Trying to decide if I should keep the background white or do a blurred background of leaves and more flowers amd maybe a bit of sky (More blurry than the already blurred parts). I am still planning on adding a few in focus leaves to this stem but cant decide on the background. Thoughts?
For me things like music, especially when combined with amazing scenery, my kids and husband playing together, yoga or a good work out, etc., can often give me this overwhelming sense of joy and appreciation. It almost feels like a little rush or butterflies. What does this for you?
Referenced a branch from our lilac. The blooms faded after a couple days so I've been improvising since then.
Sometimes I paint something and im like damn how did I do that?
I started this when my lilacs were in full bloom and im now improvising every flower since the blooms have now faded. This took me hours and is just a small section on a larger branch 😅
I started this when the lilacs were in full bloom, cut and in a vase on my kitchen table, and have had to improvise each flower now that theyre all faded 😅 what do you think so far?
A little while ago I posted my lilac painting I was working on at 7:30am instead of scrolling and some of you wanted updates so here's the first one! This took me hours and I still have so much to do including drawing out a lot more flowers. All on one stem 😅 i am improvising the flowers because all the lilac blooms have now faded. Its a beautiful and much needed rainy day. Perfect for staying indoors and painting 🤍
Everything is so contradictory so hoping to get advice for my specific situation. Its growing throughout our large backyard along with many other weeds. The little bit of grass that we do have gets fried by our very hot weather, though we dont water it nearly enough. It also comes up in my no dig garden beds. Ive been pulling as much out as possible basically by slowly getting as much out as I can until it breaks off. Ive read that this is the right approach, but also the wrong approach 😅 because it can stimulate new growth. Yesterday, google AI was adamant that I cut it at the surface of the dirt when the leaves pop out and just keep doing that, today its saying thats actually not very effective and apologized for being contradictory lol. Other advice I've read is to paint with gel round up but that would take ages.. or to put round up in a jar and stick the leaves in it, but that would require 100 jars 🤦♀️ seriously tf do i do??
So we have 2 lilacs that arched over our gateway at the side of our house beautifully. Flowers only grew at the top but its still nice and leafy at the bottoms I think because of mature suckers (the other side is so shady though so its sparse there). Problem was that it was so overgrown and some of the trunks were so thick and pushing through the gate. The base was also extremely crowded and full of leaves and garbage for some reason (from the previous owners). Anyways, we gave it a pretty heavy pruning, immediately after blooms faded. We only meant to do 1/3 but I think we may have done more? And they look kind of ridiculous and im starting to regret doing it at all. There's also one very tall trunk left on one of them (you can see it going into my neighbor's tree) compared to the rest thats a lot shorter but I didnt want to cut anymore because we already did at least 1/3 or more. First question is should we just go ahead and cut that tall one too or wait until next year so we dont stress it out even more? We also had to do some excavating around the roots because the ground was level with our wood siding, so thats more added stress. Second question is how long will it take for them to look nice again? Did we butcher them? 😩 Before and after pictures (Sorry about my hand, I was trying to cover the glaring sun cause it was making the bushes hard to see)
I forgot to get my mom a card so I painted this at 730am this morning 😅
With lilac bushes tall enough for the flowers to pour over into our patio space 🥰
Again, almost everything in here is thrifted. View of my lilac bush right outside the patio door 🤍
Almost everything thrifted. 1800's Victorian dresser. My 100% linen gingham curtains and black ruffle pillowcases from Etsy were my splurges 🥲
My favorite time of year is when these lilacs bloom. This year I decided to try painting some 🤍
My big leaf hydrangeas have at least 25 buds each on their second year! Maybe Google is just trying to make me feel good but says this is exceptional and that most of the time they have minimal to no blooms by their second year. Feel free to burst my bubble though and tell me this is average! I'll still be proud either way 🥲 third picture is them last year after just planting. I think they had maybe 3 blooms each.
Hi! So I have a bit of a complicated situation here with this entire area, expanding all the way to the back corner of my yard. Basically it all needs to he excavated to fix a drainage issue. On the front side of my house, the ground is level with the siding and slightly sloping toward the house, so it needs to be brought down quite a bit on both sides of these lilacs. So I have 2 main concerns here..
Are we going to kill these lilacs by excavating about 6 inches of the ground away?
Lets say (and hope) they will be okay with the excavation, they have clearly not been maintained by the previous owners and have grown quite out of control as you can see at the base of each plant. That said, I appreciate their goal of having them tall and arching over this gate and want to keep that. I also do not want to sacrifice the flowers pouring over into our patio space as I absolutely adore it. BUT the main problems are that the lilacs are growing through the gate (which we will be replacing in the near future), and that the other side of the lilacs at the front of the house are pretty bare, I think because theres not enough light reaching them.
So how would you recommend I prune these to help improve those 2 issues? And should we relocate where the gate is to more in front of the lilacs rather than inside them?
Side notes that the one on the right by the patio has way more blooms because I could easily reach that side last spring to deadhead it. This year we will deadhead the other as well (quite a difference it makes).