During my two holidays, I didn't have the opportunity to blog. And when I was home again, I needed to catch up with my offline life. Hence I'm terribly behind with my drawing diaries! So here's a quick post to catch up.
This is one of my beloved succulent plants.
Using the blender marker to mix two colours created a rather odd effect.
In April, my drawings were more functional than creative. I made some illustrations for my mother, who was working on a scientific article about the friction drum. I made a tulip portrait that I disliked so much that I don't even want to include it in this post. I drew one of my plants and tried to subtly blend colours with a blender marker... and spectacularly failed (see above). I also made a egg hunter's cheat sheet for Easter (see below).
Friction drum drawings and egg hunter's cheat sheet
If you have a superb memory, you may remember about my family's egg hunting tradition from my Egg hunter's outfit post. With Easter, a friend came over, and I'd asked my mother to hide some eggs I'd bought for us in the front and back yard. There are two things you need to know. One: our garden is somewhat of a jungle.
Proof
Two: A large part of the hidden eggs consisted of quail eggs and sugar eggs that were painted in natural chicken egg colours. They were pretty well camouflaged. I expected my mother to take this into account when hiding them.
I was wrong.
Mom: "since you are all grown up now, I made sure to hide them exceptionally well! Surely it would be too easy to find them, otherwise."
Typical egg hiding spot: deep down the foliage, somewhere
I think we managed to find, give or take, ten eggs. That left twenty more out somewhere there in the garden. We called upon Saartje the stealth poodle - as you may or may not know, poodles are hunting dogs with excellent noses. She enthusiastically ventured through the garden, her nose aimed at the ground. There was certainly a lot of smellable unusual activity. Many humans had stridden through the foliage at peculiar spots. But despite her obsession with chocolate, she didn't find us any eggs. I couldn't blame her, as she is only trained to track humans (she is self-taught in rabbits and does) - chocolate eggs are not regular things lying about outside. It probably didn't help that it had just rained, either. We had to look for the rest following up "warm" & "cold" signals by my mum.
At least my mother was having a grand time watching us wiggle our arms around in the wet foliage.
Eventually, we managed to find all but two (including a glass tray that was supposed to keep one sugar egg dry). Nobody has a clue where they are. Ah, well. That, too, is tradition. Next year, I'll have to make a cheat sheet for the Easter bunny as well, so they can keep track of hiding spots. This year, at least the many snails we encountered in our search had something of an Easter breakfast as well!
If that were my yard, I'd be scared of getting a poison ivy rash. Outside of that, I'd love to have that sort of backyard. I can imagine the privacy....
ReplyDeleteYou're allergic to ivy? Wow, haven't heard of that before! Don't worry, you would be safe as long as you don't hug any trees. The rest of the garden is ivy-free. :)
DeleteIt's a very specific ivy that's native to the North American continent, as are poison oak and poison sumac.
DeleteHere you go: Wikipedia entry for poison ivy
Ahhh, that's really interesting, and sheds a new light on the Batman movies. ^^ Here, we only have Hedera helix, which is totally safe. I used to cut some branches off every now and then to feed to my stick insects. :)
DeleteWhen the extended family had gathered a few weeks ago, my brother and his family spent an afternoon keeping their kids busy at a local nature preserve. Unfortunately, his wife brushed against some poison sumac and it spread fairly rapidly. By the time they returned back to their home a few days later, she had to get a steroid shot to keep it under control. While I've heard of people having reactions that bad to poison ivy/oak/sumac, I've never seen one in person. (When I get a rash from poison ivy, it doesn't spread so much or itch that badly.) And this is from a parent who has a kid with a peanut allergy.
DeleteEek! That does sound bad. Sounds like the North American flora is quite a bit more adventurous than here.
DeleteBelated welcome back! :)
ReplyDeleteYour family's garden reminds me of my mother's. Hers isn't a jungle, or at least I wouldn't call it that but it definitely doesn't have that orderly, man-made look either. In fact, I think she never planted anything in there. All the trees and flowers just grew over there organically over time.
Haha, I may have exaggerated a bit when I said jungle. ;) At the time, the plants were a bit out of control, but now you can actually walk again on the paths. Out mothers seem to have the same taste, then. Mine did plant some things in there, but we leave wild plants we like. Among those are two orchids that somehow love to grow on the path and a rare wild fern that grows on a stone ridge. I do love more naturally looking gardens. Great for the wildlife, too.
DeleteYeah the easter egg hunting was fun! :D And well yeah never had snails with easter eggs before :P. But is was a little bit hard but at least memorable. And I did not know about poison ivy, always thought it was a weird name for Hedera helix, but that is just a totally other species even another genus than common ivy. But it seems that North America has much more dangerous plants than Europe, stinging nettle is the most dangerous. I find that a little bit boring, nature should be a little bit dangerous.
ReplyDeleteYeah, poison ivy doesn't look like an ivy at all! Was totally new for me as well. We do have "berenklauw" here that can be dangerous, but you have to come into contact with its sap first and stand around in the sun. I never quite understand how people manage to do that. Poison ivy sounds like a much nastier, and more common surprise.
DeletePS How about a post doc in Australia? Maybe nature will suit you better there. :P
Love the garden. It looks so peaceful.
ReplyDeleteI like your succulent drawings. The colors and shapes appeal to me.
Blegh... poison ivy. I've had it twice. The itching drives you insane. Thankfully it was only small spots. Although...chiggers might be worse on the itching and more annoying to get rid of.
I wasn't a fan of the succulent drawings myself, because the blender really didn't do what I wanted. It made the ink bleed like crazy. I had to add the border to conceal it! Still, I needed to try. :)
DeleteI've never been bitten by chiggers, but it doesn't sound like I'm missing out on anything!