The Flowers of May

Along with getting my garden on its feet (that's an odd idiom), I have succeeded in painting a little the past week. I get so torn this time of year. Garden? Paint? Garden? Paint? Some of the spring flowers are so fleeting that they need to be painted or else I have to wait for next year. But my garden can run away on me (those feet again) if I don't get it under control at the beginning of the season.

Our back lawn is covered with wood violets right now. They are so pretty and I much prefer them to the dandelions which are also vying for my attention right now. I dug out a little clump of the violets and potted them so I would have to time to paint them. I am not a quick painter. I never have been. Too detail-oriented for that I guess. Below is my painting in progress and at the very top is my finished wood violet study on Twinrocker hot-pressed watercolor paper.

The paper wasn't completely flat when I finished the painting so I placed it under a pile of big art books. I really didn't pay attention to them at the time. They were serving a utilitarian rather than literary purpose. It was only when I retrieved my painting afterwards that I noticed the top book "The Flowers of May" with a watercolour painting of violets on its cover! I had distractedly chosen the perfect paperweight!

While it would be easy to assume that "The Flowers of May" is a celebration of this month's flowers, it actually pays tribute to a wonderful botanical artist named Caroline May who lived from 1809 until 1874. She painted delicate, beautiful watercolours of British wildflowers. About a thousand paintings of her paintings have survived. This book contains reproductions of ninety of them. I hadn't looked inside this book in years.  Look at Caroline May's painting of wood violets that she refers to as 'Dog's Violet'. Isn't it lovely? I'm so glad I saw it after and not before I had completed my own painting. It was a beautiful moment of serendipity in my week.

Within the same lovely purple palette, my lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) are in full bloom right now. I adore their fragrance and can't resist burying my nose in them each time I pass. You do have to be careful though. Yesterday my nose came very close to a giant bumble bee!

I am very fond of purple, especially blue-purple. My favourite colour is periwinkle (which is somewhere in between purple and blue). The lilac blooms have wonderful combinations of purple, blue and hints of pink. It's just amazing the gradation of colour in each little blossom. With their scent and colour, they are pretty close to a perfect flower for me.

I picked a small lilac sprig to paint. I actually had to pick more than one over the course of finishing my painting as lilacs wilt very quickly.

Here is my lilac sprig painting also painted on Twinrocker paper. The lilac in the photo is not the one I used as my reference for my painting but it's very similar. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a 'click and sniff' button so I could share their sweet, heady fragrance with you? ♥

Could It Be?

Yesterday, I gardened wearing a winter jacket. I pretended it was warm outside. On Saturday morning, it was 0 degrees. Yesterday, it started at a toasty 3C (37F).

Today, I don't need to make believe. It feels different. I heard lawnmowers in the neighbourhood for the first time. A bud on our magnolia tree is starting to unfurl, with many more to follow. All of the spring flowers are open wide, drinking in the warm sunshine. The lilac buds look like they are just days away from blooming. There are butterflies in the garden and a new family of sparrows in one of our birdhouses. Meeko and I took a long walk at lunch and came back overheated rather than chilled to the bone.

Magnolia

Prairie Crocus (plus the top photo)

I really love prairie crocuses.  They are such dramatic and bold looking spring flowers.  I have white ones too that aren't out yet.  Prairie crocuses are the provincial flower of Manitoba, the Canadian province where I was born.  I just found out that they are also the state flower of South Dakota.

Dasystemon Tulip (tulipa tarda)

Violas

Wood violets in the lawn

Daffodil (a lovely pale yellow but I don't remember its name)

Greigii Tulip 'Toronto'

This is my first spring blogging and, when I read others' blogs, it really hits home how our spring weather is behind so many other areas--except for that weird dose of hot weather we got in March.  It's hard to be patient sometimes, but then it feels really good when it does finally arrive!