The cherry trees are blossoming

But of course not up here, not on my dump.

The feet of the Giant Hogweeds are getting bigger, green leafs spreading out but still very close to the ground, sort of grabbing it. I’ve brought back home some of the dried stems from last year since I want to draw them. They are sturdy but at the same time fragile, a wrong twist and turn and they splinter.

I started today’s excursion with a sketch of a green shed.

The day was absolutely glorious, blue sky and a big sun. But the way I depicted this shed, is how it feels on some parts of the location. Grey and abandoned. Just below the shed in a trench were a population of Butterbur. I brought one back home, and after looking it up in my book I now know that the female flowers are very rare. Lucky me it was not one of them I snatched!

It’s a lonely job to paint sheds, but someone has to do it J

Up on the flat top of the dump there are Common horsetails growing everywhere. In Sweden we call them fox buttocks.

I’m happy with the colours, but not with the flower part. It was difficult to get it right. For the stems I used Raw Sienna and Permanent Rose in different mixes, and for the darker tones I used Perylene Maroon and Burnt Umber mixed with Botanical Grey. For the second one I also mixed in some Prussian Blue to get some variation in the tone. The green is what was on my palette.

I also found what I think is Cuckooflower, but I learned that this one easily mix whit a relative. So – pratensis or paludosa or a mix between them, I can’t tell. I did a rather crappy sketch of the flower.

Around the hill the vegetation is in different stages. Horsetails everywhere, clover is starting to show here and there. At the slope of the west side where several bunches of daffodils. Since it is an old dump they must have been dumped there whit garden disposals at some point and just survived throughout the years.

We had binoculars with us and one of many who passed by wondered if we were birdwatcher. Apparently this hill is a good bird location, the birds is blowing in, as he explained it to us. And later on we actually spotted a falcon, it was hovering for a long time and we had a good look at it. I think I never seen a falcon in the wild before.

The flowers

Butterbur – Petasites hybridus

Common horsetail – Equisetaceae arvense

Cuckooflower – Cardamine pratensis or paludosa

Nearby, there are two big TV pylons. I had to paint them too, in the described greyish manner. When it is windy the wire sings.