A busy day

A meeting at 9am today with Zoe from SAW,  and owners of the garden in which I'm exhibiting the Horn of Plenty. this was then followed by teasel picking in the afternoon.
I've now finished the fifth pole and will start on the sixth tomorrow. The green teasels, being 'wet', are much heavier, and are making the charred poles bend. Hopefully it won't be long before they dry out a bit. The green teasels are now taking over the house but at least I'm now on the home straits.

The green teasels

The collection of green teasels has begun and as it's school holidays son comes too.......with bribes of an all day breakfast from the cafe at the end of the walk!

When we got back to the car the windows had steamed up due the the combination of heat and moisture from these cuttings. A few more hours and I would have been making compost. Spider's webs had already spread across the back of the car and they started moving forward to the front of the car on the return journey......

In the light of past failures with 'green' plants and the problems of rotting I must move very quickly with these, and remove all excess leaves and the spread them out one layer thick so as to speed up the drying process. Rain is unfortunately forecast for the next few days, so they will have to be inside.....I'm running out of room. 

Dressing the frame

I've now finished applying the undergarment to the frame.....rather like a crinoline but much tighter.
I find it quite beautiful, a work of art in its own right. The rain fall from the previous night was still on the weed control fabric in the morning.

Abundance Garden Trail Somerset Art Week 2013

I was lucky to be among a group of artists selected for a SAW bursary to produce work in response to the theme Abundance for Art Week 2013. The work will be exhibited in various gardens all over Somerset, in conjunction with the National Open Gardens Scheme. I have been contributing to a collective blog http://sawabundance.wordpress.com/category/gillian-widden/ but wanted to now add some of the images of my work to this blog....

The teasels are in flower

At last with the good weather the teasels are flowering. Once the flowers have died off I can start the final round of cutting.....but this time, the new season of teasel heads.

The moth nursery

The moths continue to emerge in their hundreds. Every so often I open the windows and some choose to escape while others remain housebound. I think this hot weather is encouraging more to escape from their teasel homes. The thing that surprises me the most is that the chrysalises have survived their baptism in Indian ink. I would have considered it to be quite toxic.

Friends are still bringing me last years teasels but unfortunately not many of them are viable. What seems to happen is that the spiky bits on the teasel break off and the head of the teasel becomes smooth. The barbs on the stem are eroded and the stem also becomes smooth and bleached in colour. The teasel heads often become radically altered....see below.

The new teasels are just starting to get going. 

Here's hoping there is an early bumper crop in my locality.