My Garden Journal - Art in Real Life #17

Enjoy the process… take the time…find the beauty…

It’s been longer than usual since my last blog post. There are a couple of reasons: One is a number of friends who moved away over the past few years have come into town, and we wanted to reconnect - So we did, including some as overnight houseguests. They came to visit at our new home, that ended up being just a few blocks from our old house. It’s been a long journey that landed us so close to our departure, but that is another story for another time.

As soon as the weather warmed up, we headed to our new yard and garden. Along with tending the raised beds and learning a lot, we have been redesigning and renovating sections of our one-third of an acre. I’m having a great time making new beds and painting with flowers.

The photos below feature the next spread in my garden journal.


 

A Flip-through of the journal so far…

Here is a flip through of the garden journal so far. It’s still a lot of fun to make the pages and record the progress of the raised beds with photos, journaling and painting.

Using my own photos and designing the layout of the page has been a joyful evening and too-hot day pastime. I highly recommend it! One of the keys to the joy is not putting pressure on myself by giving myself a deadline. When I start to feel a ‘should’ coming on, I tell myself, ‘It takes as long as it takes, and that’s okay.’ So far, so good.

I also want my art to stay fresh. It’s been a rough few years and I’ve been journaling and blogging a long time. I’m finding the more I give myself grace to take it a bit easy, the more I’m healing and gaining enthusiasm for a new season.

 

Cultivate fruitfulness

As you see, these pages are about fruit in our yard: the apple tree and the berries. We are blessed to have raspberries in our new yard. They are sweet and juicy! Yum! We then bought some miniature blueberry and blackberry plants to put in two patio pots. I took photos of all of them and then drew them below in a whimsical, idealized way. Like the other pages, these pages were drawn with a fine line mechanical pencil before I painted them with watercolors. The process is very relaxing and forgiving using pencil and watercolors.


Drawing the garden journal pages

The page below is now my current favorite with the dark soil surrounding the plants with the bird’s-eye view of the bed, and the fruit tree growing out and framing the top of the page.

The apple tree is significant to me with sentimental value. I wrote in the scroll at the left in my journal: ‘My daughter Jennie grafted a number of varieties of apple branches onto this dward Pixie Crunch apple tree. It reminds me of her - who I love and miss since she moved to a faraway state. The tree prompts me to be thankful and pray for her.’


Using my photo reference to compile a design for the apple tree raised bed

Taking photos of the garden helps me keep a record of the progress and the phases it grows through. It also provides the visual reference and inspiration for the journal pages.


Fruitfulness spread


Like a tree…

While making this journal, I’ve been reading books, quotes, and Scripture that relate to the garden, gardening, and nature. I’ll be sharing more about that later. On the scroll to the right of the apple bed I put the Scripture from Jeremiah 17:7-8 NLT:

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.
They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water.
Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of draught.
Their leaves stay green and they never stop producing fruit.”

During the time I painted and wrote the pages above, we had record high heat. At the same time, the world has been in turmoil. It can be easy to get discouraged. Finding and making beauty is a wonderful way to help cope. For me, making two new flower beds in the back yard has brought relief from sadness and joy. Cutting a bouquet of flowers and watering the newly planted blooms is lifting my spirits. Sitting with a friend over lunch helps me stay connected, knowing relationships and kindred spirits make life worth living.

Find the beauty and enjoy!

Valerie