How pink's your garden?

Pink.  It’s the blush on your grandmother’s cheek and the tiny nails of a newborn.  In spring it dapples Winterbank’s gardens – a mad women let loose with paint and brush over camellias, blossom and towering rhododendrons.

It’s also the official colour adopted by the National Breast Cancer Foundation and October is breast cancer awareness month.  It’s the colour of mothers, of aunts, daughters and wives, of sisters and friends who have, like me, been touched by breast cancer.  It reminds us to be vigilant, to care, to nurture and live each day to the full.  

Pink flowers from a burgeoning spring garden for all the pink ladies out there – may their beauty bring joy to your day. 

An angel in the garden...

An-gel-i-ca [an-jel-i-kuh] noun:  Also called Archangel – plant belonging to the genus Angelica, of the parsley family. 

When I was a kid it was the little iridescent emerald gems on the pristine icing blanketing the Christmas cake.  These days it’s a movie star.  

It’s taken two years and finally this magnificent plant is in flower.  It is nothing short majestic and trust me, at 7ft tall it is nothing like its humble cousin!  Struggling through snow and sleet all winter, huge umbels have unfurled this spring and tower skyward, attracting bees and beetles, its aromatic foliage a graceful skirt.  The process for candying the stems is a 5 day marathon and when a spare set comes my way this will be first on my list!

just cosy up to me . . .

Heirloom varieties don't just refer to vegetables.  Handed down through generations tea cosies are nutured in the hands of many women and as such have a story to tell, not to mention keeping your tea hot! I have my friend Di to thank for teaching me how to crochet and a lovely friend Kaisa, for the gift of Finlandish wool. "Under the night sky" series was inspired by childhood visits to my grandparents in New Zealand where we slept in an outbuilding euphamistically called the "annex".  The house was a dressing gown-hugging trot through veges and flowers, dodging perpetually animated clothes flapping in Artic breezes.






  

"Under the night sky" - a childhood inspiration

Fungus captured in beautiful Finnish wool

Can never have enough tea cosies!

inspired volumes . . .

Books are my obsession and have been since I singled out Nancy Drew as my heroine although long before that, treasured Golden Books were recited by rote as I really was too young to read!  My passion for recycling led me on a quest for life's discarded volumes and when the stack got too high, a renewed purpose for them. So now I have a new passion (there are many!), distinctively tailored bespoke artworks that breath new life into old tomes. Words once uttered cannot be resumed and how many are there in a book anyway? Perhaps just one that's special...

"Read to me" - every child's wish

"Fish" - a unique gift for some amazing scientists

 

baby it's cold outside...

Snow sneaks up on you.  A white blanket tossed over the landscape in the night that muffles and mutes the dawn.  The first you know is an alien brightness sneaking behind the curtains.

Some like it hot. Me - my favourite days are when the sky's a big frown over the mountains and it's cold enough to set your teeth on edge.    A little cottage in the hamlet of Batlow nestled in the foothills of Australia's Snowy Mountains is Winterbank. My very own land of earthy pursuits and otherwordly creations...

Clouds roil out of the valleys in winter with a seemingly Tolkien touch and and the sky yawns awake in glorious vastness.

The frosts harden and the land slumbers but it seems birds never sleep.  They are constantly vigilant for larder opportunities...