My Amazing Friends, Chapter Four

Tomorrow is the Three Rivers Hidden Gardens Tour. I think you can still get tickets here.

My favorite spot on the tour is my amazing friend Barbara’s lavender garden. (Your favorite might be Anjelica Huston’s place, which I’ve only seen from the road or in Architectural Digest a few years ago.)

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Barbara and I have been having great fun putting together some stepping stone/plant identifiers. Her daughter painted a couple of saltillo tiles with lavender for her a few years ago. Barbara loved them, and decided she wanted more. Her daughter now lives far far away, so she commissioned me to do these tiles.

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I think it may fall into the category of Odd Jobs.

But, this post is about my amazing friends, and Barbara is truly amazing her knowledge of plants, her ability to work tirelessly in her gardens, and her appreciation for beauty.

When people talk about lavender, they sometimes mention English, French and Spanish. If they are like me, they most likely don’t realize there are many many version under each of those categories.

This is Spanish. The flower tips look like butterflies.

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French lavender has leaves that are sort of toothy and serrated. I didn’t paint anything that detailed on the tiles.

 

I painted 24 tiles with different names, and another 11 with pictures and no names. They are all for sale for a price not determined at the time of this writing, and a percentage of the sales benefits the Three Rivers Union School Foundation. (Sorry, we don’t ship tiles!)

 

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My Amazing Friends, Chapter Two

This will be a long post. I hope you will savor it, instead of filing it in the category of TLDR*.

The series, My Amazing Friends, began this week with Bob. Let’s continue with Barbara, also of Three Rivers, a gardener extraordinaire.

oil painting by Jana Botkin

Barbara grows many plants, knows them all and is best known for her lavender. She is so passionate about her gardens (not just a yard, not just a garden, but GARDENS, plural!) that she works under floodlights at night in order to keep them in order.

wisteria oil painting by jana botkin

Two years ago her lovely grounds were featured in the very first Hidden Gardens Tour of Three Rivers, to benefit the Three Rivers Union School, which is always in peril of closing or being absorbed into the Woodlake School District.

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I had the honor and privilege of seeing the place on the official pre-tour, a return visit or two with my camera, and being present with my easel and paints during the official tour.

This year Barbara’s garden will be on the tour again. Tickets are still available, and you will get to see 4 places, including Angelica Huston’s place. Barbara’s will be the best on the tour, in my completely unbiased (harharhar) opinion!

Okay, getting too long, to be continued tomorrow. . .

*Too Long Didn’t Read