Winter visitors

 As said before, it has been chilly in the south recently

With the bird bath often frozen, local birds have been making use of the rill, waterfall, cascade, whatever we call the mechanism for delivering moving water into the pond below. I was amusing myself by watching one of the very fat wood pigeons trying to give himself a bath with not enough depth to do so. He flew off and I was just about to carry on with morning tasks when at least three of these little delights arrived.

I wouldn't have recognised them but for a recent message from my good friend Steph who also had some in her garden. They are redwings, a thrush relative who visits the UK over winter. I was delighted to see their pleasure in finding some running water to drink, and obviously at least one of them is stil begging for food from mum, so must be from this year's brood. 

We have plenty of holly and yew berries for them to feed on in the garden, so hopefully I will be seeing them again.

Aren't they a delight?

winter arrived

After weeks and weeks of weather so mild that nature was beginning to think spring was imminent  

the temperature plummeted. Recent mornings have been scattered with frost, illuminated by blue skies or draped in mist. We have had to prise ice from the bird bath and refill with wet water, much to the delight of the starling squadrons. 

Leaves and late flowers have looked magical, though the outside tap has turned into an unregulated fountain in need of repair. 

My seafront walk yesterday evening suggested that weather was on its way,

 but very slowly, the air was so still

This morning there were still billowing clouds hovering over the sea

but the day was quiet and rather soggy. Then temperatures began to drop again, and snow arrived with some enthusiasm.

I wonder if your world is white as well?

Colour titrations

When my gal was at college doing chemistry, one of the bits of lab work she really enjoyed was titrations "the process of determining the quantity of a substance A by adding measured increments of substance B". It appealed to her sense of order and her enjoyment of methodical process, a thing she has inherited from me (though you might not think so looking at our housekeeping skills!!)

I have been doing a year's course with Christine in Studio 11 looking at colour: how colours react with each other; how to mix colours; tone, shade, saturation (intensity); all of those things that help one understand why colours do or don't work together and what their impact is on each other. It has been a very rewarding year. Our most recent exercise was looking at how mixing complimentary colours affects the saturation of the starting colour, using pre mixed liquid dye paints. I began with a vibrant green and used scarlet in various quantities to modify. It was intentionally rather unscientific, simply starting with a pure colour and mixing in small amounts of the complimentary to see where it went. We tried to keep all the mixes very close in tone, so the square looked homogenous, not entirely successful in my case as some are too dark. We created three 4x4 grids with our colour mixes, using the same pattern on each grid and leaving one square uncoloured. In this we painted a fully saturated, full strength patch of our starting colour, a much paler version of this and a full strength patch of the contrast colour. This gave us an idea of how the pure colours contrasted with those we had mixed; whether that contrast was harmonious, quiet or dynamic. 

A cool green modified with warm scarlet

Since then, I have been doing more experiments with this idea; creating greens with the warm and cool blues and yellows (royal blue/golden yellow and turquoise/acid yellow), then modifying these with warm (scarlet) and cool (magenta) reds. The warmer blue and yellow make a pretty muddy looking green, almost brown before one even starts, so there is much more brown in the top two sets, mixed with scarlet (warmest) and magenta. The cool blue and cool red sends the blends a little bit more towards grey (third mix down), a devilishly elusive colour to find. Every painted square taught me a little bit more.

Then I got into "titrating" experimentation mode. I have a wonderful little set of measuring spoons, which give me a dash, a pinch and a smidgen; respectively 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32 of a teaspoon each: brilliant for measuring out small portions of dye powder when mixing up dyes. I used the smidgen and spooned out tiny quantities of liquid dye into a mixing pot, so I knew what proportions of primaries I was mixing to get the tertiary colours

First the greens, using turquoise, royal, acid and golden. You can see the proportions carefully recorded so I know what I did in future.

Then purples

and finally the oranges

So I now have a wonderful rainbow of colours to give me at least some idea how those dyes will mix with each other. The process is, of course, dependent on my always mixing up the pure dyes with the same proportion of dye powder to liquid, but this is a pretty good guide to how they all work together, and gives me huge pleasure too. I shall take it along to my next Studio 11 class to get Christine's comments about the primary colours and what proportion of dye to liquid she uses for each. Different colours tend to be more or less dominant, so one has to adjust one's teaspoons (or smidgens) to suit.

All this mixing was, of course, much helped by music, in this case several playlists of early music and folk, set to shuffle on the iPad, singing out through my Bluetooth speaker, so I could listen for as long as the process took.

