What is in my basket?

What is in my basket...a look back at 2015...and looking ahead to changes.

 

First published within a few months of starting this blog, What is in my basket is about the watercolour techniques I learned in one of the first online art classes I bought. Since 2015, I continue to experiment and return now and then, to examine my first sketches and blog posts.

 

This post in particular, reminds me of the beauty I find each year in my flower and vegetable gardens, right in the heart of Orleans, a suburb of Ottawa. After 28 years at this address, it is time for a change.

 

Some of the flowers you see will be making the move with me, I hope. Much like the sewing machine and the lunch pail that I sketched, I have fond memories associated with select flowers, and I don't have the heart to leave them behind.

 

And so, I will bring some clippings with me to adorn my flower beds in our new home, 25 minutes from here.

A tisket, a tasket,
A green and yellow basket;
I wrote a letter to my love
and on the way I dropped it.

I dropped it, I dropped it,
And on the way I dropped it.
A little boy picked it up
And put it in his pocket! (Old nursery rhyme)

I suppose I could have painted a basket full of letters as is suggested by the nursery rhyme....but with our garden producing fresh lettuce, beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers as well as herbs, and my flowers all in glorious blooms, letters in a basket were furthest from my mind. The basket of vegetables and the overturned, overflowing pot of flowers remind me of the bounty of nature right in my own back yard.

And if I am thinking of baskets, how could I not have a basket full of laundry?

The smell of fresh linens and towels would top the list of my all-time favourite things. From the moment the final dregs of dirty snow melt away and the path is clear to my clothesline, to the morning the pristine frost blankets the ground once again in November or earlier, one of my greatest pleasures is to let my clothes dry in the sun or the breeze.

All baskets were inspired by the three-week Summer Faire course by Junelle Jacobson. I had to start the assignment over because I ruined the first three baskets I had painted by trying to flick some white paint on the watercolour sketches. However, the effect reminded me too much of snow. You will see what I mean in the little preserves basket below. It is ruined and so were the others. I should have tried the technique on some scrap pieces first.

Live and learn.