Vintage Art Appreciation: Rhubarb by Nikolai Astrup

Rhubarb, 1911
by Nikolai Astrup (1880 - 1928)
The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

It often happens to children - and sometimes to gardeners - that they are given gifts of value of which they do not perceive until much later.
― Wayne Winterrowd

There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.
― Elizabeth Lawrence

Free Botanical Clipart for Collage or Crafts: Varieties of Summer and Autumn Berries (Fruit Clipart)

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.
― Henry David Thoreau
Antique engravings from an 1890 manual of plants. This page shows a variety of summer and fall-bearing berries: blackberry, Early Harvest; dewberry, Lucretia; blackberry, Wilson, Jr.; black raspberry, Tyler; and raspberry, The Hansell. Ideal for recipe cards; childhood, summer and food-themed scrapbooking, plus many other collage or craft projects. You can download the high-res 8.25" x 12" @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


From my personal collection of ephemera. All digital scans by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if sharing or publishing.

Free Vintage Nature Poem: The Dial of a Summer's Day by C.E.C. Weigall

A Victorian poem entitled "The Dial of a Summer's Day" by C.E.C. Weigall, originally published c1890. Accompanying the poem is an illustration of a small farmhouse surrounded by a lush meadow at the height of summer. The poem goes as follows:

Just one o'clock:
In the meadow of hay,
The reapers are reaping and singing today,
Ant the swish of the scythe rings a glad roundelay.

Just two o'clock:
Hush! you babbling rill,
The world lies a-drowsing, the reapers are still,
And a shimmer of heat dances over the hill.

Just three o'clock:
Said the hare by the stile,
"The reapers are crafty -- the reapers of Lisle."
So he crept 'neath a dock-leaf and pondered awhile.

Just four o'clock:
In the wild rose and clover
The honey bee laughs, and dips over and over,
And "peewit, 'tis hot!" pipes the petulant plover.

Just five o'clock:
Twixt the moor and the sky,
Where the far distant purple of heather doth lie,
The arrowing curlews still hover and cry.

Just six o'clock:
From the ivied church tower,
The breeze carries upward in the chime of the hour,
Which the great bell is tolling with ponderous power.

Just seven o'clock:
Drones the humble bee red,
As he watches a cockchafer whizz over head,
And fussily follows a neighbour to bed.

Just eight o'clock:
As I watch and I wait
In the gathering twilight, beside the farm gate,
I know that the flowers say, "Mabel is late!"

Just nine o'clock:
As we wander and pass,
Hand in hand, lip to lip, over dew-spangled grass,
We can hear the white owl shrieking, "Lovers, alas!"

Just ten o'clock:
As we part 'neath a star,
The angels are smiling through heaven's bright bar,
And the new moon is rocking the clouds in her car.

Just eleven o'clock:
In her window the light
Flares redly and instant, then fades out of sight,
And I turn with a sigh, and walk into the night.

Just twelve o'clock:
On the motionless deep
The lights of the fishing-boats tremulous peep,
And the angels have hushed the world's sorrows to sleep.

You can download the poem along with the black and white illustration as a high-res 12" x 12" @ 300 ppi JPEG here. Lovely as a framed print but can also be used in a greeting card, junk journal or scrapbooking project.


Public domain poem is from my personal collection. All digitized poems by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if you use or share this work.

Vintage Art Appreciation: Mixed Flowers by Margaret Rose Preston

Mixed Flowers by
Margaret Rose Preston (1875 - 1963)
Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.
― Andy Warhol

What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul.
― Deepak Chopra, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water