Good day all, I was happy to add some colour to my French bulldogs and seaweed sketch, tho technically the 'seaweed' is sea algae and very prevalent round here. Tho I'm always using animals and sometimes people in my work, the sea Always inspires me.
Let's get to today's post.
Today finds us in my cut flower garden. Though are property here on the New England Seaside is only three acres, as I've only myself and hubby to maintain it, I've always taken on the approach of Little Gardens dotted about with lots of Wild in between.
This funny little garden here is the garden and cut flower garden. It sits next to our old boathouse building and I also keep my chickens in this area. The cut flower garden is still, much like most of the gardens round here, a work in progress. But here you can see a happy pumpkin climbing the fence between the veg and flower beds and the purple/red plant is a wonderful annual hibuscus I grow from seed. I grow it for it's leaves (it doesn't flower for me) and use them in arrangements. The colour is stunning with greens and blues and oranges.
In the center of the cut flower garden (it is a rectangle) I have what I call the "Weeping Bride" which is a dwarf pear tree given me 2 birthday's ago. Last season, it was not 'weeping under it's veil' and because of that I ate up not ONE pear. I have fences and wire to keep out deer and rabbits, but I learned that ground squirrel and regular gray squirrels also LOVE to eat or at least knock off one's growing fruit.
Thus, this year, I rummaged about in the sail lofts of the boat house and found yards and yards of this white netting. It is oyster netting used by the local Oyster farmers, they make little boxes and things where in they seed (small oysters free flowing to cling to this are called seed before they grow into yummy full sized oysters). I have used it around here this Spring on various fruits and this was the ONLY way I could save my newly growing pears.
My hope is to either move this pear to my growing Fruit Cage, or to make a darling little framed cage for it, paint it a lovely colour, give it a door with some decorative motif and have good solid hardware cloth on it. We shall see what comes this Autumn or Next Spring. If it falls down the list, the "Weeping Bride" will return next year but with a lovely bounty of pears, see how yummy they look ripening under the veil in the view of the sea?
Speaking of my Fruit Cage, let's hop in there shall we? See these lovely Apples?
This is the first time I've grown this variety of apple, called : Liberty and I must say I love them. They have been SO productive whilst the other variety I've in the fruit cage did not do as well. The trees are fine and full of leaves, they all flowered wonderfully, but the fruit set and then either dropped or just didn't form. I am not sure why. This tells me that the Liberty will get some compatriots this Autumn. When I enlarge and change my fruit cage I think it will be mainly Liberty.
In here, as well as my cut flower and veg garden, one has the joy of watching the sea.
had finally made a run that I KNEW was safe from these creatures and then the Mink arrived. Yes an honest to goodness mink, shining in the afternoon (the audacity to come out in full daylight rather than at night when the chickens are safely locked in their house) the rascal got in and killed a few of my new growing chicks. I was furious. Now they are all on 'lockdown' until I build a smaller and completely wired in run.
I had planned, on this day, to steal some extra panels from the fruit cage and after beginning found I'd better move that to another day's list, always so much to-doing round here.
After a rather busy morning it was back in the studio to work on my sketch. I've added the next layers of colour and build up and will next outline in inks and tweak it a bit before it goes to Prints, Housewares, clothing , stickers etc.
I also worked on other things in the studio as well, but it was hard to not be lulled back outdoors into the last days of Summer here. The scent of lavender and the buzz of bees was intoxicating.
I grabbed my parasol and made a lovely Edwardian late afternoon of it, listening to the seabirds and the laughter of the neighbours grandchildren as they dove head long from the docks into the cool Summer sea.
And of course if you'd like to experience a bit of my day, you can do so here on the video from my channel.
I hope you enjoy it and can get a moment of a Cape Cod Summer afternoon. Thanks for joining me today.