Winter Is Descending: 22nd January

Quite recently I have learnt about Japanese (originally Chinese) lunar-solar calendar with 24 seasonal divides and 72 further seasonal divides.  And the final winter part, which are 5 days, of 6 has begun this  week.  The final winter part is further divided into 3 parts for 5 days each.  The spring begins 4th of February.  The winter is almost toward the end.

Next week is the last week of January.  The air is cold and damp, though, the sunlight is getting brighter day by day.  I can feel the season is moving to the next one.  Of course, the plants sense the seasonal change everyday.  They are growing slowly but steadily in our garden.  

In the middle of January the yellow male catkins of hazel began to release the pollen.  The air wasn't dry just after the heavy rain, but they didn't miss out the non-rainy day.

Witch hazel (hamamelis) started blooming.  The thin ribbon-like striking yellow petals are appearing slowly from brown hulls.  As they flower quite long for about a month, the yellow colour  brights up in the dark half-shade area of the garden.

Underneath of the hamamelis and other bushes, and under dead leaves, the smaller plants are protected from the coldness.  Lords-and-ladies are one of the first which appear from the ground.

And, snowdrops.  They come out from the same spot every year.  Just after a stormy night, the buds and the leaves had mud, but the next rain will wash it out.  February is coming soon.

Calendar January 2015: Ground Thistle

A Happy New Year!

One of My New Year's Resolutions is to write stories about the plants each month, which are on my 'Leaves Calendar of British Plants 2015'.  I have made relief-print calendars for three years, and thought I'd like to share the small stories about the plants what I found here in the south-east Wales.

January: Ground Thistle

(Cirsium acaule, stemless thistle, daisy family)

Walking on a field in the winter and looking at the ground, you will find a lot of thriving plants here in the south east Wales. Grasslands stay green even in the middle of winter.  We don't have so often frosty morning.  And maybe those plants are hardy enough against lower temperature.  I can pick up some green plants on the grassland; dandelion, clover, buttercup,   silverweed, plantain, thistle and so on.

Thistles?  Are they the summer flowers?  Thistles, of daisy family, usually die down in the winter.  And yet, this ground thistle is thriving among the grass and other plants throughout the year.  As the other name, stemless thistle, shows, this has no or very short stems.

Fields are mowed a couple of times during the summer.  The stemless leaves survive from the blades of lawn mowers.

One chilly morning, I found the ground thistle on a field.  There were no one except for me.  The ground wore tiny morning dews on it entire leaves.  The condensed water in the air landed on every tiny hairs.  This made this plant somehow a pale fragile look.  But, no, ground thistle is tough.  The leaves are prickly and furry as of other thistles are so.

In fact, it was hard to identify the plant.  Usually thistles grow in meadows or at boarders of field.  And ground thistle grow on a short grasslands.  At first I thought it might be dwarf thistle.  Its stem is also short, but the leaves don't look like dwarf thistle not prickly enough.


'.... grow in short grassland on the downs and limestone uplands of sothern England and across Europe.....  This plant is no longer as common as it once was, since so many of the downs are now wheat fields.' (The Pocket Guide To Wild Flowers of the British Isles and Northern Europe, Pamela Forey,  1997 edition, Parkgate Books)


Ground thistle is thought to be a declining species.  But I didn't know 'the downs'.  I had to search this.  Luckily nowadays we can search on the internet.  At first, found 'the Downs, Bristol' on the wikipedia, stating that 'an area of public open limestone downland in Bristol, England.'  I searched further the downland on Wikipedia, too.  A downland is an area of open chalk hills.  It is no wonder that ground thistle has declined.  Wheat prefers almost neutral but slightly acidic soil, while ground thistle prefers alkaline soil.  Perhaps, in addition to that,  pesticides were used on the farm lands.   As cultivated farm lands expanded, ground thistle had to be excluded.

