Long Mizzle Garden

 Hello m' fiery crusts, With each growing season, it is fun to try something different at Long Mizzle. This year I thought I'd have a dabble with dry flowers. Technically all flowers can be dried, but some fare better than others. If hung upside down, nicely spaced in a warm, dimly lit place, they are more likely to retain their colour and shape.  As I am yet to erect a proper drying rack (or slung twig more like), some have started to festoon the living room druid tree - turned skeletor lamp shade.  Above: Statice (Limonium sinuatum) The Statice was very easy to grow, with lovely sturdy fluted stems and indigo flowers. The mutant molluscs seemed to leave it alone. I wish the same could be said of the Strawflowers - many young plants succumbed to the munching marauders. Aren't the papery flowers wonderful though !? Above: Strawflowers (Limonium sinuatum) In addition to the Cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus) and Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), which self seed freely here, ...

 Hello m' handsome hollies, Today I'll be sharing a few of the more wintry drawings in the found Watling bag of sketch books. But before that, it is with great joy that I can announce... HOUSTON WE HAVE LIFT OFF!!! One of the hyacinth bulbs that mam and I started off in her cold October garage, has this week started to flower. After weeks of roots expansion, and a slowly emerging shoot, the flower rocketed quite quickly and suddenly, at precisely 32 minutes past the hour.   It still yet has to extend its full flower. We think some of the others will not be long behind -   And what of our red-onion-that-escaped-the-soup-pot ? It is looking very Chrismassy on the window ledge in our Snub (home office) back at Long Mizzle -    In my last post here , I wrote about finding sketchbooks by an unknown artist called 'Mr LJ Watling'. Last week I shared the summery landscapes, this week, here are some of the wintry ones - [ Saltsjöbaden (Sweden) January 2nd, 1982] ...