Here We Go, Spring is Here

I have very few crocuses left thanks to the resident chipmunks who eat the corms, but a couple of early crocuses have bloomed. Lovely.  They may not survive long as we may get a bit of snow in a couple of days.  Today was 17C. The typical March roller-coaster.

I have a dependable patch of snowdrops, which the chipmunks don't eat, but their down-facing flowers means that this is the usual view.  They look like a flock of helicopters.

Looking at them from a chipmunk's vantage point, I get to appreciate their lovely markings,

 and their most unusual shape.

Today, I saw a blue heron poised motionless on the bank of the stream staring fixedly at the water. He will probably be able to catch some minnows.  The song birds are getting noisy in the morning as they scope out suitable nesting sites.  Hopefully soon the little flycatchers and hummingbirds will be back.

Take care.

Bougainvillae Bloom

So the crazy bougainvillea has bloomed again. The small white flowers are the actual flowers, and the bright pink surrounding them are bracts. The bracts are very papery and can be kept as dried flowers.

It is a straggly plant that I prune after it has bloomed, but still it manages to stretch out.  I will cut it this year where the leaves end before the bare stem. It is shooting a bit at the top of the curve so perhaps it will want to grow up there.

With our northern climate, it drops most of its leaves in the fall and only grows some back in February. During the winter, I keep it quite dry but now that it is in full growth I have to water it every few days. I also gave it some balanced fertilizer when it started to leaf out again. It is a bit of a peculiar houseplant but the bright pink bracts are so welcome at this time of year that I am really happy that I have it.

Hope all is well.
 

A Pair of Silly Sheep

I wanted to make a couple of little cards for two of my granddaughters.  These small pictures are based on a Youtube tutorial by Karen Rice Watercolours.  Her painting was much larger and featured five sheep.

These pictures are about 4" x 4".

It was fun doing them.  The sheep were masked out with masking tape which was removed near the end so  that I could paint them in. The sprinkled colour in the background is water colour pencil grated on an emery board over the paper. There is a bit of splatter - still haven't mastered good splatter technique. The white on the eyes was done with white gel pen. The trunks of the trees were drawn with a broken Q-tip (any stick-like tool would work) when the paint was still damp. I attempted some salting on the red part but you really need big crystalled sea salt and I only had table salt so it didn't work the way it is supposed to.

I hope people have been able to find some fun things to do in these restricted days.

Spring is coming and hopefully vaccines. Take care.