry gum balls for the birds with a definite winter holiday vibe. When it snows, it’s magic.
However, to get to that vision in my head requires tending, clipping, chasing down waterspouts, and coaxing new growth in a particular direction. Far and away the most maintenance heavy chore in the garden. I did this to myself.
April 28, 2023
Dear Internet, I am not malicious. (Buckle up, this is a long one)
One of the hardest things I do is ask to be compensated for my work — frankly I have a tough enough time telling someone that they owe me $$. I’m not proud of this and I’m trying to do better. After all, this is how I contribute to my household. It’s a wonderful world where an independent writer/artist can publish across so many platforms, but you (meaning me) have to show up and ask.
My Daily Practice color class with @creativebug launches on Monday, May 1st. I put a ton of work and heart into this class and I’m excited to share it on a platform I believe in. As a Creativebug instructor I have the opportunity to earn a bit of $$ for every person that signs up for my class, at no additional cost to you. In fact, click on the button below to get a 60 day trial where you can stream oodles of Creativebug content - including my class - FOR FREE.
Yesterday I announced the upcoming class and posted a series of links inviting people to paint along with me throughout the month of May. Apparently many of you are getting a “warning.” I assure you, I am not malicious, I’m just learning new ropes and trying to promote my work and support those that have invested in me. Thanks for listening. I’m deeply grateful.
In other matters, ‘Rarity’ anemone is delicious! Part of the Italian Mistral series, the plant is sturdy, productive, and reliably hardy in my Pacific Northwest garden. It’s garden beauties like this that fuel my continuous learning curves.
April 29, 2023
In a house that’s far-but-not-too-far and close-but-not-on-the-beach. Commence reading, resting & painting under a bluebird sky on the first warm weekend of 2023. *sigh*
April 30, 2023
Lessons in aging, courtesy of the garden.
A gawky red wallflower from a few weeks later (left) that isn’t red any more and possibly finding a touch of grace. Or at the very least a beautiful maturity.
May 1, 2023
“More than a flirtation, better than a superstition, almost a religion, the lily of the valley is celebrated on the first of May.” — Colette
Every year on May Day, I read this evocative line from Colette’s FLOWERS AND FRUIT. As you may have noticed, this is not a lily of the valley—my plants are up but not yet budded. I dream of the day when they run amok in my garden beds, as so many gardeners have warned me. Bring it on! I do well to nurture the few pips that I planted several years ago.
However my anemones are settling in nicely and have become one of my favorite spring flowers, May and otherwise.
And PINK. What is it about this color that doesn’t even appear in the rainbow that has become so important to me? I don’t fit any of the familiar tropes associated with pink. Instead I look to the rules that govern the natural world which tell us that colors need light to activate. Most colors reflect a particular and singular point on the spectrum (thank you Isaac Newton). Except pink, which is composed of both red and purple light.
So you see, pink is complicated. I get that.
May 2, 2023
For all my love of plants and flowers, shells are a motif I return to again and again in my color studies. The following is from the afterword to my book, COLOR IN AND OUT OF THE GARDEN.
"To do something—anything really—on a daily basis is to court tedium. Sometimes, all I can do is ride out the doldrums and watch for the next lifting wave of wonder and awe. It always arrives. My practice is the walk between this day and that.”
May you find smooth sailing this week my friends.
a recipe
Celebrate this season of flavor and fragrance with a rhubarb/sweet woodruff garden sip that tastes like spring. Perfect and pink for all your gatherings, especially those that honor Moms, sisters, beloved girlfriends, brides, babies, and all the special people in your life.
