Random Silver Linings...

Outside the British Museum we chanced on this South African Garden

as we passed on the way to Blades, the stamp shop. They sell some nice arty magazines too...at nice prices!!

Another day saw me at The Princess Diana Memorial Playpark with my two daughters and various friends and family members. There must have been about 20+ in our group. This is the French contingent.It was lovely to see them and practice some French.

On the way home I called to say hello to another good friend and while we had a cup of tea, this butterfly visited us.

I thought it was called a woodland something but I can't find it in the book now.

Random Silver Linings in August.

I met up with my good friend DMJ and her daughter in law and grandaughter.

Then my daughter in law brought me this lovely bunch of flowers. Made up of lilies and night scented stock, it waws one of the nicest I have received. Thank you Julie!

I had a lovely North London woodland walk with Evie and her Dad.

These gladioli in our church one Sunday gave me great pleasure.

The silver cloud at Valentine's Mansion.

This is a stately home kind of place very near Gant's Hill and a walk from Ilford Town Centre. As well as the house - with its superbly equipped family room for the children, it has a cafe where there is a kitchen garden. Look at this for a cabbage!

There is a walled garden - trust me to head for the thistle.

There are lots of flowers but this time I focussed on the sea holly (eryngium) and the blue one which turns out to be Perovskia. Thanks to Wikipedia I now know that it is named after a Russian general, VA Perovski (1794 - 1857) and is also known as Russian Sage.

The silver cloud at Ilford.

While our daughter and her family went on holiday, we were able to spend 10days or so looking after their house and garden. Imagine
my joy on walking into their house and seeing this work of Lissa Lou's on the back of the kitchen door. All week I thought to myself 'aren't I lucky to be the Grandma at the top of the tree!'

They have a French laptop with an AZERTY keyboard which I worked hard at mastering. It also had the 'O' key missing. You have to press very hard to get it to work so I tried various alternatives which cause a certain amount of hilarity on Facebook. I received suggestions about books and teeshirts searching for the missing 'O'.

It was a great pleasure to see Brian taking such an interest in the garden. At this moment he is there helping to weed and tidy up for the winter - something he never felt confident enough to do in our shard garden.

Another pleasure to sit in the garden at 6am topping and tailing gooseberries for the freezer.
Thank you Heather and Alberto - can you book us in for next summer and for 2012...

Happy Birthday to me!

At the beginning of July I was 70 years old. Heather and Alberto and Evie arranged a superb barbecue for me in their garden.
They made me a lovely card and decorated all the tables with pretty cloths (mine!) and yellow flowers; the theme was yellow because I like mimosa but its out of season in London in July.

I never had balloons at the gate for my birthday before in my whole life! And if you look closely you can just see the darling little jar of dandelions!

Heather baked a superb 3 layer birthday cake straight out of the pages of Good Housekeeping Magazine. Alberto was in charge of the barbecue and Brian made up a quiz for everyone.
Unfortunately after a traumatic Spring with various problems I actually took ill on this day and so there are not so many photographs as I would have liked. I will try hard to keep up the blog because in spite of the ongoing nature of the problems, they can't be allowed to take over and there have been some silver clouds this last couple of months.

The Art of Mixed Media

I have just had the pleasure of spending two days this weekend in an art studio at the Museum of London. The tutor explained the recipe for different kinds of paint. (I should say at this point, before you eat Skittles again, check out what shellac is made from)(and you probably won't eat Skittles again!)After this we dispersed to try our hand at playing with the different kinds of 'mark makers'. This is my 'play' (as opposed to 'work'). I used india ink, wax crayon, gouache and oil stick. The scene was out of the window. There are some jokes in there if you can see them. The torches were a silvery metal, and didn't have fire burning in them. It just needed brightening up.

The technique we were introduced to on the second day involved using turpentine to scrape the paint of a magazine picture and turning the picture into something completely different. I could not see the point of this until I came across an article about Margaret Thatcher. Then I thought Yes! I could enjoy scraping the smile of your face! so I did and it turned out to be Blackpoool Tower, because that is made of tempered steel - or some such metal.
There's lots of layers here, india ink, gouache, pigment, tissue paper, and wax crayons.This is not the finished article, but the colours came out better in this photo. The finished one has a bit more white gouache highlighting.
It was a fun weekend with lots of inspiration from the others on the course.

Kenwood

I saw a programme on TV this week - maybe Countryfile- when we were asked to let them know our favourite secret places. Whats the point of that I thought - they wouldn't be secret any more...This is definitely one of my favourite places. Its very public, but the magic is there no matter how many people there are around.
The rhododendrons and azaleas are on the way - and we'll be able to enjoy them for another few weeks.

This is the Japanese hankerchief tree I googled that and top of the list was www.hampsteadheath.net with photos featuring this very tree.

This year we dicovered a small bluebell wood - across the path and down the banking towards the lake. Real dark blue English bluebells - no paler blue Spanish ones in sight.

And on the edge of the lake a water rat 0r vole who posed quite happily for several photos.