Spring has Sprung !

“Camellia 26.2.14” copyright http://www.chriswoodartist.com all rights reserved.

Today’s research reveals that – apparently, the Camellia is a cousin of the tea plant and the symbol of Alabama.

As magnificent as they are, sadly, the flowers drop off after a while and I’ve often thought about whether I could do something more creative than scooping them up and consigning them to the compost bin but to date NOTHING ! I did think that I would press them and try to extract enough coloured liquid to use as ink but I’ll leave that for another day ! This all reminds me of a friend and fellow Artspace member, Adrian Mundy who is “Growing an Exhibition” and is in the throws of applying for funding from The Arts Council. He is responsible for the award winning Artspace garden and is proposing to make paper from a selection of plant material. He will then make a series of artists books, hold a series of exhibitions and finally run a series of workshops – watch this space as I will keep you informed and put up links to his website later.

Returning to “The weather” – on the South Coast it’s been horrendous this year but since earlyDecember our camellia has been festooned in buds which have just recently burst into flower. The wall is south facing and protected by the house – our back door is to the left of the picture. Whilst there has been lots of wind and constant rain for two months we have not had to endure much in terms of sub zero temperatures – and this has resulted in this years bumper crop of flowers !

The photo was taken with my iPad and is a raw image without any of my usual tinkering with exposure, saturation, contrast or colour correction.

More evidence of Spring will follow later !