September’s Abundance of Roses
Few things can lift my heart like a garden full of roses. While Brisbane can be a bit tricky for growing roses with the humidity, September is a magic month of warmth with blue clear skies, encouraging armfuls of blooms.
I picked these stems just before a night of forecast rain. The one on the left is one of my favourite roses of all time with a heavenly fragrance (I generally only grow fragrant roses). It is a french Delbard rose called Soeur Emanuelle (Sister Emanuelle). I think I was a bit of a strange child because my favourite show back in the late 80s, early 90s was Burkes Backyard - even back in primary school I was dreaming of creating a beautiful garden. One night they featured a rose called Souvenir de la Malmaison (another french rose - this time old variety smelling like pink musk lollies). Named for Josephine Bonaparte’s Malmaison, it is a quintessential romantic rose. After one rose fatality, I now have two smallish bushes in my garden and despite being small they produce lots of pale pink blooms.
No shortage of art inspiration or things to paint this month. I have a little ritual of giving our bird baths a fill once every 2-3 days and filling them with floating blooms. It is a lovely way to engage with nature and warm up before an art session and a beautiful mindfulness exercise noticing form, colour, and fragrance - plus a lovely welcome for anyone visiting.
My husband and I have visited the Everglades gardens in the Blue Mountains a few times and I remember reading about the original owner who used to always have flowers floating in a bowl in the garden to welcome guests to the house. I have a beautiful bronze swallow birdbath outside our house and another couple of smaller ones directly outside my studio (one on the ground which stays flower free because the chooks like to use it as a drinking bowl when they come and visit!).
I love this box of coloured twine so decided to try and paint in a bit of a different style with black lined edges.
Twine and Roses - Oil on Linen
