In the Garden and In the Studio

One of my annual rites of spring involves taking out my old lawnmower and seeing if she will start up. When I say old, I mean OLD - this poor thing is about 20 years old. Every year, I wonder if this will be her finale - the year she doesn't start. But miraculously, she always does - as she did this year, on Saturday. I breathed a sigh of relief, told her she was a good lawnmower, and cut some grass.

After that, my garden demanded attention. Weeding, weeding, weeding. And I finally got around to planting some summer bulbs I foolishly bought a month ago. I had seen this wonderful display in a store back in April and, in a moment of temporary insanity, picked up a bag of gladiolus bulbs - 50 of them, to be exact. It took a long time to plant them all. But while I was doing that, I had time to appreciate the things that were blooming in my garden right now, like these daffodils and periwinkle and a mystery flower (?) - not sure what it is.

It was a great weekend for working in my studio. After the yardwork and gardening, I spent several hours working on a couple of paintings for a show coming up, Art Fayre. While I was in my studio, I found some old sketchbooks. There were several fast warm-up drawings in them - not keepers, just quick gesture drawings. I like the colour in this one.

And this was a very fast pencil sketch just to loosen up my hand and arm. The right leg and foot were fun.