Bleeblahblu

♪***♪ . . 3月の終わり頃 まだこの頃は 蕾が多かったね。 . . .

Paintings by Shang Chengxiang

Shang Chengxiang’s (born 1985) work digs into the deep psychic of a human being, revealing the anxiety, fear, and fantasy of unconsciousness. Dream plays a crucial role in his works.  The artist is inspired and intrigued by his dreams, his paintings are often a mixture of his memory of his dreams and his pondering of his reality and things that are in between. The colorful cloud/ smoke in his “Cloud Path” series derive from the rainbow-color forest that once appeared in his dream, many drafts and attempts later, the artist couldn’t recreate the scene in his dreams, the illusionary quality of dreams started to sink into Chengxiang’s mind. He compares this illusionary quality of dreams to the evaporating quality of cloud and smoke, both temporary and unobtainable. He started to combine colors with clouds in his paintings, together with surreal and dream like images, Shang Chengxiang leads his audiences into the world of unexpected. Follow him on Facebook.

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Hofskirkja, Iceland. photo by Menno Schaefer 

This picture taken in Iceland in the late afternoon. On the picture is a little church made from wood and peat (turf). Is one of the last peat churches in Iceland. The humps in the grass are ancient graves.

Chou à la Créme

The Bee Garden Guild

Denmark // Zone 8

The “bee garden” is a little right triangle-shaped bed – where I have been growing the showiest and most fragrant purple flowers I can find in order to provide a concentrated source of forage for bees and other pollinators – right in the middle of the forest garden.

The idea is to attract the insects to the middle of the space, so all my fruit trees and vegetables around the periphery are pollinated.

Last year, in June, it looked like this:

Currently, this rather sandy and elevated garden contains blossoms that open in different seasonal windows, so there is always something blooming.

Tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths early in the season fade to aquilegia and lilacs, while the lupins and giant alliums prepare to bloom throughout June; digitalis sends up a flowering spike in the meantime, as do mullein and astilbe. These are followed by gladiolus, wild daisies, and poppies. By that time all the blossoms in the bee garden have faded, the roses scattered throughout the rest of the garden start opening, and continue to do so well into winter.

I added the highbush blueberries and lilacs to this polyculture last year, training them to a single stem, so their fruit/flowers are above the herbaceous perennials. The fruit trees are some of this years’ seedlings: peach, apricot, and plum. They will benefit from the lupins fixing atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, and form a low canopy.

This is a simple 3-layer guild, but it stacks a number of functions into about a two square metre surface area.

I am happy with the way it’s begun to establish itself, and since it is so crowded with aggressive perennials, there is no virtually no weeding necessary. to maintain it. It generates it’s own mulch and fertiliser, and the carpet of plants hold water and humidity at the soil level, while sheltering all manner of insects below.

More edible forest gardening

Ducks Get Their Own ‘Duck Lanes’ Near The Canal Walkways In London

Abadie cigarette papers (1920) by Susanlenox Via Flickr: Artist unlisted.

Chris (Simpsons Artist)

fire falling into the sea, I’ve never seen such hellish beauty

Former Embassy Theatre, Peterborough. May 2015.

Vintage illustrations of the Moon at its First and Last Quarter.