The grassland, where I found the ground thistle, was not a wheat field, just a a short grassland in the winter, a meadow in the summer between meadows and farms.  Some seeds with pappus (hairy part attached to a seed) might have flown over from somewhere and landed on the grassland.  The ground there might contain chalk some of these stemless thistles have survived.  They are so prickly that dogs don't dig them out with their pows on the field.  They are small and flat, but tough!

Merry Christmas!

Today is Boxing Day, and it's been raining and now becoming stormy.  Such a day isn't for a walk but good for writing my blog.  :)

After the hectic days, we have spent relaxed Christmas days.  Making Adventskränze (Christmas wreaths in the German traditional way) became a tradition for us among German-speaking friends.  We bring leaves, branches with berries from each one's garden and decorations.  It's always nice to share the materials among us, and to catch up with a or more cup of coffee and/or tea, of course.

Since my husband is German, we follow the German way more or less.  Putting and decorating a Christmas tree, and unpacking the Christmas present take place in the Christmas Eve.

This time, I chose a necklace for myself as a Christmas present.  I saw it on a stall next to me on a craft fair.  Yuki, whom I got to know at the last Christmas fair, creates beautiful fine jewellery with the name of 'locca'.  She uses a distinctive technique of Japanese Shippou-enamelling, and is inspired often by plants and animals.  The necklace I bought is not used the shippou-enamelling technique, but I fell in love with the delicate form and texture.  It looks like a petal of, say, rose.  But she told me that the necklace was inspired by a scale of a cone of a kind of spruce or larch.
(Yuki has her own blog: locca.exblog.jp)

Christmas Day was chilly but sunny with the crisp air and the blue sky.  My eldest son, who is usually not keen on walking in the woodland, suggested a family walk in the woodland.  As we knew the ground was quite muddy, we all put on wellies or sturdy water-proof walking shoes.

The stream was quiet and clear despite the recent bad weather.  But the ground was muddy as expected.  A flock of sheep was browsing on the green field.  At the fringe of the woodland, the fern leaves were now died down.  But I find a batch of the grey beige leaves was beautiful.

As we entered the birch woodland, we were surrounded by the quiet atmosphere.  It was Christmas Day at noon.  Most of people were gathered at home and busied with preparing Christmas dinner.  Quiet; even birds might have been resting in the rare sunny day.  

A tall old birch was fell down onto a foot path.  Was it not able to hold its long trunk?  

Birch trees grows mainly in the woodland, but some other trees also cohabit.  Larch trees fell their leaves but left some cones on their branches.  I found it on the ground and imagined Yuki might have saw one like that and made the beautiful necklace.

PADLT Craft Fair was held today

The weather was nice, warm and dry today.  A lot of people came in to the Baptist Church Hall to browse the PADLT craft fair although there were some other craft fair near by today.

I prepared much more greeting cards than ever as I noticed at the previous fairs in the summer that more and more cards were sold.  As expected a lot of greeting cards were sold.

Also calendars for 2015 were sold well.  Some people returned to buy the next year's calendars.  This encourages me to carry on creating calendars.

Quite a few people were interested in the original paper cut pieces, which I framed and displayed but not for sale.  It was a shame I didn't want to sell them since they were very precious.  However, I wanted to show how the original pieces looked like.  (As an example, see the pictures of the diary on 23. November 2014)

I would like to thank you all so much for having come to the fair,  and also thank the PADLT for having invited me as a stall holder again!

The PADLT showed the visitors the documentary video of their youth group's visit to Lesotho in the summer 2014 during the fair.  I hope they raised a lot of money for children in Lesotho through today's craft fair.  I am very pleased that I could contribute (only a little bit but )to the fund raising.

I will have a stall on another craft fair, nus nus Winter Fair, next Saturday 6th December in Cardiff.  Please come along if you missed today's fair!

In the morning at 10 am, the fair has just started.  

