Raindrops and Snowdrops

 snowdrops images free use

We've had so much rain, I've been in doors all week.
What do you do when your at home and it rains everyday?

It seems like most of you clean the house from top to bottom.
Have you met Daphne she decided to wash all her blue and white
crockery that she has on display. I didn't want to do things like that,
although she did make it sound a pleasure, pop over and take a look at her blog.
Every week she shares a tasty recipe, along with the music she listens to while
cooking/baking and she can make a visit to the dentist into an interesting story.


Those of you know me well,
know I'd rather be doing things in the garden, than dusting.
I'm always looking forward to Spring.

In between the few times it stopped raining, I had a quick wander around
the garden, and made a note of some of the things that I need to do
as soon as we get some dry days. Looking at the weather forecast
it won't be until the middle if next week.

I did another search to see if I could the find any snowdrops in bloom
 this is the variety I planted 2 years ago.

I still only managed to find one in flower, which had been
battered by the heavy rain, so I brought it indoors.



 Daphne spotted this lonely snowdrop amongst the
tete a tete daffodils in a photo I shared on my Facebook page.

I had hopes of the garden being full of white clusters of snowdrops.

Just like this.

 snowdrops images free use

There are so many different species. all so dainty.

Maybe I should have chosen a more hardy type similar to these.

 snowdrops images free use

I'll have to ask my friends if I can dig up some of theirs after they have

 finished flowering, to plant for next spring. Which is called planting

 'in the green' or wait till next Autumn and plant some more bulbs.

No gardening has been done, so I did the next best thing.

As I'd left my watercolour paints and journals handy

I had a great time sketching & painting Snowdrops.

This was painted in a Stillman & Birn Beta journal.
using Winsor & Newton pan paints.
I really like this paper it's thick so you can paint on both sides.

The next sketch was done in a  10 cm x 15 cm  sketch book made for me
by Valerie Gardener who has a lovely Sketching blog,
called Colours in the Briezh at the moment she is sharing sketches
 from her clothes  designed in the 60's.
She lives in northern France and travels a lot with her husband. She records
all their trips with sketches in situé. Her posts vary from time to time,
 I look forward to seeing her next posts as she is travelling again.

This sketch I did in the lovely handmade sketch book she sent to me.
All the pages are different types of paper.

 It's still raining,
and  while I've been doing these sketches, no dusting has been done.
Who cares, I'm back into watercolour painting,
and if we do have any unexpected visitors,
I'm sure they'll have come
 to see Mr France and I
'Not the dust'

All snowdrops images
are from snowdrops images free use

Have you got lots of snow drops in your garden ?
if so take some photos, I'd love to see them.

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian