What's in a Name?

 These gorgeous lilies have several different names, such as Maltese Cross Lily or Jockey's Cap Lily.

If we are to use their scientific name, it's Sprekelia, always better, as everyone knows exactly what lily you are referring to. They are very easy to grow and the bulbs multiply rapidly. What's more, they look spectacular in the garden.

Now What Can I Do?

           These aren't cages for illicit plants, but cages for ordinary everyday vegetables.

 They keep out the birds and possums, but oh no, the rats have discovered that they can gnaw their way in.

                                                                        Now what?

Crests.

Having managed to get several reasonable prints of my cockatoo lino cut, I needed to add the red crests to them all. I did a trial of different paint colours and decided that I liked one better than the others, but unfortunately while painting a couple, the ink, which has been on the paper for many days, smudged, and I'm not sure now if I have the required 9 reasonable copies. I really can't face trying to print any more, been there, done that!

Patterns in Nature.

     This is the flower of a monstera plant, unfortunately it's been a little damaged at one end.

 This is how the seeds develop, from tiny close packed undefined marks at the top to distinct seed packages near the stem as shown below.

Exhibition Up!

 As of last night our exhibition is up and running. With just the 2 of us exhibiting, we managed to put together over 40 pieces of art, a third of which is fine botanical art and the other two thirds is textile and mixed media.

 The gallery is part of an old church complex and has some very pretty stained glass windows, however it is almost impossible to photograph art work covered with glass as there are reflections where ever you turn.

             The distance shots work better, but of course you can't see much of the exhibits.

 With so many pieces to display we ran out of wall space, but I think that the plinths work quite well anyway.  I did notice one person down on the floor trying to see the stitching on the small piece at the back left in this photo!

                Here are 3 beetles and a butterfly, reflecting the theme of the exhibition very well.

Now that is quite a big refection! We had a good crowd for the opening, but only sold 4 pieces, so I hope that the next 2 weeks prove to be more lucrative.

What Fun!

I went to a morning workshop recently which was run by the representative of a local paint and paper retailer. He showed us all sorts of different types and weights of art paper and we got to try out different media on the various papers. With a chart to fill in with the way each type of paper performed, it was a valuable mornings learning. We tried out alcohol markers, pastels, watercolour, acrylic and oil paints and also good old pencil. What  fun morning.

Cute but a Nuisance!

       So this is who is eating the vegetables in the garden, a mother Ringtail Possum and her baby.

                       They are very cute, but I do wish that they wouldn't eat from my garden.

                                                               Please move on you two!

It's Spring!

It's definitely spring in my garden, with bulbs, azaleas, rhododendrons, hibiscus and statis all flowering profusely.

New Gazanias.

 With the warm weather that we have had over the past couple of days, the Gazanias are all opening up.

 They only open their flowers in full sun light, but I'm not sure if this one is only partially open or if the petals are actually furled like this.

 I'm loving the surprise of each flower opening up.  The plants you might remember I grew from seed, and it took a couple of years before they flowered.

                                     I just love these bronze, red, orange and yellow shades.

Return of the Cockatoo.

 I started off with some new ink to print the cockatoo again, but in the end I found that it wasn't just the ink that was a problem, the paper was too. It was too lumpy and bumpy, and I ended up getting a better result with smooth card. I've cheated and removed the lino carving marks before up loading the scan.

 Here I've printed it over a piece of card that I previously printed digitally with variations of a bunch of gum leaves that I had pressed. The marks of the lino carving show up here and don't look so good.

Just for fun I inverted the image and quite like the result. Plenty of fun fiddling to indulge in here!