Last week, I promised radish seed pods – and here they are. Sculptural, like ancient wine carriers, they have fine grooves along the pod. These lovely things are my bonus for growing useless radishes and letting the rest of the plants run to seed. Each holds just a few seeds, now saved for next year's sowing season.
Drawing my chilli harvest (just three but to me, riches), I realise how similar the chillis are to the radish seed pods. These, of course, are also seed carriers. Green chillis, these, there's complexity of colour I hadn't expected, shape and shadows showing purple.
But the week's biggest surprise as I look through drawing is the sunflower seeds. The neighbourhood squirrel has shown me, through the medium of acrobatics, that they are ready to harvest... I had picked out a few to draw digitally for textiles and plants now done, ahead of rain I've harvested the whole seed heads of the giant sunflowers, seeds saved, with some left for the wildlife. Looking at them up close to draw, they're extraordinary things, like deep-quilted upholstery made on a curved grid. One of the things I love about nature is that it doesn't do uniformity and here it is again, each seed an individual in a patterned whole. Where seeds have been harvested or snaffled by the squirrel, I can see that they're set in to a tough honeycomb structure; towards the centre, there are tiny star-petalled flowers, each from a tiny vase-shaped bulb.
This, in a week when I had been thinking about making a quilt. Thank you, nature, for the inspiration.
Ballpen, watercolour and fineliner on handed-down watercolour paper.
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