Gooseberries and cabbages

A week of sunshine, sandals, swallows swooping and singing from early morning til late at night.

A red tractor making green stripes in a yellow field. Drying hay, making the air sweet for miles around. Throwing turf, making fingernails brown and hands rough.

A cup of tea with a 93 year old Grand-uncle, sitting out in front of his house on top of the hill. He sent me home with 2 jars of gooseberry jam, courgettes, a head of cabbage and a bundle of rhubarb sticks from his garden. 

Evening in a Summer Garden

Wood pigeons cooing their lullabyes. Robins flying quietly home back into the trees. 
Sounds carry from a neighbour's nearby garden; glasses clinking and laughter. 
Above the wall, old-fashioned, full, pink roses seem to glow in the dim, dusky, half-light of a long Summer twilight.
 A wooden seat for dreaming and enjoying the night time vespers.

Portrait painting

Sometimes I like to paint portraits with oil paints and big brushes. It makes a change from painting teeny flowers with tiny brushes ;)


One of my favourite portraits is The Fisherman's Mother (1893) by Irish Artist, Helen Mabel Trevor.
It hangs in the National Gallery in Dublin.

Wedding bouquet

Flowers for a friend's wedding. Her favourite flowers, she told me, are Peonies and Daffodils. They do not bloom together in July - but on my painting desk they grow at the same time ;) Oak tree leaves (the tree for July, (13th June-10th July in Irish folklore), symbolises protection, keeper of the woods and all that dwell therein like deer). Ginny-joes: blow and make a wish. Many Ginny-joes: blow to make many happy wishes for her and her husband.

She "introduced" me to cloudberries

July sunshine and Morning were smiling to each other this morning and I went out and made a third. Sitting on a wooden bench under the dappled shade of two apple trees. With a coffee. And my camera and a letter to read.  The leafy trees put on a show, thrilling blissfully as the breezes rushed through them.

Above, a painting for a girl who introduced me to cloudberries (they are the little flowers painted around her feet). She is a talented knitter and a tea connoisseur! 

Landline

He is a joy to all his friends - you should hear him listen.

Swaying like the long grasses

Early morning walk. Stepping through grass touching my knees. Swishing of the long grass as a sound accompaniment.

 Rustling leaves above join in for the harmony.

 Swishing and rustling.

And for the evening walk, the grass still swaying in a golden light. Were they swaying all day?