Christmas Fairs are coming soon!; Greeting Cards: Christmas + 4 Seasons + 4 Trees

I've been busy with preparing for the upcoming craft fairs.  I'll bring my art work pieces including the next years calendars and greeting cards.  Either of the fairs are free admission.  Please come along!


Upcoming CHRISTMAS FAIRS 

PADLT Christmas Crafts and Creations

Saturday 29th November

10am - 1pm

Stanwell Road Baptist Church Hall (next to the Paget Rooms)

Free Admission

nus nus Winter Fair

Saturday 6th December

10am - 5pm

St.Catherine's Church Hall

Pontcanna, CF11 9DE

Free Admission

New greeting cards (A6, 105x148mm) are now ready for the craft fairs.   

CHRISTMAS CARDS

There are two versions of two different images from paper cutting.  1st version is in the black background, and 2nd version is in the green background (each green is different).

Squirrel and Holly (left)

We have a big holly shrub in the garden, but the berries almost disappear by the beginning of winter every year.  I presume birds eat the most of the berries, and yet our neighbouring squirrels might contribute to consuming the red berries, though I have never witnessed it.  By the way, the holly berries are toxic to human.  So you never eat them!

Robin and Rose Hips with Holly Leaves (right)

Robin, of course, is a typical symbol for the winter here.  When I walk outside in the meadows near by our house in the late autumn and in the winter, I can find half-pecked ripe rose hips.  Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can see the feast.

These are the original paper cut pieces; 11x11cm.

FOUR SEASONS
These four cards are extracts from the 'British Countryside Series'.  The size of the original paper cut is A3, and the images are trimmed for the A6 cards.

 TREE SERIES
These 4 pieces of relief prints are from 'Tree Series'.  They are 'Sycamore and Ash', 'Silver Birch', 'London Plane' and 'Bustard Service' .(clockwise from upper right)

TREE SERIES
These 4 pieces of illustrations are 'Tree Portrait Series'.  Clockwise from far right: 'London Plane', 'Silver Birch', 'Turkey Oak' and 'Horse Chestnut'.

At last! Calendar 2015

Now it's in the middle of November.  I should have planned better to organise calendar making.  It was running late.  However, the leaves calendar 2015 is at last ready!

I have made three types of calendar for the next year.  The moon phases and seasons (equinoxes and solstices) are put but no particular national holiday on the calendar.

Wall Monthly Calendar I: (larger one, right)

Calendar Original Relief Prints with individual signs and serial number (limited edition of 20)

12 pictures (one picture for each month, 10 x 15 cm)

Paper Size: 14.9 x 42 cm, Weight: 150 g/m²

Acid free cartridge paper from responsible sources

A tweed thread (wool 60% and cotton 40%) for hanging

Wall Monthly Calendar II: (smaller one, left)

Printed with inkjet printer

12 pictures (one picture for each month, 5 x 10 cm)

Paper Size: 10.5 x 29.7 cm, Weight: 150 g/m²

Acid free cartridge paper from responsible sources

A tweed thread (wool 60% and cotton 40%) for hanging

Calendar in acrylic case stand: (bottom)

Printed with inkjet printer

12 pictures (one picture for each month, 5 x 10 cm)

Paper Size: 10.7 x 18.4 cm, Weight: 148 g/m²

External Size of the case: 0.8 x 11 x 19 cm

Original relief prints of 12 different plants for 12 months

Serial numbers and signs for original relief prints

Calendar stand

If you are interested in the calendar, please leave a message (below).

Apology for Calendar 2014: October 20th was missing!

I have to apology for my mistake in the 2014 Calendar.  Just before I have received an email from one of my friends about missing the 20th October.

Having checked in my file of 2014 Calendar, indeed, the 20th was missing; the 21st came straight after 19th.  Although I had checked through the calendar when writing the numbers, I couldn't find the mistake before finishing the work.  It mustn't have happened, and mustn't be repeated!

I will endeavour to avoid any mistake.  (There is no missing number in my 2015 calendar.  I am relieved.)