Hello,
I’m so glad you’re here. Here in the Pacific Northwest, sunrise dawns before 5 am and dusk lingers until 9:30 pm — and we’re still a week away from the Solstice. Like most gardeners, I spend a remarkable (ridiculous?) amount of time watching the skies and monitoring the weather. The best news of the week was we got rain, finally. Wait, silly me. Picking the first sweet pea was even better. As I wrote in Color In and Out of the Garden:
I wait all year for the day when I can harvest the first sweet peas of the summer.
The delicate flowers are a personal totem and a generational touchstone in my life. Impossible to accurately replicate, the scent of sweet peas — part honey, part orange blossom — holds the memory of every blossom from the time I was a child in Nana’s garden to those of nearly every year since. Follow your nose through a garden and pay attention to what memories are triggered: freshly cut grass, lazy summer days and lavender, honeysuckle evenings. We can plant to preserve the past.
In other news, I’ve been busy adding to the digital shelves of the resource library that’s open to all paid subscribers. I’m also working on adding a new batch of originals to my online store. As always, subscribers, paid or otherwise, get first dibs on new work.
ox Lorene
A week in color
June 7, 2023
There she is—the first sweet pea of the year. How perfect that it landed on our wedding anniversary.
Honey I love you!
Of course I have no idea what variety it is because I have no idea where my seed packets are thanks to the basement project.
June 8, 2023
I struggled mightily on this color study and it wasn’t the least bit comfortable.
The colors would come but the shapes were off — then I tamed the shapes and the color dulled. Back and forth, around and around. At one point I just about quit - the whole exercise just felt so self conscious. In the end I was left with a painting that settled (sort of), although I still see evidence of the awkward progression. Today's reminder that process not “finished” painting is the point of this exercise. And I didn’t quit.
June 9, 2023
My shell color studies are somewhat autobiographical.
June 10, 2023
Earlier this week, on a warm morning with bluebird skies, I got to visit a beautiful garden created and tended with great heart and a love of beauty. Perched at the teetering edge of a high bluff above a low tide with glassy water, the cool colors in the garden invited the blue water and distant landscape into the space.
We sat and talked gardens (and baseball - it’s not what you think). Then as I was leaving, the gardener gathered a bouquet of mostly spring alliums, I think this one might be a type of Allium nigrum, and succulent sea glass green foliage. It was a generous visit in every way.
June 11, 2023
I see backbones everywhere, like the gentle line of this sprig of Salvia. It’s the curve that makes things strong. A counterbalance that pulls one way and the other.
Poise.
I’m off kilter these days and life is getting small. Back pain is limiting movement. Gardening is reduced to making a list of what needs doing, rather than—you know—doing it.
But I can pick flowers. And more importantly, I can visit gardeners and their gardens. It’s like looking at the growing season from the other end of the lens.
Frustrating, oh dear lord, so frustrating. But it feels like gardening beyond the boundaries of my own plot.
June 12, 2023
Sometimes a crop is an exercise in tending on a scale that’s greater than anything else in the edible garden.
I have an immodest love of fava beans. So much so that I had to steel myself to cut this sprig for a color study, but ruby favas deserve to be seen.
Homegrown, fresh picked fava beans are sweet and not the least bit starchy if you time your harvest just right. In addition to ruby favas, (Plant Good Seed, where you’ll find the variety listed as crimson fava bean), I grow Frog Island Nation (Uprising Seeds) a white-flowered fava with dark pinky-purple seeds.
I’ve learned to tag plants and save seed of the ruby variety as this can be hard to find and often sells out quickly. While I’m at it, I save seed of the other one, too. So I’m growing 2 crops, one for dinner and one for next year.
June 13, 2023
Lime green, lemon yellow, lavender, and navy flowers on hot pink/coral stems: Yes please!
Queen’s tears (Billbergia nutans) is hardy in my Pacific Northwest garden, gardeners in colder regions can grow this showy bromeliad indoors and move it outdoors during the growing season. Also, commonly known as “friendship plant,” queen’s tears is quick to increase and soon you’ll be sharing offsets with friends and family. My plant (right) is ready to be divided again, which I may or may not get around to.
“Experts" on the internet suggest repotting queen’s tears every spring and only using distilled water or rain to water and mist (!?!) your plant. I get it, native to rainforests in South America, Billbergia, an epiphyte, where it hangs out in trees and loves dappled light, high humidity and clean water. However, my plant lives in an old maple syruping bucket (drilled for drainage) in a corner of our backyard shelter where it gets bright but indirect light and an occasional sprinkle from the hose. I get no complaints.
Dangling, curlicue blossoms with the colors of a tropical bird appear in summer at the tips of slender pinky coral stems. Totally swooning over here.
In the store
Remember, all postcards - with or with out envelopes - are 15% off until the end of June. Most sets contains 12 cards (2 of 6 images); grid postcards come in a set of 10.
Drop a note to a friend, frame as a mini print, or pin it to the refrigerator, everyone needs more color in their life. Enter code POSTCARD at checkout and save.
Curious about what’s in the resource collection for paid subscribers? From my favorite paints to recipes and projects - including instructions for Pebbled Garden Mosaics (pictured above) - to illustrated essays. I think you’ll find something to love.
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