Resilience in the garden (part two)

Following on from my previous post, here are a few more plants which have done well during this hot and dry summer.  Above is Clematis heracleifolia Wyevvale, which is a perennial non-clingy herbaceous plant.  This one is in a pot, so it has been watered this summer, but I divided it in the Spring and put the division into the border and that has not had any extra water.  It has pretty blue/purple flowers and a scent which reminds me of soap.  Not unpleasant, just soapy.

This is Clemaris heracleifolia New Love which is in the border and had no extra water. It has flowered for a long time and is still going strong. 

I forgot to put this photo in my previous post - this is the back of a flower of Japanese Anemone Ruffled Swan - so pretty.

The ever reliable Asters or Symphyotrichum as they have been re-named (they will remain asters to me as it's much easier to say and spell!).  Above is Aster/Symphyotrichum novae-angliae September Ruby.  I love the helpful way their flower centres change colour once the pollen is gone.

Here is  Aster/Symphyotrichum novae-angliae Mrs S T Wright.  These two are great and don't get the powdery mildew that others may succumb to (yes, Aster/Symphyotrichum Little Carlow, I'm looking at you! To be fair, that plant is probably planted in the wrong place with not enough moisture at the roots...)

Liriope Muscari is the unsung hero in my north facing border. It is reliable, comes back every year, (needs dividing, but I am a bit worried about doing that in case it upsets it) and gives me the green strappy leaves to enjoy as well as these purple flower spires at this time of year.  

The flowers are really interesting too. 

Hydrangea Arborescens Annabelle, my favourite hydrangea, who usually appears on this blog at least once a year, will not be making an appearance. The heat and lack of water did her no favours and she is a shadow of her former self.  I may have to address that for next year...

Resilience in the garden (part one)

 It has been another hot summer (for the UK), with very little rain.  I have again been surprised by the resilience of some plants, so here's the ones that have done well, with either no or very little extra water. 

I know that cyclamen hederifolium are late summer/autumn flowering anyway, but they are very reliable plants.

The japanese anemones have done well, also late summer flowering plants.  Above from left, going clockwise are Pretty Lady Susan, Ruffled Swan, Bressingham Glow and Pretty Lady Maria.  Bressingham Glow has been flowering since July.

(Photo collages created with https://www.photojoiner.com/ )

Salvias have also done well.  Three of these are in pots and the Salvia Amistad (top left) came through the winter. Hot Lips (top right) is ubiquitous, but rightly so. I bought it for the allotment, but am thinking I may keep it! The white one (bottom right) is one I bought about a month ago.  Peach Sorbet (bottom left) is planted in the border and has coped pretty well in a very dry border. 

Helianthus Lemon Queen is a reliable, tough plant but can be a bit of a thug, although it hasn't been in this garden.  It is very happy now that the big rose bush has gone and is looking good.

Finally for this post is a Hibiscus. This is planted in the sunniest (and driest) part of the garden and has been flowering for over a month now. It hasn't had any extra water. This particular plant is the triple one, bu I have only seen two different varieties this year - a pink and this white/pink one. The flowers look so delicate and exotic but it is a tough shrub.  More good value, reliable and resilient plants in my next post. 

Slow Drawing journal - double page spreads

Following on from my previous blog post about slow drawing, I have been working on a journal to put some of my slow drawing pieces into for a little while now. It's one of those things that I do every now and again.  There are lots of interactive bits, like flaps, doors, pockets, windows etc, but I have a number of double page spreads that I would like to decorate without any of these, as the journal is getting quite chunky!  So I decided to use some of my favourite patterns.  Above is Poppy.

If I have the name of the pattern, I will add it in. This is Burst.  I really enjoy slow drawing as it uses minimal supplies (watercolour card, pen, ink, watercolours) and the whole point is to slow down and concentrate on what you are doing.

This doesn't have a name, just marks made with a paintbrush.  

Here is Blossom. I really enjoy patterns like this with lots of repetitive lines.

This is one of my own patterns, although no doubt influenced by other slow drawing patterns.

Here is Crowd, which took me about three or four sessions to complete as I needed to rest my eyes often.  It does look really good though.

This is Artichoke.  I enjoyed how this pattern seemed to move depending how I drew the shapes.

This was a Youtube video pattern and I am not sure what the name is.

Here is a bigger version of the Dot one I did for the Smallest Things challenge.

Finally, we have Holes, done with a nice fat Quill brush, which gave the thin and thicker lines.  It reminds me of water drops.

I still have another eight double pages to fill, so I shall keep going!

The Simplest Things challenge 2025

I have just finished this little challenge, run by Amy Maricle of Mindful Art Studio.  This little accordion/concertina journal is three inches x three inches (ish). Amy also does the Inchie Challenge, which I have taken part in before, but that is twelve days.

Amy sends an email with a prompt each day for five days and also an example of what she drew for the prompt.  The idea is to do a simple thing - a mark, a line, a dot etc. each of those five days and then continue to draw in a mindful way after the challenge ends. (To this end, Amy has a Slow Drawing lesson every Wednesday and I absolutely love Slow Drawing. Minimal materials and taking your time while drawing for an hour, including a short meditation to calm you down and help you to focus on the drawing.)

So, here's what I did.  These squares are watercolour card and I use a Lamy Safari fountain pen with an extra fine nib and De Attramentis document ink.   This is Closer.

Here's Squiggle, using a brush and watercolour.

Dots is my favourite - simple but effective, using a brush and watercolour again.

Branching using a pen and ink.

