July 2024 Bloom Day

Hanging basket on porch.

  

It's hot and very dry here in my corner of Virginia--USDA Zone 6B--on this July Bloom Day. We haven't seen a drop of rain in going on three weeks, and June's rains weren't exactly plentiful. Despite my attempts to keep it watered, my garden is really suffering, and the local deer are more voracious than ever. So, this Bloom Day, hosted by Carol Michel's May Dreams Garden, is going to be skimpier than usual.

 

Hanging baskets.

Fuchsia on porch.

 

Thanks to their daily watering in the scorching temperatures, the hanging baskets on the porch have about the most flowers: petunias, calibrachoas,blue and white  lobelias, coleus and a Fuchsia in one basket. There are a few flowers the deer have mostly left alone, so let's take a look.

Starting on the east side of the house, the hydrangeas 'Little Quick fire'  and 'Incrediball' have flowers that haven't been mauled--while another hydrangea, 'Endless Summer' next to Incrediball has been completely consumed.

 

Hydrangea 'Little Quick Fire'

Hydrangea 'Incrediball'

 

My Vitex usually blooms profusely at this time of the year, but despite lots of watering, the shrub (now about 10' tall) isn't nearly as showy as in other years.

 

Vitex in bloom.

Coming around to the back yard the 'Blue Nile' Agapanthus I planted last year has produced a couple of stalks, and the red Salvia next to it is also flowering.

 

Agapanthus 'Blue Nile' with red Salvia.

The deer left me only a few blossoms of Liatris, and black-eyed Susans in my flower beds, probably because they couldn't reach them easily. The Chinese iris, formerly known as Blackberry lily or Belamcanda, don't appear very appetizing to them either.

 

Liatris 'Kobold'

Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm')

Chinese iris (formerly called Belamcanda)

Towards the west side of the back yard, the bed with the Anise hyssop and bee balm 'Jacob Cline' are doing well, they seem to be fairly deer-proof. But my Coneflowers and Phlox have been decimated, very few flowers have survived. Just about every Daylily bud was eaten before it could open, among  dozens on plants: Stella de Oro, Purple de Oro, yellow and peach colored varieties, so sad!

 

Anise hyssop and bee balm 'Jacob Cline'

Back toward the front walk, the Agastache 'Firebird' is among the few plants that deer don't find appetizing--I must plant more Agastache in my garden, so I can have a few more summer blooms. Unfortunately, they prefer well-drained soil, which with all the clay here is just about impossible to provide, so they do better for me in pots. But the pots have to be watered on a daily basis.

 

Agastache 'Firebird' along the front walk.

Back deck potted plant  collection

 That's about it for bloom day in my garden, pray for rain in this area, plentiful rain! Then maybe I'll have more to show next month.

New Artworks

 

Wakulla Cypress, oils on panel, 18"h x 14"w.

The first week in June I had the great opportunity to take an oil-painting workshop with master artist Steven Walker in an unusual setting: Snow Fielding's mill in Millwood. I hadn't done much painting in oils since we moved to Front Royal, except for a couple of commissions, and felt my skills had become rather rusty.

 

Steven Walker's demo with students.

Steven's demos were awesome--he works with amazing speed and sureness of touch! The materials he uses were new to me too--mostly double-sided plastic panels and aluminum/copper panels made by Raymar. He sprinkles the painting surface with a solvent-free medium made by Gamblin, which helps to spread the paint on the panel, eliminating the need for linseed oil; this medium helps the paint to dry faster, becoming tacky in just a few hours.

I had not realized that Gamblin also made a solvent-free gel medium and bought the gel medium rather than the liquid, and discovered the gel medium didn't spread quite the same way as the liquid. I ended up using way too much medium on my first panel, and applied it to the smoother side, which made it very difficult to apply the paint--a mess, in fact.

 

First painting: Trillium Trail, 14"h x 18"w.

Fortunately, my messy painting dried overnight while in the back of my car (it gets very hot there at this time of the year), so that I could continue working on it the next day. I stumbled around trying to turn my painting into something with interest, and eventually managed to get an acceptable painting. The "Trillium Trail" was the best I could do, but I think the painting needs more drama. I'll probably try to paint this again sometime and see if I can do it better.

 

Bear Loop Trail, 16"h x 20"w.

My next workshop painting was a classic Virginia mountain landscape--the Allegheny ranges seen from the top of Warm Springs Mountain. One of the things I struggled with using the gel medium on the smooth surface of the panels was that skies would become streaky, and need another layer of paint to smooth them out. Everything in this painting took two layers of paint to achieve, and the colors/values are still not quite right. I guess it takes the right amount of paint/gel medium with just the right touch to spread the paint. It takes a lot of practice to get this right.

 

Hiker at Calmes Neck, 16"h x 20"w.

 

My third effort (above) started off a bit better--the lighting of the photo was easier to deal with, with strong light and shadows. I still didn't get the right val-hues (as my old teacher Lee Boynton would say) on the first layer of paint, but it became easier to adjust the values as I went on.

On our last day, one of the other students (we were all female, BTW) brought a lovely bouquet of hydrangeas from her garden, and Steven used it for his last demo. His painting has such a wonderful, looseness, just enough detail there to convey the sense of the flowers, the 3D modeling and colors--just perfect!

 

Steven Walker's last demo piece, 8" x 8"

I'd love to be able to paint that loosely and still communicate all the important details to convey the depth of dimension and lighting in my oil paintings, I'd be very happy.

 

Wakulla Cypress, first layer

 

With the inspiration of Steven's example, my last painting started out somewhat better than the others, thought the first layer (above) is still streaky, I was starting to hit the val-hues a bit closer to what was needed, and the brushwork was looser. I didn't get to finish this one at the workshop, and brought it home for the second and final coat. The result is what you saw at the head of this post. I think this one turned-out best of the four.

I'll probably submit the last two of these oil paintings for Art at the Mill's fall show to see if they find a buyer there--we'll see.