Vancouver

I spent the last few days in Vancouver waiting for my daughter's passport to be issued. This gave me a chance to stay with my Mum and Dad and to paint some of the plants in their amazing garden. Their days are filled with environmental activism and plant related passions. In these photos my mum labels pots of seedlings in preparation for Saturday's "Adopt a Pot" event in which members of the Lighthouse Park Preservation Society will come and foster out pots of native plants during the summer before planting them in Lighthouse Park in the autumn. The seedlings have been propagated by my parents from cuttings and seed over the last year. Mum and Dad are really saving the world, one plant at a time.


While in Vancouver I started a painting of my Mum's hydrangea. I like that it has such complicated little green shoots while retaining last summer's dead blooms. Birth and death... a philisophical little painting. The shoots were so complicated that I couldn't figure out what was really happening with them enough to paint, so I brought them into to house overnight to open up a little. I think I can see each separate leaf bud now. I'm not surprised that they were so tightly curled up against the elements as it was cold and actually snowing yesterday and today. It really doesn't feel like spring and everything in the garden seems to be happening later than last year.I love dranunculus at this stage or later in the summer. It just gets weirder.