Smash, which was suggested by Chris. I was thinking along the lines of smashing watercolour onto a square or smashing the pieces together.  I like this idea better!  All these patterns are simple - just lines or dots. When you start to repeat the lines or dots, they become interesting patterns.

A really simple and fun little challenge.

More cards and some new stencils

Here are a few more cards which I haven't posted about.  Above is one for a friend who appreciates animals and...

... a pun or two...or more.  I really like the stamp set I used here, which is by Josh Griffiths' Beyond Stamping range.  His animal stamps are so cute.

I added a final pun on the back!

This one was for a friend who really likes the slowing drawing patterns I make.

This was for my niece and I tried out a stamp which had lots of images on it, by Lynne Perella for Paper Artsy. Lynne Perella's stamps are full of collaged images and detail.

A ruby wedding anniversary card for one of my sisters.

A card for my mum-in-law's birthday, with a die cut heart which I watercoloured.

Another friend's birthday and some lino cut stamps from Clarity Crafts, again watercoloured.

Here are the new stencils I treated myself to. I like the retro feel and I think these geometric patterns will work well, especially for men's cards, which are always trickier.

They are rotating stencils, which means you apply the first colour, then rotate 90 degrees and apply the second and so on until you have the four colours.

This one is my favourite so I tried it first.

This is what it looked like once I had finished applying the inks and then it became this...

...a birthday card for a friend's daughter. I saw the idea when the stencils were being demonstrated and knew I needed to make my own version!

I really enjoy making cards and getting inspiration from others. There are so many talented people who generously share their skills and ideas.   (The only trouble with this hobby is that there are too many lovely stamps, stencils and dies out there and news ones coming all the time!)

In the Pink

I have been growing cosmos for a few years now and for the last couple of years, I haven't had much success. However, this year, I bought a cosmos 'kit' comprising a tiny seed tray and lid, compost and about eight seeds.  I duly planted them, not expecting much but they are doing me proud. These are Candy Stripe and I love the different combinations of colours on the flowers.  

These are in pots at the front of the house and greet us with a lovely splash of colour.

I think this may also be Candy Stripe, but very different.

This is not Candy Stripe, but one of the Sonata mix, I think.  It has a much richer colour than the photo suggests, and is in a pot in the back garden.  The flowers are good for pollinators too and if I keep deadheading and watering, they should go on into October/November (depending on the weather, of course).

Cats sleep anywhere...

I am a lover of blue and white pottery.  Spode 'Blue Italian' is my first love, closely followed by Wood and Sons 'Yuan'.  We were lucky to be given some Yuan pieces and we then started looking out for it, so we have quite a lot now and we use it as everyday china.  

Chris managed to buy a large Yuan bowl at a car boot sale last week.  The bowl would have originally been part of a set for a washstand, with a jug and possibly other small pieces, such as lidded pots.  He brought it home and put it on the table, until we have found a better home for it.

Look what happened!

Yes, you guessed it, the cat who visits us regularly (we have called him quite a few names; Slinky Malinki, Larry the Loafer, etc. but I have now settled on 'Cat', which he seems to respond to) has decided that the bowl is now his bed.  Chris had put some comics in the bowl and I think these will have made it nice and cosy for the cat!  

He has chosen many other places to sit and sleep, most usually my chair, but also the back of the sofa, my lap tray and on top of various papers - quite often what look like fairly uncomfortable places to me.

For now, the bowl is his bed.  Eleanor Farjeon's poem is right!  

"Cats sleep anywhere

Any table, any chair,

Top of piano, window ledge,

In the middle, on the edge,

Open drawer, empty shoe,

Anybody's lap will do.

Fitted in a cardboard box,

In a cupboard, with your frocks -

Anywhere! They don't care! 

Cats sleep anywhere."

July Junk Journal Challenge 2025 - #JJJC2025

 I have been taking part in a July Junk Journal challenge on Leigh's Art and Journal Wonderland where you have prompts for each day and then create a page around the prompt.  I particularly enjoyed this one as it was only on weekdays, so that you could catch up over a weekend if you needed to.  Leigh created a video for each page and had a big list of other people who were also doing the same, so there was always plenty of inspiration.  Below are some of my favourite pages that I created and I tried to make the pages interesting with flaps, fold outs, tip ins, tucks and pockets, so that the journal has ended up being quite interactive.

The prompts for these were A Touch of Gold (although the gold does not show up well in the photo!) and Botanical, which uses one of my slow drawings, a piece of embossed card, a piece of scrap book paper and a piece of a paper bag from a shop.

Something Vintage included a copy of an old photo (I bought a set of old photos on ebay and have scanned some in so that I can keep the originals), an old postmark and various vintage book pages. Tag on the right was using inspiration from Alison Bomber from Words and Pictures.

Bird on the left has a flap and Tea Bag on the right has a pressed blueberry leaf from last year under a tea bag on top of a piece of paper painted with tea marks.

On the left, you can see the flap lifted up, with stamping, the negative of the die cut bird from the front, a digikit image of birds and a feather in a 'slide'.

On the left is Ticket which has a combination of real and digital tickets, while on the right is Book Page, which has one of my carved stamps as a focal point, over watercolour. It folds out to reveal...

A leafy stem drawn with a brush pen and another hand carved stamp.

This was a lovely challenge to take part in and I really enjoyed it.  Working in a small scale meant the blank page wasn't too scary.  I found that sometimes leaving a prompt to the next day helped me to come up with a better/more interesting idea, rather than going with my first thought. 

Here's to #JJJC2026!