*and time moves on

Two days ago we celebrated my Birthday, well I have not really been in the mood to celebrate anything, but I prepared a cake the day before and we visited my beloved linden alley, even though the weather was really grey, windy and cold. It was a short endeavor in the end, but there were some sweet chickens running around in the park which captured my attention. It was really nice to observe them! 

The pictures are from January still, there is the last analogue picture that I made of Sunny.

Today I wrapped up warmly and cleaned the walls of the greenhouse and started to prepare the garden beds until my ass froze off. I had enough of waiting for better days. I hope we get some rain in the coming days, the garden is already very dry and we can not turn on the garden fountain yet. Please keep your fingers crossed!

☙

*about books & the right amount of space

First of all,

March is here!

Winter roses from our garden are decorating my working table and I'm drinking some peppermint tea as I am writing here. If you are in search for a good book, I can recommend you "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke. I finished it on the last day of December and it was a fabulous read! I had a break from reading novels after I finished the last part of Christelle Dabos's "The Mirror Visitor" and was delving into nonfiction again, but yesterday I finally started "The Blue Fox" by Sjón and I'm holding myself back to read it in one go, I really love the way it is written and how the author plays with space, it looks almost like a book of poems. Thinking of space, I was never too afraid of white spaces in my art, the opposite is the case, I like to play with it rather than trying to fill the page until no space is left. For me the right amount of white space is making a painting extra appealing! I hope March will bring you lots of sunshine, joy and spring flowers!

☙

*a winter moon & paper stars

I still haven't removed my paper stars from the windows, but recently burned the last twigs of the Christmas tree in our stove. February is coming to an end, I mostly painted my way through it and try to find back into some sort of life balance.

☙

*first paintings of the year

I'm happy to be able to share my first watercolor paintings of this new year with you! Some days ago I spotted the first liver leaf in the forest and yesterday the weather was really springlike. The first sun always makes me really sleepy, my body needs some time to adapt after the dark period. I'm playing a lot with pencils at the moment, but don't quite know how to integrate them into my illustration work, but maybe I just don't do it and just have fun with playing in my sketchbook or I transform the sketches into watercolor paintings later. Even though there are so many different colored pencil shades available nowadays, I'm never really fully happy with the colors. With watercolors it's so easy to create all different shades to create the atmosphere I'm longing for. Have a nice day + see you soon again!

☙

*in the ice meadow | part 2

Untouched meadows where all the wild grasses and flowers are allowed to grow are one of my favorite places to be, not only in summer. There seems to be this natural balance in amount of different sorts of plants that are showing up either in groups like islands in the sea or individually spread all over the area. It may appear wild and random, but if you take your time to observe with all senses, there is a great order feelable, much more than in a manmade field. In the past I used to cut down withered flowers, grasses and other plants like people usually do at the end of the season in our garden, but more and more I'm stepping away from this behavior. I know that many people enjoy a tidy garden, but is it natural to actually do this, is it helpful for nature? Since I do not remove the "garden waste" of many plants and flowers anymore, I noticed how the soil stays healthier over winter and the birds are still collecting seeds from the withered flowers and enjoy them. The applied mulch stays on better, because the wind is not able to remove it so easily anymore and the fallen leaves that usually get blown over those places, stick to those plants and create a natural mulch blanket as well that keeps the soil moister and more alive. I'm sure I'm discovering more good reasons to go further into this direction, but for now I already feel quite content with it. Temperatures are getting milder now here as well, but it is also more stormy again.

☙

*ceramic boxes

Ceramic boxes with bird lids,

also with little holes for dried flowers. 

I really liked the idea, I have not seen it anywhere before. One of them is holding some memories of Sunny inside.

☙

*in the ice meadow | part 1

This picture series has been taken before Christmas still when there was a pleasant amount of snow & frost outside and hope inside of me. Winter's minimalism can be so beautiful! But the last days I have shed so many tears over the earthquake situation in Turkey/Syria, that I have hardly been able to function. Even though I'm not watching any news, enough pictures have reached me and I'm getting the whole downside of being a very imaginative & emphatic person who is able to create even more images and pain in my mind which is not very healthy. I think I never wrote here before that next to my fear of heights I am claustrophobic. Thinking of the many buried people is a pure nightmare and all who have lost their family members, friends, pets and homes. May God be with all those people.

☙

*from the winter diary

Highlight of the last week:

Spotting two beavers! I don't remember that I ever managed to get to see one before in natural surroundings. (Only their works on the trees.) They are quite big!

☙

*View from the castle ruin

From the winter diary.

I like to visit the castle ruin of Gars, especially in winter. There are always lots of pigeons and the view of the city with the Kamp river is wonderful. We are having quite some minus degrees at the moment. In the morning we had minus 13, but we don't have snow anymore and the sun is shining.

☙

*a simple cookie recipe

Just some random winter pictures and the cookies on the first picture are the only one that I made before Christmas. I tried out a very old recipe and they turned out quite tasty and I liked the texture. It is a very simple recipe that leaves a lot of space for variations which is something I like, because I seldom cook with a recipe and keep it more experimental and spontaneous in the kitchen.

Here is the recipe in case you want to try it out:

Lemon cookies

2 eggs

1-2 table spoons water

100 gram sugar

75 g wheat flour (I used spelt)

1 package custard powder with lemon taste (I used vanilla instead)

Beat the egg yolk with the water into a foam and add three-quarter of the sugar and continue beating until the texture is creme-like. The rest of the sugar beat under the whipped egg whites that you prepared before. Add the whipped egg white to the egg creme and sieve the custard powder and flour onto it. Mix everything carefully with a eggbeater. With two spoons place small heaps on the with baking paper prepared baking sheet. Bake with good medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes until the cookies are golden yellow.

I'm not the best when it comes to translating recipes, I hope it was clear though, if not, just leave a comment to ask me. There are many different sorts of custard powder out there which makes it easy to try out different tastes. 

☙