May and June

It's been so long since I last wrote that I thought I'd break things up into months to let you know what we've been up to!

May was all about the end of the school year for Daniel and me working on commissions, some of which I can't show yet. 

However, Lola growing up was a big part of our summer. We all graduated from puppy school (and by now have forgotten much of what we learned). Lola is such a good dog - she loves to play with her toys, she doesn't chew on anything she isn't supposed to and she is the snuggliest dog we've ever had.

By now, she and Winslow are best buddies and love to hang out together. We have to make sure she doesn't get too wild with old Winslow, but other than that they get along wonderfully!

Other than that, May was all about the garden being at its most beautiful! 

Our fruit trees were coming along nicely as well. The kumquat tree has been blooming all summer and is full of fruit that will be ripe in the winter. 

Our quince tree, which had two quince last year, is full of slowly ripening fruit. We are looking forward to the winter when we can hopefully make a good bit of quince jam.

Which brings me to our fig tree and the month of June. 

In June, the figs started to ripen and we picked several pounds of figs every day, which had to be processed immediately. Luckily, they don't all get ripe at once!

We dried many pounds of them and made jam to last all year. My favorite jam from this batch was with added orange blossom water. So good! The dried figs we use in Muesli and a rye sourdough bread I make that is amazing!

We also gave many figs to friends and I baked a few of these gorgeous fig frangipani tarts. By the end of the month - and about 90 pounds of figs later - we were glad it would be a whole year before the next harvest!

And of course, there has to be some art in my post. These were two commissioned paintings I finished and sent off to France at the end of June.

I'm working on one more large one for this client, which should be done in the next few days. 

I hope you have all been well this summer and have enjoyed a slower pace, the joys of longer days and maybe a vacation. I visited Germany in July and will tell you all about that in my next post!

❧ Silke

Around the Garden

This is such an exciting time of the year because so much is happening in our garden every day! And the weather is still cool enough, which means I spend a good bit of time outside looking at everything. Later in the summer I basically hide in the air conditioning...

Last year, we planted a quince tree. It was just a stick, really, that then grew branches and leaves. This year, we had a few flowers and it looks like we are getting two quinces to grow, which is probably enough for the tree as it grows and gets established.

The oleander is blooming already and will hopefully continue to do so throughout the summer.

It's such a beautiful splash of color!

A few days ago, our jasmine started blooming and because it's cool enough to have the windows open, we can even smell its wonderful fragrance inside the house.  

While our "normal" hydrangeas aren't blooming yet, one of our oak leaf hydrangeas is sporting gorgeous flowers. The other two are in a different part of our yard and were really affected by the hurricane winds last fall. While they are growing and leafing out, they don't have flowers this year. We are happy they survived the storm!

Every year, Daniel plants a good number of annuals in pots which we have around our back porch and patios. One of my favorites this year is this impatiens with the filled flowers. They look like little roses.

Ahhhhh, the figs are growing! Our tree is loaded and I need to start collecting recipes! I'm sure we'll be making lots of jam and chutney again.

Mama raccoon has been fun to watch. Most of the time, we just see her ears.

But sometimes she will look out and stretch. Can't wait for the babies to get bigger and start peeking out of their nest.

The other day, I looked up to see what the raccoon was doing and saw a green heron sitting nearby. We hear them all the time, but they are usually well camouflaged in the leafy branches.

Tomorrow we are expecting storms but the weekend promises to be gorgeous again. Maybe I'll take some more photos then...

Happy Thursday, everyone!!

❧ Silke

Nothing Stays the Same

I know this. I know that change is the order of things. I know that the only constant in life really is change. And of course my art has to evolve just like everything else, but it catches me by surprise every time.

I really made a commitment early on that I would let my intuition guide and drive my art and that's what I try to do. So, you can see by the elephant and the bird that my color palette was changing. A little darker, calmer and subdued.

And I kept feeling a need to paint more complex paintings, small and large. Today, I'm only showing the small ones as the larger ones are in the sketch phase only at this point.

