Berries: gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants ripe for picking. I reap what I have sown. I have cultivated my plot. Metaphors for life.
Produce good to eat, to conserve, to save for winter, less productive times.
There has been a gap in posting. A time to slow down. To think about this blog.
What does it do, produce, make, change, develop, bring to the fore?
Lessons: take time, take your time, slow down, use what you have grown. Drawing slows you down, drawing makes you look. Do more drawing. Keep drawing your tools. The implements that help you cultivate and harvest.
Small brown brush makes me think of small brown bird. How we start to value the small and the brown and the bird. On the allotment there are more birds. I see them more. A wren scuttled under the shed. Collared doves (Where are you?) nick my redcurrants.
Message: See the small things. Enjoy the small things. No need to travel far. Look around. Sit by the love-in-a-mist, watch the bees collect nectar and pollen.
This is a pause in the frenzy of life. A rent in the curtain. Stop and stare. What do you see when you look through?
Here is my rose, rosa mundi, rose of the world.
It’s a gallica rose, a French rose, a crimson striped with white rose, a shrub rose, an old rose, a bushy rose.
A showy rose, a fragrant rose, a semi-double rose, a classic rose, an open-cupped rose, a distinctive rose.
A-yellow-at-the-centre rose, an ancient rose, a candy-striped rose, a symbol of paradise rose.
Name of a historical reenactment society.
Rosa Mundi is the Summer Solstice Festival of Our Mother God.
Named after Rosamund Clifford, mistress of Henry II.
This was half my total harvest of radish. There were two left alone by the slugs. Even this one has a bite out of it.
Radishes may have originated in South East Asia. Greek and Roman agriculturalists of the first century AD mentioned details of small, large, round, long, mild, and sharp varieties.
First three artichokes of the season. Cooked them whole and served with a vinaigrette. Leaves were tasty and I ate the hearts as well as the chokes which were still soft and tender.
Artichoke has art at the start (as does start at the end). The shape of this thistle looks ‘mathematical’ – the arrangement of the tiered leaves, the artful outline of this vegetable/flower/bud. The globe artichoke is a cluster of budding small flowers (inflorescence).
The word artichoke may have come from ancient Arabic. The modern Arabic word for artichoke means ‘earthy, thorny’.
When left to flower they have a truly beautiful head of purple hair.
