I painted this watercolour of hostas yesterday, and it's a far cry from the beautiful botanical studies I'd hoped to make celebrating my various cultivars—many of which, evidently, are actually species.

watercolour on Japanese appointment diary, roughly 5.5 x 8.25". 21sep2020. photographed, image adjustment including croppin and colour adjustment, 22sep2020

The hosta dominating the page is (probably) sieboldii elegans, and the one along the bottom edge, lancifolium —both easy to grow. (The yellow ferns are cinnamon ferns.) —The mosquitoes were annoying, but the part that absolutely broke my concentration was the neighbor two doors down who has been rototilling their double lot—of bishop's weed!

I have to deal with this aptly named and highly pernicious ground cover, and lemme tell you, chopping its roots up to make five or ten times as many plants is not the way to go. I'd say they deserved what they get, except I'm gonna have to listen to all that racket again when the new crop springs up...

Anyway. My efforts to capture the subtle shadows and delightful crinkling of the hosta were pretty bad, but I would like to note that this hot-press-smooth paper has the interesting and sometimes very fun quality of not absorbing the paint to the point that it can be ‘pushed’ to a remarkable degree on the paper.

And now I think I'll go try paint some more, before all the racket begins again...

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.