Bountiful harvest

We've been eating from the tree of knowledge - the apple tree in our own garden of eden. What I do know now is that it is a miracle that a tree in our backyard can produce such superlative fruit - as red as the apple in the story of Snow White but not a drop of poison.

In fact our apples are organically grown - so no chemicals or pesticides. We weren't sure when to pick them so kept trying them - at first they were a bit too sharp so I made them into apple crumble. The last harvest was just right - deep red on the outside, firm and white on the inside, with that sweet freshness that is the essence of apple.

I'm putting some works into the local Agricultural Show - which has an art section. Some of the works I am submitting I finished last year and some are more recent ones - the works below are the recent ones. Wish me luck!

A handful of 'mums - acrylic on canvas

Still life with chrysanthemums - pastel on paper

Ocean echoes - pastel on paper

Flashbacks

Well we are a couple of months into 2011 already - how did that happen? Here are some highlights for you...

A painting I did of cherry blossom - commissioned by a friend

My niece's dragon birthday cake - a joint effort

P's sister and her family from Queenslnd stayed with us after Christmas so we had a festive lunch with his side of the family

L enjoying the water slide at Christmas in our newly turfed back yard!

After the festive madness we went away camping for a few days with friends near Freemans Beach - very relaxing...

Windy weather - perfect for kite flying

To the beach...

An excursion with L to the Aquarium - I took photos of nearly every exhibit - here are some of the better ones (taken with my iPhone)

Then a trip to Tasmania with my sister, her kids, my mum and her friend - 11 of us

Wineglass Bay- Freycinet on the east coast of Tasmania

L always had to be the leader on our walks

Dove Lake - underneath Cradle Mountain in central Tasmania

Taking a well earned break - nearly at the end of the Dove Lake circuit

Lake Lilla - Cradle Mountain in the background

Horseshoe Falls - above Russell Falls on the way to Hobart

The Neck on Bruny Island off southern Tasmania - penguins and short-tailed shearwaters nest here

Blue berry bombs

P and L put their detective hats on and got out the magnifying glass the other day when they found splats of blue on our pavers (unsealed - why oh why did we think that was a good idea?) at the back of the house... after further investigation they traced them back to the source - an exceedingly pretty bunch of blue berries at the front of the house, scattered among the lime kangaroo paws. I believe they are the fruit of the Blue Flax Lily and are edible - though I have yet to try them myself.

One morning soon after their discovery, as I stepped out for my early morning walk, I heard a little chirruping sound. When I looked up I spied a crimson rosella inching along the fence towards the berries. I crouched down so as not to frighten it away and watched as the scarlet and ultramarine blue parrot hopped onto the bright green kangaroo paw stems and bent down to pluck a purply blue berry. As soon as it had the berry in its beak it snapped down on it and a burst of juicy spray went out in all directions. The feast the birds are enjoying seems to causing them to do blue droppings - which is what we found on our pavers.

Now instead of blue splats on our pavers we have small piles of white powder. No - we haven't been dropping our cocaine stash along the path - it is bicarb of soda which is good for absorbing spills and stains. Lets hope it works.

Christmas unwrapping

Weeding for the best part of 5 hours - that's what I was doing one weekend in December. Thanks goodness mum and dad came to help otherwise I wouldn't have got very far... our backyard has been a wilderness for some time now and every time I surveyed it I got that sinking feeling otherwise known as despair - when you know you've left a chore too long and it just keeps getting harder every day (or should I say month) you put it off. We have now made some inroads - is it too much to hope we'll have a half-decent space by Christmas..?

In an effort to stem the tide of unbidden greenery, P decided to cover most of the yard with blue tarpaulins (a sort of blue Christo artwork if you will) which had the effect of creating a hothouse for the weeds under which they flourished, as we discovered when we started the unwrapping of the back yard. I have a hunch they actually thrived beyond normal parameters - the photosynthetic process in green plants uses the blue spectrum of light to function.

P and his Dad get out the power tools - for building the retaining walls

L had a ball in the sand pile with his herd of toy dinosaurs

P's Dad working on the wall - see the wrapped yard in the background

L and P hard at work

P levelling the ground in preparation for the turf laying

Our backyard ready for turfing

They were so green and lush I wished they were edible - they looked pristine and almost virtuous in their green-ness - thoughts which I had to swallow down as I proceeded to tear them from the ground and onto a make-shift compost heap. I guess if you take the long view, we will be eating them eventually, once they are composted down and spread around our vegetable garden to be, the nutrients from that green-ness will come through in our salads and stir frys of the future.

Another side-effect of the blue tarps was to create a huge waterfall in our back yard where the tarps collected all the rainwater and directed it to the corner of our garden where our sunken garden (read drainage pit required by council) overflowed and threatened to engulf our back neighbours' house. P was up in the middle of the night working to stem the flow. Luckily that only happened once in a particularly heavy downpour.

