Home in London after a week away, I head into the garden expecting something – well – Autumnal. Mellow fruitfulness, that sort of thing.
As I get my eye in to draw, what it gives me is Autumnal but more in the sartorial sense, when nobody knows quite what to wear. It's doing its equivalent of sunglasses, umbrella and layers...
One of the little sunflowers is teeming with life: ladybird, little speckly spider and tiny beetles.
The borage has gone for a second flowering, hairy buds and leaves competing with the velvety Nicotiana I bought from a Surrey Docks Farm plant sale, thriving in its new spot. The buds are tipped with pink but the flowers will be a vivid, hot blue.
I'm useless at growing famously-easy radishes but this year, as they run to seed, they've given me a consolation prize of pretty, pink-tipped, four-petalled flowers (I work the colour into water for the blend) and sculptural seed pods, more of which next week.
And once again, I have visitors, crab apples from next door's tree, flung in by the wind, perhaps, or dropped by ever-hungry pigeons. I bring them in to the kitchen for cooking later and as I sketch, I notice that they have unfeasibly long stems, like banjos in fruit form.
Will next week bring traditional Autumn? Maybe; maybe not – but if I pause and look, the garden always serves up something interesting.
Ballpen, watercolour and fineliner on handed-down watercolour paper.
Rose sketches from this project are available as greeting cards, from the Garden Museum shop in London and at Hackney Wick Underground.
On my Teemill shop, watercolour and line sketches on t-shirts and tote bags.