The magical Blooming Garden Inn

Find the daddy cardinal in this picture, 6x9" watercolor

This spring has been a ripe piece of fruit that I have juiced for all the paintings I could squeeze out of it. Many more paintings were painted en plein air, but most of them oil, so I have not shared but a few of them on this blog. As I’ve mentioned, I try to reserve this plein air blog for my calligraphic watercolors. The ultimate place I visited this spring at which to render these watercolors was perhaps the Blooming Garden Inn in Durham.

What a treat it was to stay there. Proprietors Frank and Dolly Pokrass are equally interesting and eclectic as the Inn with all its trappings and antiques. I am convinced Dolly dresses up at night as a fairy godmother with a duster, magically transforms all the fireflies in her garden into fairy recruits and puts them to work weeding the garden by moonlight and helping her dust all the collectibles inside the Inn. If you knew Dolly, you would believe this possible.

I hope these paintings of the Inn’s animal-friendly garden convey a touch of the whimsy that permeates the appropriately named Blooming Garden Inn.

Find the mama cardinal in this picture, 9x6" watercolor