A special day and a present.

Today is my birthday and Mr P gave me a wonderful new camera.

I have a lot to learn about it so of course I decided to start this afternoon in the garden.

Pie as usual looked beautiful having a roll in the sunshine.

I just love these white foxgloves, they looked wonderful in this light.

The lavender is just starting to flower now and the perfume from it is just so good.

So there are my first photographs with the new camera - I'm looking forward to learning more and share them with you.

Sculptural flowers.

In between the rain we've been working in the garden.

In the vegetable garden the last of the leeks needed to be dug up to make room for new plantings.

I usually keep some of them and let them go into flower as they have such wonderful shapes.

This year because its been so cool the flower heads haven't opened yet.

Flower heads from last year.

However I just couldn't resist their wonderful sculptured forms and with any luck they still may open out with their huge white and purple flowers.

Venice inspiration.

I have been working on some new pieces of art.

My starting point is Venice especially looking at the water, reflections, old buildings and the effects of the elements on the old brickwork and plaster.

In this piece I was looking at the old metalwork grills on the windows and their reflections in the canals.

Iris .

In the garden the iris are in flower and they look wonderful in the bright sunshine.

I am reminded of some paintings I did a few years ago.

I used wax resist, dyes and inks.






I love their rich velvety petals and their jewel colours.
They are not a long lasting flower but whilst they are there they are magnificent.

Of course with paintings and photographs they are always there to look at and appreciate.