Documenting the botanical year in my sketchbooks

My new home-made "Seasons" sketchbook is becoming a bit of an obsession! I have even made a second one, identical to the first but with cold-pressed (more textured) paper rather than hot-pressed (smooth) paper. I wanted to see which paper I preferred. It turns out I like both! The second one doesn't have a theme as such, but has so far evolved into a double-page a month. Keeping them both going is definitely giving me plenty of drawing practice! And there's certainly no shortage of interesting things to draw even at this time of year. What I'm finding is that every page is so different and there is no plan to the pages because I add things as I come across them, so each page grows organically.

Early spring is an interesting time of year, with left-over bits from last year's plants, with a few fruits still hanging on, and new growth for the coming year. Wind-pollinated trees species, like Hazel and Alder, are already flowering, getting the business of pollination done before the leaves get in the way of the wind-blown pollen.

In one of our flower beds I found the remains of a leaf. Almost the whole leaf blade had disappeared leaving just the veins. Even in decay, it was a beautiful thing and revealed the amazingly intricate network of the veins.

February's page in my second sketchbook

I have also recently come across the concept of a perpetual journal from Lara Gastinger on Instagram. The idea is to have a page for each week, but not to specify a particular year. You then add to the page on that week each year until the page is full. It then builds into a really interesting chronical of the seasons. I really like this idea, so I made myself one.

Here's the first page I completed with things I found during this particular week. It was a joy to see the first Cherry Plum blossom as that's one of the things that really makes me feel that spring is on its way. It's often mistaken for Blackthorn, which is superficially similar, but Blackthorn flowers slightly later and has slightly smaller flowers and thorns on the twigs. Young twigs of Cherry Plum tend to be green, but in Blackthorn they are dark grey. Also, if you look at the backs of the open flowers, the sepals (the green leaf-like bits below the petals) turn downwards on Cherry Plum but lie flat against the petals on Blackthorn. When the hedgerows are filled with white frothiness of these two bushes I know the green will not be far behind.

I love seeing Cow Parsley along the paths and road verges in the spring and the leaves of this plant have been growing larger over the last few weeks, so it won't be long now!