I am hoping to get some help from a permaculture garden service - they might be able to help with some of the hard labour and also advise on design for our garden. We have quite a clear vision of what we want, but we could always do with more information on how to go about it and which plants will do best in different areas. We'd like an organic vegie garden, complete with chook dome as well as a sizeable portion of lawn for L to run around on. We're putting in a shed behind the water tank and eventually we'd like an above ground pool in the back corner (opposite the sunken garden). I'd like to have some native shrubs and trees around the fence line as well. We also want to plant some large deciduous trees near the house to ensure good shading in summer and bare branches in winter to let the light through.

All in good time!

A cow sighting

I met this gorgeous black Angus cow on a farmstay holiday inland from Kiama. Her name is Sandy - a legacy from a cow that lived on the farm at an earlier time* - she was obviously not named for her colour! When we met her she was calmly munching on grass in a bright glade surrounded by trees and stood very still and let us brush her coat. Her bull calf huddled close by her. This pastel piece I did of her was shown in the Hornsby Art Prize exhibition over the weekend.

Sweet Sandy - Pastel on paper

*In fact there is a childrens story book about the original Sandy who heroically found her way home after sold to a farmer in a far away town.

I went along to the opening for the Hornsby Art Prize with L (P was singing in church that night) and we had ourselves a few adventures. After wandering around looking for my work and trying to take it all in, with L dashing in between the tables of nibblies and myself, I managed to lose L for a short while (I was distracted by the paintings don't you know) then found him a short while later racing around with one of the volunteer ladies looking for me. He told me he nearly cried - poor love!

We voted for our favourite artwork - L liked one of autumn leaves - he has a good eye for colour and pattern. I couldn't decide between a red tinged painting of bare trees and one of the works earmarked for an award - a small work titled 'Backyard Barbecue' which was impressionist in style, with lots of textured paint, high key colours, but somehow just captured the mood and light and the poses of the people really well. 

My friend M also had a jewel-like coloured print (not sure if I am describing it properly) titled 'Fallen' on show which put me in mind of a medieval illumination or stained glass window and was very clever with an apple fallen out of a tree, next to an outcast from the garden of Eden who was in black and white, while the apple and the garden were all in colour.

Then I nearly fell up some steps (how silly that sounds - you would think in the normal course of things one would fall down stairs, not up!). L inadvertently dislodged a painting from the wall - luckily only on canvas - not in a glassed frame. We tried out some fruit punch - L was not a fan - too many 'bits' - though he had a monopoly on the corn chips.

We hoped to hear the speeches and the awards before we left but we only had an hour before we had to pick P up so we didn't get to find out who the winners were - although we had a clue from the generic award labels that were next to some works. I was just happy to have my work hung in the show and be a part of the buzz.

Oh - we did get our bags of goodies - according to L the most exciting item inside was the two-ended purple marker! I was glad to see a copy of the Art Almanac - which lists upcoming prizes for artists. I'll have to go through and mark some for next year methinks!

A whale of a time...

On Sunday we delivered a cake in the form of a whale to my 8 yr old niece's birthday party at Dee Why. It was inspired by a cake in one of those Womens Weekly books, but I like to think I made it a little fancier with swirly silver pipe cleaner spouts and a little friendlier with a shaped licorice for an eye instead of a giant smartie. Approval from my niece came through in the words -  'it looks so nice I don't want to eat it".

Whale cake made for my niece on a foil covered board and wrapped in a gilt edged ribbon

On the way to the beach L was groaning in the back seat of the car - complaining that his ribs hurt (who knew he knew he even had ribs?). As we made our way through the suburbs beyond Lane Cove the moans took on a more urgent note. He said he felt sick and might vomit. We had to stop the car to investigate. After a while his stomach was better but his side was still hurting - I made sure it wasn't in the area of the appendix. He didn't appear to have temperature. He said it hurt when he breathed and when I tried to touch his side. I got in the back seat and tried to comfort him. He kept twisting and moaning so I got out my new iPhone (still getting used to having it and all its possible uses!) to look up a local medical centre. We found one not to far on our way to the beach - no appointments necessary, a 20 minute wait and $80 per appointment. As P pulled up to park I urged him to go into the paid parking behind the shopping centre - money was no object at this moment in time!

When L got out of the car he seemed quite up in spirits and then started running up the ramp to the shopping centre. At that point I was starting to feel he was probably OK. We debated whether or not to go ahead to the medical centre and decided to ask at the chemist first. They were worried by the 'hurting when breathing' bit and advised on seeing the doctor. Even though I felt L was now getting back to normal, the seed of doubt took hold and we went ahead. The doctor couldn't explain it, but said it may have been a muscular pain - maybe a pulled muscle... She gave L some Nurofen and said to come back if it got worse. When we got to the beach L was back to normal and had a great time swimming and running around with his cousins - he even enjoyed a piece of the whale cake!

Moral of the story: go with your gut feeling and enjoy your cake!

Dabbling in digital art...

So I thought I'd have a go at some digital art - I have some new software called 'ArtRage' which handles quite nicely. I'm still getting used to all the tools but have had a go at a still life and a landscape - both based on photo references. I tried for a more impressionist style as you will see. Using a wacom tablet is something to get used to also - it still doesn't feel as natural as a pen or brush on paper...

Dahlias

Street scene

View other digital art work at Ambient Design.