The background above happened by me dripping high-flow acrylics into watered down absorbent ground. It made for such cool shapes. When I put this on Facebook, one of my friends saw a horse in the upper right, another saw the face in the lower left and I filled in the rest.  I love this painting!

The same with the one below - the figures were suggested by the shapes in the background and I just went with it.

And this one is really different. She was all there in the shapes, wing and all. We'll see where this leads.

Already in the background I created today, some warmer colors are sneaking back in. The textures of this piece are amazing! We'll see what it wants to become. 

And now a few photos I snapped around town and in our back yard (the flower photos at the end!). Savannah is full of "secret" gardens and whenever I walk through town, I try to find one of two.  

Everything is starting to bloom and it is gorgeous!

Winslow and I spotted this heron on our walk yesterday. It was so focused, it totally ignored us.

 And this color is all from our garden. It is spring here in the South and everything is waking up!

Head on over to Paint Party Friday for more beautiful art and inspiring blog posts!

I wish you a colorful, warm and sunny week! 

❧ Silke

Art and More

I'm late with this week's post, but I have a good excuse. Sunshine! And warm temperatures. It's been gorgeous this weekend and I have spent much time outside. I'll have some outdoor photos later in my post, but first this week's art!

This mountain lion just wouldn't come together, so I just kept working at it and adding more layers and wiping them off and adding another. And suddenly, there it was! Beautiful and intense.

The swans are somewhat unusual. They look like they are floating under disco lights. Strangely enough, I painted them around Valentine's day. Totally unintentional and very heart-shaped!

The gorilla took a little while, plus one revision after I thought it was done. I had to lighten the background to make the face stand out a little more. I had fun with this one and the swan painting using my stencils. I used them to apply paint and also wiped off layers of paint with rubbing alcohol through the stencil and got some great texture that way.

I love this snake! It looks as intense as it probably is. I'm happy I don't see them in the wild too often. In fact, having lived in areas heavily populated by poisonous snakes, I have only ever seen three in nature. And none of those times was I in any danger. I'm very glad!

The following four photos are of the backgrounds I prepared for this next week's small paintings. All of them have two layers of high-flow acrylic paint.  I'm hoping they will be just as beautiful when they are all finished.

This next photo just makes me laugh. One of my dear friends from childhood sent us two espresso cups from Germany. One smiles and the other one sports this sad, sad face. I was sitting at the table and noticed the ceramic woman a friend brought back for us from Santiago de Compostela in Spain last year. She, too, looks so very sad. It had quite the opposite effect on me and had me giggling and reaching for my camera.

Daniel has been beyond busy with work and this weekend I made him drive to Tybee Island with me and go for a walk on the beach. He was brave and walked in the water even though the ocean is still very cold. It looks like we were the only ones there, but the beach was full of people who had the same idea. It was wonderful and somehow makes us feel more relaxed instantly!

The artist in me always notices things in nature that I would have overlooked before getting into art.

Here I was totally enamored by these tree forms the waves left in the sand. Aren't they pretty?

Speaking of nice weather, we've put a bit of time into our yard this weekend and planted several kinds of lettuce, parsley, cilantro, kale, zinnias and poppies. The poppies never come up, yet we put out seeds every year in hopes that maybe this year will be different. We'll see. The zinnias always do exceptionally well and give us cut flowers for the house all summer long. Can't wait!!

I took these photos this morning in our yard. The daffodils are blooming, the kumquats are ready to be eaten, the yarrow is starting to flower and a few azalea buds are getting ready to open. They won't really bloom until mid-March, but they are announcing that spring is coming!

On that note, I hope you are seeing sings of spring where you are. I know that the weather hasn't been great in northern Europe where many of my family and friends live. I wish I could bottle up some sunshine and warmth for you who live there...

I wish you sunny days, a happy heart and flowers to bring you joy! Until next week...

❧ Silke