Here are some photos from the afternoon. Ms. Hendry was kind enough to take some photos for me. All photos in this post are © 2011, Sharon Hendry, all rights reserved, used with permission.

The students listened very intently during the workshop. Photo, courtesy of Sharon Hendry.

This student concentrates on rendering a leaf accurately. Photo courtesy of Sharon Hendry

I answer questions while other students paint steadily. Photo courtesy of Sharon Hendry.

The students and I discuss how their work is progressing. Photo courtesy of Sharon Hendry

Clockwise from left: How-to instructions; Tips on tracing a leaf form: ArtL8dy's supply kit, with a paint dot card I made; demonstrating light source and shadow. Photos courtesy of Sharon Hendry

Thanks HCC illustration students for being so enthusiastic and receptive! Thanks Sharon, for the invitation to share with your students! To see more of Sharon’s artwork, visit her blog, E-14 Studio.

• 2 x variety of native wild azalea, rhodendron canescens “Phlox Pink”
• 1 x sassafras, Sassafras albidum
• 1 x Brazilian pipeweed, Aristolochia fimbriata
• 1 x Cat’s whiskers, Ophiron labiatus
• 1 x Purple porterweed, Stachytarpheta sp.
• 1 x Gulf Coast penstemon, Penstemon tenuis

On Friday, October 14, my sister and I attended the storied Houston Bulb & Plant Mart, the Houston Garden Club’s annual extravaganza. This year, Bulb Mart was held at the Holly Hall Retirement Community literally across the street from the old Astrodome (Reliant Stadium to newbie Houstonians). As always, it was a high-decibel, tightly packed bedlam of grabbing, gabbing gardeners.

I managed to snag the following goodies:

• 80 x anemone corms, Anemone coronaria, “De Caen”
• 40 x ranunculus, Ranunculus asiaticus, “Tecolote” (mixed colors) and “Merlot” (a bi-colored deep pink and cream)
• 2 x Amaryllis, Hippeastrum x, “Vivaldi” and “Clown.” These are my Christmas decorations for 2011!
• 3 x hyancinth, Hyacinth orientalis, “Delft Blue.” In the fridge now to chase those winter blues!
• 1 x Ophiron labiatus, to pair with the one from the plant sale
• 1 x Aristolochia fimbriata, likewise
• 2 x Australian violets, viola hederaceae
• 1 x Toad lily, Tricyrtis formosiana, “Alice Staub,” a dwarf variety
• 2 x Maidenhair ferns “Cree”, Adiantum capillus
• 1 x Anemone “Alice Staub” Anemone huphensis?. This is a shade-loving variety, unlike the corms, which are high sun. It is a low plant, with trilobed leaves and pink blossoms. If you know the species name, let me know in the comments!

And finally, my Bulb Mart impulse purchase:

• 2 x American pitcher plant, Sarracenia wrigleyana. Weird, whacky, wonderful. Sun-loving bog-dwellers. Carnivorous plants. What will I do with them?!

Good for thee, but not for me: Sassafras needs plenty of room and lots of sunshine.

Saturday the Wrenaissance Man and I went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science plant sale. The sale is an annual fundraiser for the butterfly center, and features plants that will attract butterflies and do well in Houston gardens. We were hoping to acquire some plants for our microscopic, shady-to-part-shady townhouse garden.

We were attracted by the sassafras—the Wrenaissance Man liked the old-timey, granny garden associations, and I was thinking about autumn color. We both imagined it was a nice, little shrubbery. Unfortunately, Dave’s Garden informed us that sassafras is a 50-foot tree that requires full sun and plenty of space, as it is also invasive. 

Oh, dear.

Anyone up for a plant barter?

Translation: This is a yellow cab.

The treachery of text.

Apologies to René Magritte.

I was especially interested in the gardens and landscaping. Charleston’s classic house style is a long, narrow 2- or 3-story structure with the narrow end facing the street. One of the broad sides has a porch running the length of the house, facing the long, narrow yard that extends to the back of the lot. The lots are equally long and narrow, so houses are crammed quite close together.

This layout is similar to our townhouse lot. I was hoping to get some brilliant ideas for designing our own 100′ x 8′ side yard. Just like our yard, Charleston gardens frequently have shady light conditions. The climates are not too dissimilar, either.

Sad to say, a lot of those 18th-century side gardens have been converted into parking spaces for the modern day owners.

Some ideas gleaned from our trip:

Windowboxes stuffed to the brim with carefully selected flowers were everywhere in Charleston.

The beautiful compositions of the windowbox plantings at the front windows were a neighborly gesture.

The lacy red foliage of Japanese maples is reflected in the peeling red paint of the old hitching post.

You always want what you cannot have. Beautiful red-leaved Japanese maples seem to thrive in Charleston. Here in Houston, they fry like bacon in the summer sun. Fortunately, crape myrtles were a popular alternative.

Fatsia hedera is a popular choice for the Charleston shade garden.

Fatsia filled nearly every shady garden strip we saw. Don’t you just love how the gray spotty tree trunks melt into the faded, humidity-patched stucco wall? While so many Charleston houses had fresh, sorbet coats of plaster, some seemed to almost revel in a slight decay.

Lush greenery everywhere!

Ferns, hydrangeas and liriope galore. Every border was stuffed with green.

Brick walkways lead the eye to focal points like this pergola.

Brick paths both straight and meandering combine with pergolas, sculptures and benches to create miniature vistas.

I couldn't resist showing you another windowbox!

