Month: March 2019

In the Garden: Daffodils

With clear blue skies and temperatures in the 70s, spring has arrived!  I packed up a watercolor book, pens, a couple of cameras, and myself – off to the local botanical garden to finally get a look after weeks of rains and closure.  I was not disappointed.  Flowers in bloom, hordes of butterflies as I haven’t seen in years (lots of flowers = lots of butterflies), people.  The air was fragrant from the new growth everywhere, but in particular was a clump of daffodils beneath an old olive tree.

I sat down on a rock, and did this sketch, saving the colors until I got home.  I also took a lot of pictures – digital and film – for reference.  People stopped by and made conversation, a dog or two came to sniff.  Nature, while beautiful, is also capable of irritation – the baby flies were a bit annoying and I wonder if I should put on some DEET to keep them away.

For months I have been thinking about drawing in the garden.  It changes daily, and with the seasons.  This is the first drawing of this project, which will be ongoing.  I’ll be adding it to the page My Other Lives page above.  (For now – WordPress seems to be having issues adding pages!)

Happy Spring everyone!

Daffodils

Every now and then, a day becomes more than a day.  I went out to the local botanical garden to do some sketching, and came across a small mass of daffodils all in bloom under the olive tree.  After all our rains, the world is bright with new growth and color – butterflies in multitudes, fresh breezes, the scent of flowers – everything is as if the world was just created.  How easy it is to forget nature’s beauty in our crazy world . . . 

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

     –by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.