Gill-over-the-ground (watercolour 4 x 7 in.) SOLD!

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16 April finds me out between rain showers, behind the Canada Plum thicket at our place in Bishops Mills, examining the flower buds in search of candidates for a painting.  They rise in loose clusters of three or four, each on a longish petiole, and all tightly clenched like pale babys' fists emerging from scalloped reddish cuffs.  As I was moving along the bushes, pulling down branch-tips to see the buds close up, I glanced down to adjust my footing, and my eye caught a wink of intense purple among the new blades of grass where we mowed the lawn near the tent last summer.  Ahah!  I have found the next-to-bloom wildflower (after our early Dandelion) - Gill-over-the-ground!

This has been a very demanding painting, as Gill-over-the-ground turns out to be jam-packed with details!  I didn't want to do it without the running stem, as it is so much a part of the character of the plant, running "over-the-ground".  Notice that the stem is square, giving away that it is a mint.  We use it in our wild spring salads, for colour as well as its bitter minty flavour.

Comments

  1. fredApril 18, 2010 at 11:28 AM

    Oh, to be a creeping Charlie,
    Oh, to gill over the ground.
    Oh to fill the shady corners
    where turf grass cannot be found.

    ReplyDelete

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