*time for healing

Not my month so far. On top of having a relapse after a new tick bite in May, I had one of the most horrific nights in my life from methylmercury poisoning. I survived, but my nervous system has been damaged and it is not easy at all right now. It is really frustrating, because before it all happened I finally felt a bit more stable again in my body and it was so nice to be able to paint again. Now it feels like starting from zero once again. I have still some paintings that I will share before the month ends and then let's see how it goes further. Have a good transition into summer + take good care of yourself!

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*fairy tale home

Another beautiful house that caught my attention. An old mill, almost entirely covered with ivy, directly by the Purzelkamp. Like coming from a fairy tale, next to the house door was a huge wooden Frog Prince sculpture and rose bushes all around the front yard. It is the perfect home for an artist!

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*big watercolor update – #maykind challenge

1. Seed

3.Tulip

5. Cupcake

7. Barefoot

11. Window cat

13. Garden tools

17. Postcard

19. Cloud

21. Sketchbook

23. Moss

25. Open book

On this last day of May, I will show you all the paintings I did in this very productive month! Most of them were for the #maykind challenge (hosted by Anna Shepeta). Those are the ones with the title on the bottom. You can see I was a bit obsessed with painting chicken lately. I hope you enjoy them! What are your favorites?

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*Foraging herbs & flowers at the end of May

{Music: Lights are on (Instrumental)  – Edith Whiskers + There is comfort in hope – peaceful classical music}

Lately I'm all into picking herbs and flowers to preserve them for the colder season, all sorts of mints, oregano, sage, lemon balm and many more. The elderberries have never been richer in blossoms than this year! We have an abundance of elder bushes in our direct surrounding and there are constantly coming up little bushes like weed in our garden as well! The moderate weather of the last few weeks made everything shine in its most beautiful shades of green. I always feel very grateful when it is not as dry as usual all the time and we get a bit of rain every now and then. It makes everything so much easier!

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*dreamy homes surrounded by cowslips

Cowslips are one of my favorite childhood flowers. We don't have them here, but I'm always happy to find them somewhere on our walks in the forest quarter. I also like to collect pictures of dreamy homes like the one on the second picture. Pretty isolated houses can be so inspiring!

Yesterday I finally prepared the lowers beds and planted the zucchini seedlings. The weather is very moody, but such comfortable temperatures! Usually it is either cold or hot and we do not have much in between, but this year is different in many ways and I enjoy it!

We have magpie children in our garden. They are so playful and nosy! To watch them is utterly entertaining! I observed one of them pluck the single blossom of a wild red poppy on the slope at the end of our property, while the other magpie child immediately stole a part of the blossom from its beak and played with it. Both then ran wildly around in circles with the red blossom parts in their beaks until they got bored.

At the end of winter I placed all remaining walnuts, that I collected in autumn, for the birds under the spruce. Little by little they disappeared one after the other. Then I saw one of the magpies bury a nut in the meadow under the birch trees. I did not know that they hide their food to eat it later. Later I read that they can remember their hiding places better than squirrels. Maybe that is also the explanation for the little nut tree that suddenly appeared behind the greenhouse.

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*no man's land

I wish I could share the sounds that we could hear on that weekend in April when we stayed in the woods of the Forest Quarter for two days. We accidentally crossed the border of Czechia once which already happened to us far too often on our little adventures. I loved the border region in the north-western region of Austria since my early childhood. Back then the Iron Curtain still existed and I remember how there was a little zone that was called no man's land and it especially caught my attention. This area felt so different to every other region I know. It is almost unpopulated due to the happenings of the past and feels like a forgotten place. If I could choose again where to live, I would pick an isolated farm location on the edge of those forests.

We are still working on our hedge, but fortunately an end is in sight! Since the Ice Saints are over now, I have started planting the tomato and pepper plants in the beds and many sunflower, zinnia and corncockle seedlings. I also sowed two more rows with old pea seeds that I found in one of my seed boxes. Hopefully they will still germinate! I managed to paint ten illustrations for the #maykind challenge so far, but I really don't know if I can keep up the rest of May, but let's see!

I will go off now and put the oregano that I picked a few days ago and dried into glasses. Have a good weekend!

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*the shadow side of spring

We had some welcome rain on the weekend. On our walk we came by a meadow full of huge marguerites, wild bellflowers and buttercups, and to my surprise the first scattered, bright blue cornflowers. I'm still busy with painting for the #maykind challenge and yesterday I finally planted my cucumber seedlings into the greenhouse and soon the weather should be stable enough to also plant the tomatoes in the outside beds. This year it is exceptional tricky, because of the abundance of ticks we are having. I think it might have to do with the floodings we had last autumn. I was already shocked when I found six ticks on my clothes in a period of no more than three quarters of an hour while cutting the berry plants. But when we had 26 ticks on a short walk on a forest path, I knew that this will be an extreme year and to be honest, I don't know how to manage this. There is this constant question mark in my head since a few years, something I can not wrap my head around. How should one be able to connect with nature when every step outside is such a risk to one's own life? Everyone who had been seriously ill from a tick bite will understand what I mean. Last month a dear friend of my sisters fiancé committed suicide after battling with severe symptoms of neuroborreliosis for 18 years! It is a hell of a sickness. It destroys you from the inside in a way that makes you feel completely trapped and out of control of your body functions and brain. Like torture, but with no hope for salvation. Sometimes I really feel lonely and stumped with this theme.

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*Gentle May days

{Music: Love grows – Oak Studios + Far Away From the Past – Hanna Lindgren}

Some gentle moments,

between blowballs, quince flowers

and the snails in the soft evening light.

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*a busy May

May is such a lovely month, but oh, so busy! I'm missing stopping by to leave some pictures and words. We started to trim our gigantic cherry laurel hedge this weekend. Recently I found pictures from when we had planted it and it's just incredible how it has grown over those eleven years. It is over 4 meters tall and partly almost 4 meters broad. To trim this giant is one of the most straining garden tasks of the year and it's not manageable anymore in just one weekend. But it offers complete privacy from the street side, keeps out strong winds and provides shade. After the exceptional summery weather we are having cooler days again and frosty mornings. At the beginning of May I started to join the drawing challenge #maykind, but I can't possibly paint all 16 prompts in that short time, but I will show what I managed as soon as the challenge is over. I wish you a fabulous weekend full of scents of lilacs and lily of the valleys!

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*spring watercolor update

Welcome in May! 

I'm back with a big watercolor update with all the paintings I made last month. Since the quality of my favorite watercolor paper changed over the years, I ordered some paper from different labels and feel quite excited to test them out! My last dahlia bulbs are planted and I can't wait to witness how the garden is transforming into a blooming dream, like in my paintings.

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