Free Vintage Bird Clipart for Cardmaking, Collage or Scrapbooking: Robins on Icy Branches with a Rose in Full Bloom Amid Winter Snow

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Digitally restored and enhanced antique postcard from the early 1900s with an illustration showing a pair of robins percehed on snowy branches in wintertime. Miraculously, a marvelous pink rose is still blooming amid the winter cold.

Free to use in your cardmaking, collage or scrapbooking projects. You can download the high-res 6" x 4" @ 300 ppi JPEG without any words or watermark 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 you use or share this work.

Vintage Art Appreciation: A Winter Woodland by Karl Rosen

A Winter Woodland
by Karl Rosen (1864 - 1934)
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
― John Muir

The places of quiet are going away, the churches, the woods, the libraries. And it is only in silence we can hear the voice inside of us which gives us true peace.
― James Rozoff

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.
― Theodore Roosevelt

An English wood is like a good many other things in life-- very promising at a distance, but a hollow mockery when you get within. You see daylight on both sides, and the sun freckles the very bracken. Our woods need the night to make them seem what they ought to be--what they once were, before our ancestors' descendants demanded so much more money, in these so much more various days.
― Gertrude Atherton, The Bell in the Fog & Other Stories

Free Illustrated Template for Cardmaking, Collage, Graphic Design or Junk Journaling: A Little Happier Verse with Poppy Field Decorative Border

This image was extracted from an art nouveau style vintage postcard in my personal collection. The decorative border shows an L-shaped row of stylized red poppies with a lush summer meadow and billowy clouds in the background. On the upper right side of the page is a little verse that says:

“A little happier, a few more friends,
A little richer, In the blessings Heaven sends...”
I think this would make a wonderful background for a journal or scrapbooking page but you could also use it in a greeting card project. You can download the high-res 12" x 12" @ 300 ppi JPEG here.

Here is a New Year card I made with it:

Happy New Year of the Rabbit 2023!


All pre-made templates 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.

My Photo Journal: Buddleia 'Grand Cascade' and a Common Buckeye Butterfly

Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.
― Albert Einstein
It's been a while since I attempted to make any gardening notes - it always seems so overwhelming on top of tending to the garden itself. However, I have resolved to keep more conscientous observations about what I have planted in the garden and how these plantings do over the year and hopefully, in years to come.

Here to kick things off is a Buddleia 'Grand Cascade' that was introduced to the back garden in 2022:

Now, even though the tag says full sun, I have had some success with butterfly bushes in partial shade before. This shrub was planted in a full sun to part shade location, and I have to say I was quite happy with the first season progress that it made.

It started producing masses of flower buds beginning of August, and boy, did it attract a ton of butterflies when it started blooming profusely in late August. It continued to flower vigorously into early November when it started getting brown and done. I feel that my flowers came out looking more pink than lavender (see first picture at top of page) but that might have something to do with the quality of the light when I took the photo ― late summer afternoon, deep shade. Despite the profusion of blooms, I must admit the perfume was quite underwhelming ― the scent is a lot more subtle than any other butterfly bush I've ever planted.

I garden in a Zone 5B and it's been a fairly mild winter so far so I am keeping my fingers crossed that the Grande Cascade will shower me with more love next year. However, just to be safe, I did mulch about 4 inches thick and piled bags of unopened compost all around the bottom part of the shrub to provide a bit of a wind break as well as additional warmth to the surrounding soil.

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By the way, here are a couple of photos from the Walters Gardens site to show you how large this perennial shrub can grow. You can also find descriptions of the plant on their site. [Images below belong to Walters Gardens.]