The little things - Heart Urchins

The little things in life that make the difference...

...finding these white shells, like fine porcelain sculptures on the beach yesterday all along the tide line and discovering that they are the shell remains of Heart Urchins. So fragile that it must have been a very gentle tide that washed them onto the shore.

Colour from the Season - Horse Chestnut leaf red

More Horse Chestnut - the trees here in Devon are stunted by winds and altitude, but in Bath where it is sheltered (and where I grew up), they are comparative giants.  We used to strip the leaves to their skeletons trying to keep the whole palmate of leaves intact. These leaves were on the ground, a couple of days ago and I liked their rich red brown colouring...

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook

Colour from the Season - January leaves

Freezing weather again and blue skies - in today's morning light even the dead leaves and seed heads left on the trees suddenly seemed remarkable. All these beautiful subtle colours which perhaps on a duller day I could have easily overlooked...

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the Season - Primrose pink?

The first primrose is flowering in the garden! In Devon primroses thrive - and soon the banks and hedgerows will be completely carpeted with them. Yes, primroses are usually yellow, but these pink hybrids occur naturally and range from the palest pinks like this one, to quite dark pink. Luckily our garden seems to get the full colour range...

...from my seasonal colour notebook.

Colour from the season - Rosa maigold

More thorny rose stems, this time from the beautiful old english climbing rose Maigold, which flowers in a wild and extravagant manner all through May on the front wall of our house. Interesting slightly ragged flowers and thorny stems, which were the inspiration for my fabric design Rosetta Glory...

 ...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Rose velvet fragrance

At this time of year you notice the stems of roses more than in the summer and often their names would seem inappropriate if you had never seem a rose bloom, this dangerously thorny one is called Velvet Fragrance. Roses always remind me of my mum - in the summer she has a garden full of amazing blooms. Though she had already pruned this one - she was ok about me taking off a bit more and luckily of course I have my new secateurs..x

...from my seasonal colour notebook.

The little things - pocket sized secateurs

The little things in life that make the difference...

Mini secateurs - easier to make a quick getaway and much less damaging to the plants, which benefit from a little bit of pruning here and there anyway. I made a little holster for these because they're pretty sharp  - Perfect! 

(They're by Alan Titchmarsh)

Colour from the Season - Sarcococca

Berries turning right through these shades of red and purple to black and acid green leaves - For the January catwalk, this little moth I scouted out the other night, is wearing Sarcococca...

...from my seasonal colour notebook.

Colour from the Season - Horse Chestnut bud red

Hard to believe after the prolonged cold weather - that any new growth would be venturing out of the trees and ground - but this morning I noticed that the Horse Chestnuts were starting to bud and it seemed fitting to start a new year with new growth. The sticky red of the bud alongside the smooth brown and purple of its branch.

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.