Plein Aire in the Garden

The garden... what can I say?  It has been stupendous!  Glorious!  Amazing!  Despite all those words, there really are no words that can adequately describe the beauty that has blessed my backyard this month.  It takes my breath away! 

What fun it was to get out the paints and spend some time painting the garden en plein air!  

While I am not yet able to interpret my garden in paint the way that I want to, my little paintings still capture the essence! I'll have to keep playing and working to be able to capture the glory in paint.  

I definitely do better in photographs!  

Then I had a go at watercolors.  Much happier with these, maybe because I stay better practiced and I have a better feel for how to achieve the results I'm after.  What a glorious evening it was to sit and paint my mother's birdbath!  

This robin came and bathed and drank fairly frequently while I was painting!  

Overhead, the clouds glittered in the veining sunlight!  Amazing to look up at that deep, deep blue.  

Here is the finished watercolor sketch. 

I started a second one as well, that I had to finish inside when those clouds covered the sky and began to send sprinkles down!  

The following day was gloomy and grey and in the afternoon we had an enormous thunderstorm that dropped 2 inches of rain in about 30 minutes.  The garden took a beating from the heavy rain and wind, but I'm grateful we had no hail.  

The only damage was lots of waterlogged roses and many, many petals on the ground. 

Beautiful in it's own way. 

Still lovely.  

Now, a week later, after a week of hot, hot, hot temps and bone dry, the garden is looking a bit weary, but still lovely.  I need to find time to go out and deadhead the roses.  

The climbing Iceberg Rose has finally come into it's glory though!  

There are still beautiful blooms.  This is "Lady of Shallot".

These brilliant pink beauties are Boscobel.

The side gardens continue to bloom with the delphinium taking center stage right now!  

The Bunny Cauldron is looking it's finest as well!  

I've spent a fair amount of time inside, away from the heat and scorching sun, working on our family cookbook.  It's a project that has been in the works for a couple of years, but I've finally made great headway on it and the end is in sight!  There have been a fair number of cooking projects to go along with as I need photos for various parts of the book!  

With all the gardening, cookbook writing, cooking and photography, I haven't put a single stitch in anything for well over a month now!  Think I'd like to have a go at sketching my garden in stitches!  But first, there is a huge garage sale coming up in two short weeks that I need more time to prepare for!