It may well be six degrees today and drizzling greyly, but I am wearing thigh-high socks instead of woolly tights and listening obsessively to The Pierces and The Mamas and Papas – I don’t care what you think, summer is definitely here.
I was going to blog about my scenic painting photos from January, which have finally managed to ‘find a destination’ (apparently) on my laptop... but quite frankly, all I can think about is gardening.
So while the weather sorts itself out a bit more, let me share with you some photographs from last summer at my old house...
My little slither of garden was nestled under a huge sycamore tree and was very dry with practically no sunlight, making it nigh-on impossible to grow things in! Here is a raised shelf I made to try and catch some more light. As you can see, I’m not really into minimalism...
Spot the following - two points for each:
- A handmade candlestick, originally from the Picture Of Dorian Gray installation
- A stone painted to look like a ladybird
- A slightly wilted-looking tomato leaf
- Three chilli plants with cunning copper slug repellers
- A pot stand robbed out of a German dustbin
- A lump of green driftwood
- A morose-looking toad
- A tiny headless stylised pottery figure from a set model
- A broken rear-view mirror from my first Mini
- My (former) jelly-shoes
- A piece of mirror out of the skip at drama-school
- A broken vase
- A tile-effect bit of set from Dead Dog At Drycleaners
Another shelf-photo, featuring
- A tiny broken cup, formerly owned by Rowena
- The hand of a doll, brought as part of a box-full at a car-boot from a man gleefully selling off his ex-wife’s crafting supplies
- A bashed up spice tin, gleaned from a fly-tipping site I used to browse
- A naked lady tankard, formerly my Dad’s
- A bee home, cunningly created from a can (spaghetti hoops, if my memory serves me correctly)
- Another bit of pottery set, from Salome
- A carnation, loving propagated by yours truly
- A glow-in-the-dark skull, from, er, Asda.
A pillar I painted orange. I can’t be bothered to go into much more detail, but I will tell you this:
- The candle-holder thing I found squashed in a local field
- The broken bit of cup I found outside the doors of Ikea. It was made, glazed, packaged, transported, unpacked, stacked, brought and then dropped without ever getting so much as a sniff of a hot beverage. I was so wounded by its wasted existence that I took it home with me.
Well here are three of your answers from earlier.
I have a book on stone-painting from the seventies. Apparently the key is making them look like fish. Seventies fish. I went through a bit of a phase.
The succulent above the headless man (John the Baptist, if you must know) was stolen from someone else’s garden as a cutting. I have no idea what its proper name is, but it has beautiful purple flowers and the leaves have this amazing texture, like tiny squid tentacles. I can never get enough of touching this plant. Succulents are amazing – I also love House Leeks (previous photo, another spaghetti hoop can). They have such a sculptural quality to them – whilst being proper hard! – they can withstand all sorts of weather and temperatures with very little soil!
St Pauls Oil painting and a plastic cherub, glimpsed through the chrysanthemums.
My horse chestnut tree! This came to be when I was around twelve and attempted to keep the best conker shiny by wrapping it in a rag from a favourite ex-dress (lamentably too small) and kept it in a damp Pringles pot... and now it is taller than me!! It’s on the way out in this photo, but is covered in lovely sticky buds as I type.
I laid this herringbone pattern flooring myself! Just behind the aquilegia, you can see a ceramic snail that I made when I was ten.
A mouldering plaster foot sticking out of a clump of stinking geranium. This is actually a cast of my own leg that I made in my first year of university.
As I’m sure you appreciate by now, I find the dressing of an outdoor space just as important as an interior or a set, and fill all the spaces in my life with little bits of junk that make me feel happy.
Please let the sun come out!!!
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