Your Custom Text Here
Once again it's the glorious month of June, and the roses in my garden are at their glorious best. Here are a few photos.
This tree is a styrzx obassia... and I have an old rosebush climbing through it, to give our chickadees pleasant surroundings.
A mighty New Dawn climbing rose bush covers our garage roof. It is impenetrable and thorn-filled .
Here, the New Dawn climber watches over my garden.
Illustration Friday # 28: SWEET, RISD CE graduation, and chickadees
Life is Sweet ©Cheryl Kirk Noll
You can see the passage of time... here the snowbell flowers are budding.
Spring is my favorite time of year. Classes finish up. Students graduate. Flowers bloom and babies hatch.
This year has been particularly productive for my garden. A cute little birdhouse that my dad gave us at least ten years ago has it's first tenants this year.
Our chickadee family settling in at Songbird Hollow in the styrax obessia (Fragrant snowbell tree)
The flowers have blossomed. Breath in the fragrance!
A black-capped chickadee couple made Songbird Hollow their home. The birdhouse hangs from a styrax obessia (Fragrant snowbell tree) right outside our back window, so we were thrilled to watch the pair nest-building. On Tuesday, I heard the babies peeping for the first time when their parents arrived with food. Within two weeks, they should be flying away.
It's a life-affirming process to watch.
After the 4 day heat wave, the snowbells are gone, but roses are out!
My job as the adviser for the Children's Book Illustration certificate program at RISD-ce is a thrill for me too. I often meet students when they start the program, and I always have them for at least one class, meet with them for the final portfolio critique, and have the honor of handing out their certificates.
I'm thankful to my brilliant program coordinator, Francoise McAree, to the CE staff, and to the fine teachers in the program who have led these students along the way.
I'm so proud of this year's 11 graduates. I'm as proud as a mama chickadee, and I can't wait to see where they fly, now that they've left the nest.
l-r sitting: Roya Ma, teacher assistant Susan Novich, Sherry Brodeur, Sarah Luz, l-r standing: Laura Foltz, Jeanette Bradley, Instructor Judith Moffatt, Mary Jackson, Emily Laramee, Meg Sodano, Peter Sentkowski, Anne Wert (missing: Karen Sculos)
To see more about the graduating students and the program, go to the programs informal blog,
I've had a garden in my postage stamp yard for years, but for some reason, it's gone wild this year. I can't say how much pleasure I've gotten from walking around the "back 40," deadheading and taking pix and smelling the flowers. Here are a few pix on this rainy Wednesday.
Stella d'oro (reblooming daylily)
Sedum sieboldii (stonecrop)
Stella d'oro and astilbe.
Feverfew, foxglove, Campanula poscharskyana
Ahhhhhhhh.
Here are a few from a sunny day last week.
Blue-star creeper
clematis and golden shower roses
garden going wild!
We New Englander's long for the RETURN of spring, even when the winter is mild, as it was this year. So for this week's Illustration Friday prompt word, RETURN, I reveled in the RETURN of spring.
I've worked in the garden several times this week, enjoying the seasonably cool weather, and marveling at how everything is several weeks ahead of the normal schedule for bloom-time!
For this illustration, I used a friend's daughter as a model, and had spring on my mind.
Here are a few photos of my spring garden from other years. The tulips haven't quite popped yet this year.
home • artists bio • portfolios • books • teaching • blog • contact • links
© Images found on this website are copyrighted. They may not be used without specific permission. If your are tempted to copy or download materials from this website, please don't. Illustration is my livelihood. Thank-you.
