Surprise, we're back!

Surprise, we're back! There was a time when we first moved into this house that there were no gardens at all. The cottage had stood vacant for a few years awaiting a buyer  after the owner had moved to greener pastures. The yard was piled with old furniture and car parts. Glass bottles and old tin cans had their own pile behind the house. Birds and  animals had moved in to the building.

It was around the second or third year after we moved in the house before
we began planting gardens for eating and pleasure that we noticed narcissus first popping up. We hadn't planted them but there they were in all their glory. Volunteers they are called, having landed somehow without help.  The first year only two blooms came forward but each year after that they get more and more.

Each year painting them begins as soon as they rise out of the ground and continues until they bloom. Sometimes that happens while I am present allowing me to paint them as the blooms pop out one petal at a time into the air like a slow motion windmill.  Watching such a beautiful plant develop is such a humbling experience on so many different levels not the least of which is the contrast of spring colours. The composition is provided by the plants themselves so half the work is done before the painting is even begun.