A Walk in the Winter Garden: Roath Park

From hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping in the town centre of Cardiff, just some 5 minutes drive, I was in the Roath Park.

It was a drizzling mild morning.  The flowerbed near by the conservatory in the botanic garden, a part of the Roath Park, was emptied and showed the dark brown manure, where some gardeners were working on.  It was quiet.  While having been walking toward the lake, I have seen only a few dog walkers.

(This tree is, however, no Japanese Maple.)

I haven't been to the park for years, but still remembered there was a Japanese plant area on the way to the lake.  I would come here sometimes with my children and a playgroup when they were very young.  The Japanese maple trees still stood there, but the all the leaves fell down.  The leaves kept their vibrant red colour as it didn't take so long after the fall.

I didn't expect so much colours in the botanic garden.  But the peculiar light purple colour was caught by my eyes.

Murasaki-Shikibu, Japanese Beautyberry!  I had seen them, in fact, only in pictures.

Next to the Japanese Beautyberry, I found another Japanese shrubs, Nanten, Nandina Domestica.  They are commonly called Heavenly Bamboo or Sacred Bamboo (in Wikipedia) although they are not the bamboo family.  

This shrub is seen widely in every garden in Japan.  My parents' house, my grandparents' houses, my friends' ....... this plant is so familiar.  Nanten is evergreen bush and has berries in the winter.  My mother would decorate the branches with berries for the New Year's celebration, and often put the leaves under or next to food on festive plates.

In the rain, despite the rain, they made me a little bit happy like being in Japan, my home country.

Some shrubs like thorns under big trees had still green leaves and red berries.  Holly-like shrub had strikingly red and green holly-like but tiny leaves.  I cannot find the name.

South Wales has usually wet mild winter.  The autumn has just gone and left colourful gift behind.  The winter brings the plants to rest and looks after them until the spring takes turn.

Calendar 2014 Is On Its Way

The Calendar for 2014:

I have been printing the next year's calendar now, again of the leaves of British plants.  They will be in a landscape acrylic case.  This time I am trying a hanging version as well.  I'll see.  The picture below is Virginia Creeper for October.

Memory of our trees: Sycamore & Ash

There used to be two big trees between the fence of our neighbour's and ours.  Until just a few months ago.  

We have talked about concern of the overgrown trees over the roof of both of us for years.  Then at last, the chance came round in the early spring.
( If you don't know, please see my 'Tree Diary' on 15. April 2013.)

I really wanted to make a nice memory of trees for our next door neighbours, who have been the first to greet us when we moved into our house more than ten years ago and been always so friendly and gave hands for help whenever we needed.  Sadly the couple are going to move out because of downsizing of their family.

Sycamore (left) is on our neighbours' side, and ash is on our side.  The squirrel family has nestled somewhere near by and they run around our house.  They are running around outside, climbing up trees, jumping over from a branch to another branch.  The bird box has been at our ash tree still there (please see the photo on the previous diary) for our regular guests, blue tits, in the spring.

  Sycamore and Ash 2013

(23 x 30cm on A3 cartridge paper, 7 panels with 12 colours)

The leaves are coming out

I haven't written for a while...., and the summer has arrived at last.  It was quite late.  Many leaves are now growing quickly to catch up and to enjoy the short summer.

The ash tree in our front garden, which has had a massive pruning in April.  It looked very odd and bleak, but now young leaves are thriving from the pruned branches. 

 And,  as usual between the spring and the summer, a couple of blue tit nested in the bird box at the trunk of the ash tree, flying from branch to branch, perching on the roof of the nesting box, looking into through a small whole (Is a mum-to-be already sitting on eggs inside?).  The tiny blue tit is very busy.

Summer is coming!

It's now in May!  After the long chilly spring, the summer is approaching to the South Wales.  At once many flowers have started blooming here and there.  Though, only a few common toad flax's sprouts are coming out of the soil.  In the front garden, now!, early dog violet are blooming, which bloom usually in April.  The plants have delayed their growth schedule a couple of weeks (even a month), but I hope they catch up soon by the summer comes.

By the way, I have taken part in a 2-days brush-up workshop for screen printing over the weekend.  (Hurray, tomorrow is a bank holiday.)  I have learnt screen printing in my student time, many years ago.  But I didn't remember how to do it precisely; perhaps the method might have changed.

But, it hasn't changed much.  As we proceeded the screen print, I was gradually remembered how to do it!  


I brought one of my latest paper cut as a try how to transform it onto screen prints.  We were allowed to make prints up to A3 size.  So I brought an A3 size black paper cut work.  All the flowers I cut out from the paper were grown in my garden.  In fact, it doesn't matter to see this picture up-side-down or from whichever side.

My Summer Garden 2013

(paper cut, black paper, A3)

I tried 2 coloured prints and 1 coloured prints on the second day.  At first I separated the picture into 2 parts with Photoshop.  For the 1st layer yellowish colour was used, fully covered with the colour all over except clouds in the centre.  The 2nd layer was practically the same as the original paper cut, and coral orange was used.

My Summer Garden Orange 2013

(Screen Print from original paper cut, 2 colours, water-based acrylic colour, white cartridge paper, A3)

My Summer Garden Green 2013

(Screen Print from original paper cut, 1 colour, water-based acrylic colour, white cartridge paper, A3)

Without great guide and a lot of useful suggestions by Jude, who led this workshop, I couldn't have enjoyed much.  Thank you so much, Jude!

(The workshop was held at the Printhaus, Cardiff.  Click the name, left, or see the Link List at the bottom of this page.)

A big trim at last...

There had been young two trees, sycamore and ash, in a big garden many years ago.  Some decades ago the big garden was divided between these trees, and a new house was built on the ash tree side.  They grew every year and gave shade for the houses on the both side and rests for birds.

But their branches became overwhelming.  In the small town facing the Bristol Chanel it was often windy.  The trees became a nuisance; the branches fell down over the roofs when the storm came, the leaves in the autumn fell down on the roofs and stopped the rain drainages, their shades prevented other plants growing etc.....  The most dangerous possibility was that these trees fell down one day on the houses next to them.

The big trim was needed for them before they came back to life.  My neighbour decided to get rid of the whole tree on his side, sycamore.  We decided to keep our ash tree but with a lot of trimming.

Last week 4 tree service men came round in the morning.  It was so quick until the sycamore tree was cut into piece and disappear from my sight.  There were a lot of pieces of trunk and a big pile of small branches left on the ground.

They came to our tree around noon.  After only one and a half hour or so, our ash tree was drastically trimmed down.  It looks bleak and probably will stay not much different from now  this year, but will grow back to normal in a couple of years.

'We took care of your bird box', one of the tree men said to me.  I noticed in the next morning a pair of blue tit going to move in.  The spring has come!

It looks a bit bleak.

English Oak with leaves (2nd of 3: Tree&Leaves series, A5)

The first one of the trilogy was published on 11/2/2013.  (Turkey Oak)

Today, I'm going to upload the second one.  (The third one will be uploaded some time later.)  This is English Oak.  English oak is so common that it's seen everywhere in the UK.  The one I made this print stands on a small field in my town.  English oak can be quite massive, but this one, I would say, is middle-sized.  I liked the balanced form of its trunk.  Its branches were growing down almost onto the ground, but the thick trunk holds them strongly.

English Oak 2012

(Japanese vinyl relief, 2 rounds with 2 colours, A5)