Geranium Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 13 x 10" 33 x 25cm SOLD
Roses yellow/coral Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 16 x 12 40 x 30 SOLD
Sassi on a Cloudy Day Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 19.5" 30 x 50cm
First red rose of summer Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 12 30x 30cm
Sassi under clouds Laurie Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 12 30x 30cm
Iris with Buttercups Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 16 x 12" 40x 30 cm
Iris with fig leaves Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 16 x 19.5" 40 x 50cm SOLD
Chicken Family Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 16 30 x 40cm
Pint-size chickens adorn our yard, enveloped in our
knee-high prairie. Some have funny “Mohawk”
haircuts, and I suspect these are the potential roosters. Harika
puts them through their paces, and we are careful not to feed her chicken. The yard is a veritable jungle for the under
16” set, and I imagine cities and festivals, churches and bordellos below.
The buttercups are less prominent this year, but we have an
array of purple flowers: tall, dark
spikes; teensy magenta flowers; a multi-petaled purple dahlia affair with
ragged edges; aster-like lavender blooms, red-violet clover and many
irises. A few buttercups and a
smattering of daisies set it all off nicely.
Blair jokes about how I always wanted to plant “meadow in a can”, and
now I have that, in spades.
The roses surrounding the house have begun to bloom. The bees are busy. We’ve have two or three new swarms a week,
that Ludovico and Fabbio capture in large plastic bags and carry off to a new
hive. I’ve been really surprised how
that works – the maverick queen, an upstart in the hive, takes off and lands on
a tree (this sometime takes longer than one would like, and the mass of bees
buzz around), then hundreds, maybe thousands of bees surround her, creating a
football-like mass. Sometimes the bees
cover the entire tree limb, which the gardeners enclose in a plastic bag and
cut off. They place the new “hive” in
their car/truck and drive off. Blair
says he hopes there won’t be an accident.
I’ve planted a few things myself, somewhat to the chagrin of
Ludovico, who feels all the flowers are his job. I couldn’t wait another minute for the
geraniums, which have been growing absurdly spindly in the “cantina” this
winter, to produce a flower, and bought a few thriving plants. I figure the subterranean variety will bloom
sometime in late June or early July when we are in Connecticut. I planted cosmos and nasturtiums and
marigolds, from seeds; we have sage and rosemary and a thyme plant.
All of the fruit trees have their fruit on: figs are nearly ready; cherries just a couple
of weeks away. The apples, pears and
peaches look to August, and later all the nuts and grapes.
Needless to say, I have some pretty fierce allergies
transpiring. I have to spend time indoors to stabilize,
then I venture out to paint. I am taking honey made by these local bees as
a vaccine against the pollen, but this year it is taking longer to work. I use an antihistamine as well.
Friends from Paris have come to visit for the weekend. They are amazed at the difference in our
lifestyle. But I think there is as much
going on in our patch of lawn as there is in the whole of magnificent Paris.
