At Susanna's

Its the arts trail time of year when artists and craftspeople from all around the area open their studios and workplaces to the general public. Last night we were invited to Susanna Lisle's private view. We were students of Susanna's father, Frank Lisle, when he taught the fine art students at Leeds College of Art in the early sixties. It was a lovely drive through Somerset and Wiltshire, the countryside looking beautiful in the early evening light, the roadside verges a froth of cow parsley and fresh green foliage. 

Susanna's work is inspired by landscape, gardens and geometric pattern so it seems very appropriate that she needs to access her studio from the house by walking through an ordered, balanced garden!

Susanna in the white pants.

And her sister, Rebecca, a children's author, also in white pants.

(These girls are creative, just like their parents.)

A lovely evening - there was a fair bit of reminiscing!

This morning I started my day, as usual, with a wander round the garden. Its changing rapidly now. The first roses are just coming into bloom. They are old friends, many of them came as cuttings from my previous house, over twenty years ago. Here is Constance Spry, one of my good doers, climbing up the wall.

I picked a few blooms for the house, Blairi, Pascali and other, un-named roses. Most of my named varieties are still in tight bud. I'm hoping it will be dry weather when Cinderella opens her flowers. If not she will sulk and we shall have nothing but balls of soggy petals.

I bought three new bare root roses earlier in the year and they seem to have settled in well. One of them is the delicate tea rose Marechal Neil. It needs winter cover so it is in a pot in the greenhouse. I have grown it before in the large greenhouse of our previous home, where its soft yellow flowers hung in profusion from the ceiling. It is going to take a few years to get a similar result - I'll have to be patient!