New painting, a great laugh and gardens

Well I finally got some painting done, I am a bit slow getting back to it after holidays, but here is a watercolour that I have just finished. It is titled "Celebration".  It is a little late for Canada Day and Bastille Day but still a good fireworks show is always welcome:

I remember as a Brownie and Girl Guide singing a song about a Kookaburra that laughed.  Now I had forgotten about this until recently when "Seeing Each Day" posted some pictures of a kookaburra. I decided to investigate the birds call and here is what I found.

Now that is a really good hearty laugh and it had me chuckling.

Here are the gardens I promised, this time two private gardens, first Mary's garden in England and then Steve and Chantel's garden in France.

Mary's garden reminds me of my mothers' garden when I was a child, filled with roses, peonies, phlox, delphiniums and columbines. I was transported back by the beautiful columbines and probably took too many pictures so I have made some of the pictures into mosaics.

 

This one has attracted a bumble bee:

One last one .....

There were also irises, lilies, clematis, flowering horsechestnut, gladiola, and many more I haven't been able to name.

A beautiful garden, thank you Mary for sharing your garden with me.

"To be overcome by the frangrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat." Beverly Nichols

Here are some pictures of the flowers in Steve and Chantel's garden in southern France. Clematis, honeysuckle, wisteria, and Virginia creeper covered decks and pathways offering glorious shade and filling the air with perfume.

Roses, pansies, hibiscus, daisies, geraniums and many more flowers, bushes and grasses created a beautiful and private retreat. Pots, hanging baskets, whimsical garden ornaments.

Steve and Chantel spend the time to water (by hand), weed and trim so the garden thrives.

"A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them."   Liberty Hyde Bailey

And the lavender bloomed in the second week of our stay and filled the air with its heady scent.

"Everyone can identify with a fragrant garden, with beauty of sunset, with the quiet of nature, with a warm and cozy cottage."  Thomas Kincade

Warning: If you don't like bugs, you might want to skip over the next few rather quickly.

There were some interesting bugs too, I spotted this little fellow on a rose. Some of the bugs were much larger than I am used to.

This iridescent June beetle loved the honeysuckle. It was at least an inch long.

This large moth came for a visit one evening, I have seen similar ones before but never one this large, it was over 4 inches long. It made quite a racket banging against the ceiling, and was still inside in the morning so we carefully put it outside.

I think these next two are grasshoppers or crickets, both were in the 3 to 4 inch long range. The first one was out in the garden but the second one (black) was on the ledge outside our kitchen window. We closed the window just in case it had any intention of coming inside and I bravely took its picture through the window.

Enough bugs, everyone that tuned out can come back now.



A couple of weeks ago Jeremy (Jeremy Inglis Photography) shared some wonderful Puffins pictures on his blog, and allowed me to use some of those pictures to do a painting. I have always been fascinated by these beautiful and brightly coloured birds.

So my painting is below, it is a watercolour and is quite large (13" X 19"). The painting is not quite finished yet, it is unsigned and without a name, but I wanted to share what I have done . Thank you Jeremy, hope you like the result.

 

That's it for this week, thank you for dropping by, Happy Whimsy Wednesday, until next time .....