The blue ageratum really pops against the deep salmon stucco. You can’t pitch a rock in Charleston without breaking the antique window pane of a National Historic Register house.

Not quite yet—still waiting for those Texas bluebonnets. © Wren M. Allen

Sunday morning we went walking in the Houston Arboretum to enjoy the crisp, early-spring weather. The open meadow area had some bluebonnets massed along the trail, but only 1 or 2 buds. The experts predict a less-than-stellar wildflower season this year, due to lack of rain caused by La Niña weather patterns. The cold weather has also slowed down flower growth.

There were plenty of bird calls as we hiked. That’s a skill I’d love to have—recognizing birds by their songs. Can you recommend some good birdsong audio guides?

One of my brand new toad lilies waiting to be planted in the garden.

I went to the Houston Bulb and Plant Mart a couple of weeks ago with my friend. The Bulb Mart is run by the Houston Garden Club and is famous for not only the widest variety and largest quantity of bulbs sold in Houston, but also for offering really unusual and fascinating plants for the home gardener. I love bulbs, and both she and I needed some shade-loving plants for our back gardens, so it was a fun morning.

There was such a crowd at Bulb Mart! We went on the first day, which was tax-free, and ended up spending about half of our time there waiting in the long, snaking, checkout line. There were a lot of folks replacing their losses from last year’s hard frosts.

In the shade-lovers section, I spied these little beauties. Toad lilies, tricyrtis formosana, love the shade and moisture. They have exotic blossoms and bloom in the early fall. Their flowers are really gorgeous, with purple spots on a pinky-white ground and very prominent stamens. And they spread! So I bought two.

I can hardly wait to plant and paint this specimen.

Waiting to bloom: Corpse Flower Lois © Wrenaissance Art

Like almost everybody else in Houston this July, I rushed to see Lois the Corpse Flower bloom at the Museum of Natural Science. Or rather, to watch her in bud, as she didn’t actually bloom until 3 weeks after the initial announcement. The crowds were not too bad if you went at 7 am, as I usually did. Besides the flower, it was an amusing exercise in non-profit public relations, marketing and expectations management. How does one balance the need to promote an interesting educational event to the public using the media, without pushing said newsmedia into a hype machine for a natural process that can’t possibly meet the breathless vaporings of the 6 o’clock broadcasters?

The atrium where the flower was displayed was very cramped, with no room to discreetly sketch, although I did manage to get a basic palette mixed for a final composition one weekday morning.

The plant itself is pretty interesting. Arum titan grows from a corm, just like anemones. Unlike anemones, it grows on limestone cliffs in the Indonesian rainforest. The bloom imitates the look and smell of carrion to attract the beetles that pollinate it. Immediately after pollination, the giant flower closes, and the plant enters dormancy, later re-sprouting in its vegetal stage.

For an illustrator, the flower offers many rendering challenges of texture, color and composition.

Check back often to see updates as I illustrate this fascinating flower!

Neighbors demonstrate against a proposed school in Leblon

Not all is bucolic bliss here in Leblon. While the toucans and hawks were locked in existential battle on the back side of my building yesterday morning, the good burgers of Leblon engaged in civic battle in front at noon.

The green space under the banner is the entrance to an old house behind two predios. The current owners run a small private school for primary grade children, and have won permission to expand the school. An ad hoc neighborhood group has formed to prevent this.

Timóteo da Costa is a very narrow two-lane street snaking up a very steep hill. It loops back down as Rua Sernambetiba and has no cross streets except at the bottom. There is also no legal parking on the street (not that that stops anyone!). An increase of school run traffic would cause huge bottlenecks on a busy residential street. If we were going to live here past the end of the month, I would certainly be happy to sign any petitions for this issue.

What was humorously contradictory is that a group founded to ease traffic would hold a protest that itself caused a giant bottleneck. People heading up the hill to their Saturday tennis match and feijoada at the Clube Federal were trapped by pamphlet-wielding Ladies of Leblon and their DHs. Much honking and angry shouts of “Oopah!” when hungry feijoada-cravers would break the picket line and slowly drive on through the pedestrian crowd (small as it was).

Toucans feeding in an abriço de macaco tree

Toucans! A flock of channel-billed toucans was feeding in the tree. There were at least ten, hopping around in the branches and plucking fruit off the trunk of the tree. They have a very strong safety policy for the flock. One bird at a time flew from a sheltering tree to the feeding tree, until a whole group was lodged. Then as they moved eastward through the Jardim Pernambuco condo, they flew one at a time again, from one tree to the next, until they were lodged in some palms. This group-protective behavior was well-warranted:

Savannah Hawk perched on a satellite dish, watching prey

There were two savannah hawks pursuing them. Just like cats, the hawks would shadow the toucans from tree to tree. At one point, the hawks were perched deep in an amendoeira on the street directly across from our living room. It was quite nerve-wracking to see toucan after toucan landing in the same tree, on their flight to the palms! One of the hawks made a dive for a toucan, but an early gardener down below shouted in surprise, and ruined the catch. This disappointed hawk is sitting on the neighbor’s antique satellite dish, observing toucans to her left and her right. Frustration!

We’ve been watching this pair of savannah hawks for three years, and had been wondering what they were eating (besides pigeons). Hummingbirds and bananaquits are not even a mouthful for a big hawk. Well, clearly toucans make a nice breakfast.

This is the closest to the ground I’ve seen the hawks fly. Normally, they sweep up and across the valley and land in trees way up the Timoteo da Costa hill, or on the other side of the valley. This morning one of them nearly landed in the neighborhood street below.