I was thinking about plants and my miniatures.....

I expect if you've been reading my blogs for a while you'll have worked out that gardening, and creative arts and crafts, but predominately miniatures, have been passions since I was young. Although it's mostly gardening at the moment.
 

Growing up with a mother who somehow passed on a love of plants both wild and cultivated - and their latin and common names - without her daughters ever actually realising it, to creating my own gardens, we all became 'gardeners'.  Our family was like that - and painting, drawing, making things...whether it was a pair of gloves or a dollshouse...it must be in the genes.  

So many of you seem to be both passionate miniaturists and gardeners. From reading your blogs I'm convinced that there is a direct link between visualising a garden - even when it's a bare patch of earth - and visualising a dolls house and its 'people'and accessories, even when it's just a box or a kit!
So - stick with it..... the following picture (I expect you've seen one like it every year...sorry) is our glorious Continus in its autumn foliage.  The leaves are almost like animal skins, or exotic plants, so vivid.  So a few years ago I scanned, reduced and used miniature paper copies as exotic leaves in my miniature conservatory. It's how you see it - isn't it? 

Back in the day (and historically) fresh foliage was preserved in a mixture of glycerine and water, fresh flowers in  dry preservatives like silver sand or borax or even washing powder!! Oh yes I tried them all!  Thinking small I preserved tiny flowers like forget-me-nots and lychnis, tiny grasses, seed heads and ferns which I used in little arrangements before the brilliant floral experts pushed the art to a whole new level.  Illona and Jan Southerton.... are two of my favourites who spring to mind using completely different materials and techniques.  Of course now there are lots of lovely commercial products like coloured foam, scatter, fibres, papers,  polymer clays and silks that make life  easier for all of us, but it is so satisfactory to start from scratch and develop your own techniques and find your own way, I think.

Finally I can't resist showing you a picture of one of the little robins that accompany us when we're digging and weeding - having filled up on worms, he/she is having a bath in one of our mini ponds.

Anecdotally, gardens and outside spaces help many of us cope with the restrictions of the pandemic; I'm sure hobbies and crafts have played a major part too in keeping us 'sane'. Your many and various blogs have been fun, inspiring, and informative - thank you all for staying in touch. Stay safe.


Thank you for looking.
Robin x

 

Mending Fairies' Broken Wings

The white fairy has been in my gardens for many, many years and has moved with us - but she is now elderly and quite fragile.  She took a bit of a tumble and lost a wing - out came the glue.  As if in sympathy the other fairy flew out of the willow tree and landed badly - broken leg - more glue.

It seems the right time to relocate them to safer perches.  So the white fairy smiles at us near the back door and her friend is guarding the gravel garden alongside our mad hare.

 A rainy, gusty few days brings new delights into our autumn gardens and as we tidy up for the winter a little robin is usually twittering along near us helping himself to the last blackberries and scratching for worms.  These little birds are so tame many people hand feed them, but we've resisted the tempation as we have a cat and don't want to tempt providence.
As we've been pulling lovely carrots, parsnips and leeks (which taste so good straight from the garden) there are plenty of worm-filled patches to scratch in.

This picture of our lovely yellow clematis (tangutica I think) is a perfect example of 'be careful what you wish for'. It looks glorious now, and will do when the fluffy, silky seedheads follow - and it covers the fence, nearly the whole long length of it......and a beautiful rambler rose......two bush roses, lilies.....and our lovely neighbour's shed!!  I wanted it to clothe the fence but not take over! I was brutal last year and cut it back HARD, and look at it.....oh dear, must be more brutal!

The passion flowers also go mad, but are more restrained. They are still blooming their socks off - we have two - and the ornamental fruit are setting and will soon look like orange balls which I can dry and bring inside. Fortunately our two neighbours love it too - one has happily trained it along his clothes line and the other encourages it to scamble through his shrubs.

As an antidote to the virus I've been slightly extravagant in ordering spring bulbs online and happily planting pots of tulips, tiny iris reticulata and pale pink grape hyacynths (muscari) to cheer myself up.  I hope you've all found something cheery to do too and that you stay safe in these worrying times.

Meanwhile these sweet little cyclamen definitely cheer me up!

Thank you for looking.
Robin x