Having my converted garage space for these experiments is an enormous boon and one I am endlessly grateful for.

Autumn delights

I'm not normally a fan of red and yellow together, but these glorious dahlias and the vivid yellows and greens of the ginko behind them are giving us great pleasure at the moment

Today darling daughter and I are off to Knit and Stitch at Ally Pally, traveling up from the south coast to stay overnight so we are fresh for the fray tomorrow. We will be taking a class in something called "broomstick crochet" which I have been vaguely aware of in the past, though having no notion what it entails. 

We'll try not to spend too much ....

Biblioproblem?

We are having our sitting room redecorated in the coming week or so, new carpet, new colour on the walls, new hearth. This, of course, means emptying the room of all that is movable in preparation. In doing this I may have to acknowledge that I find it hard to say no to books!!

There are now numerous smaller piles in my study - these are gardening and art history

and two very large piles (almost teetering in fact) in my dear heart's study - the "oversize" collection of history and art history

This is the contents of just one room - it doesn't include: the two bookcases under the stairs (more art history, textiles, and design), three in my study (embroidery, textiles, mythology, philosophy, more history. poetry), four in his study (Africa, aircraft, general and history), one in the sewing room (embroidery, knitting and crochet), another in the upstairs "anything" room (more Africa, more history) and the small collection in the kitchen (cookery of course). A few have been put to one side for the charity shop box, but not very many. I may have acquired some of these since the last culling twelve years ago!

I wonder if one can take bibliophilia too far?

Quiet corner

I can see these flowers from my kitchen window as I potter about. I have been loving the little gathering of warm colours, part of the corner display my dear heart put together for our open gardens day back in July. Two delicious dahlias and, in between, cheerfully nodding cosmos. We have been dead heading and watering as much as energy will allow and they are rewarding us with this heartwarming display

Elsewhere the garden is sparse and brown, but some good heavy downpours are forecast, at long last, for the south east corner, so perhaps things will green up a little before we dive down into winter. 

Gardening is all about hope isn't it?

Being open

We opened our garden for the annual Hospice gardens scheme once again today. A beautifully sunny day, which has resulted in a white "halo" on my chest where my necklace sat, protecting me from the sun which was shining down with some enthusiasm!

Once again, our hearts were warmed by the positive comments from folk who visited. We had felt it wasn't "up to scratch" this year, what with the heat, no rain, and both of us feeling a bit overwhelmed by all that needed to be done beforehand; there were too many bare patches of earth, things planted have not thrived, and fewer things have been planted that we planned. One of my failings is being seduced by tempting pots in garden centres which then languish as I ponder where to put them! However, the day dawned, folk were kind, and we have reached the end of it having welcomed over 100 people and had some delightful conversations along the way. 

So, just a few pics for you to enjoy a little of what they saw, while we sit down and contemplate the pleasure of sharing this space

You can see why I got a little bit pink!

The good man does a very fine line in beautifully planted pots

we are very pleased with our new bespoke pond cover, no more fish lost to the heron we hope

one of the lovely dahlias darling daughter gave the man for Christmas last year

As I was crouching above the pond to look across the garden I sensed a delicate fluttering and heard a tiny high pitched peep. If you look very closely at centre left, below the peak of the pond cover, you'll see a little goldcrest just about to land on the top level of the waterfall to take a few sips of water

To paraphrase Christopher Lloyd, if you are out in the garden enough, the birds will take no more notice of you than if you were a sheep or a cow. 

Dixter delight

We are so lucky to live within easy driving distance of this lovely garden. This week we had a very pleasurable visit from some members of my dear heart's family, including the recipient of this quilt, who has now grown into the most delightful little person who kept us very busy on the afternoon she and her parents were with us. My darling girl came round as well, and definitely fell in love!

The following day, four of us drove through the winding Sussex countryside to visit Great Dixter. The weather was wonderfully bright and breezy, and despite a brief and very threatening looking selection of clouds, it stayed dry and warm and the garden was at its wild and wonderful best.

The planting there, in particular in the areas bordered by yew hedging, is both tall and dense, which means you wander through, perpetually surprised and inspired by a new and interesting combination of plants. The style could be called relaxed or chaotic depending on your taste. I find the sense of enclosure creates a wonderful aura of mystery and timelessness. You are in a jewel box of colour, scent, movement and sound with occasional glimpses of the red brick and tiles of the house itself. For a change of view you can find your way out to areas of meadow planting and the arresting topiary yews. It is a space I could cheerfully spend many hours in, just watching, listening and absorbing. 

I thought you might like to share some of the pleasures