A Dawyck walk in sunshine

I was going to visit the Mummy exhibition in Edinburgh today but the weather was much too wonderful to spend time indoors. The mummies can wait (after all, they have done so for thousands of years already!) and I went off to Dawyck for a walk. I was trying to think of ideas for the new theme on the Sketchbook Challenge site which for this month is: Flowers. Not hard you would think but it's such a broad subject that narrowing it down proved to be difficult for me. At such time a walk can do wonders! As I was by myself it also served as an Artist Date.

In Dawyck, as in Kailzie Gardens yesterday, the snowdrops are now mainly over and the daffodils not yet out. There was no fully flowering rhododendron to be seen yet, although plenty of them were in bud and promised delights yet to come. Only this pink one very close to the entrance has luscious pink on show already, it's a Rhododendron Oreodoxa according to the label.

You can see what a splendid day it was, with a blue sky plus the occasional fluffy white cloud. I walked without a coat (although I was silly enough to carry it around with me, just in case!). If you look closely you can see the amazing amount of lichen clinging to the trees.

Although the views in Dawyck are beautiful wherever you walk, I can never get enough of the details either, such as this shining rhododendron leaf.

Finally here is the entire plant of which the picture at the top (also my blip for today) is a detail. The name tag in the garden described it as: Lysichiton americanus, but my RHS encyclopaedia tell me the common name for this bloom is: yellow skunk cabbage. Somehow the Latin version sounds a lot more upmarket. This part of the plant is known as the spathe. It's a bog plant that needs to grow near water in order to thrive.

My walk proved very fruitful as somehow during it my mind must have made itself up. When I returned to my studio in the afternoon I immediately started to pull out fabrics and set to work on the Flower Journal Quilt. I'll show you the result as soon as it's finished!