Vintage Art Appreciation: Camelias, Amaryllis, Hyacinth and Violets in Ornamental Pots by Johan Laurentz Jensen

Camelias, Amaryllis, Hyacinth and Violets in Ornamental Pots on a Marble Ledge, 1836
by Johan Laurentz Jensen (1800 - 1856)

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.
Don’t wait for good things to happen to you.
If you go out and make some good things happen,
you will fill the world with hope,
you will fill yourself with hope.
― Barack Obama

Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier...'
― Alfred Tennyson

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do It.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
― Neil Gaiman

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.

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

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.]

Vintage Art Appreciation: The Quiet of the Lake, Roundhay Park by John Atkinson Grimshaw

The Quiet of the Lake, Roundhay Park, 1870
by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 - 1893)
You cannot wait for an untroubled world to have an untroubled moment. The terrible phone call, the rainstorm, the sinister knock on the door—they will all come. Soon enough arrive the treacherous villain and the unfair trial and the smoke and the flames of the suspicious fires to burn everything away. In the meantime, it is best to grab what wonderful moments you find lying around.
― Lemony Snicket, Shouldn't You Be in School?

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Free Vintage Winter Clipart and Nature Poem for Cardmaking, Crafts or Junk Journaling: Snow Crystals, 1881 and Snowflakes, 1879

Above is a black and white illustration from an 1881 magazine thats a variety of snow crystal shapes. I also found a sweet winter poem called "Snowflakes" written by Mary Mapes Dodge (1831 - 1905) and first published in 1879 that I thought would go well with the illustration. Here is how the poem goes:

Whenever a snowflake leaves the sky
It turns and turns to say “good-bye;”
“Good-bye, dear cloud, so cool and gray!”
Then lightly travels on its way.
And when a snowflake finds a tree,
“Good-day,” it says — “Good-day to thee!
Thou art so bare and lonely, dear,
I’ll rest and call my comrades here.”
But when a snowflake brave and meek,
Lights on a rosy maiden’s cheek,
It starts— “How warm and soft the day!
‘Tis Summer!”— and it melts away.
[Source]
You can download the free illustration as a high-resolution 5" x 7" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark here. Perfect for a holiday greeting card or incorporate into crafts, scrapbooking or junk journal projects.

By the way, here is an audio of soprano Gwen Catley singing "Snowflakes," which had been set to music by composer Liza Lehmann (1862 - 1918), and published in 1914. [Source]



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: Christmas Eve by Carlton Alfred Smith

You can live a charmed life by causing others to live a charmed life.
That is, be the source of ‘charm’
— of charming moments and experiences — in the life of another.
Be everyone else’s Lucky Charm!
Make all who you touch today feel ‘lucky’ that you crossed their path.
Do this for a week and watch things change.
Do it for a month and you’ll be a different person.
― Neale Donald Walsch
I initially downloaded the above painting — Christmas Eve, painted by Carlton Alfred Smith (1853 – 1946) in 1901 — on Wikimedia Commons, which I then cropped and edited. You can download a high-res 6" x 4" @ 300 ppi JPEG of my digitally enhanced version here. I thought it would be interesting as a greeting card or incorporated into a collage or junk journal project but you can also simply print and frame for wall art.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Free Vintage Outdoor Clipart for Cardmaking, Collage or Junk Journaling: Two Drawings of Winter Scenes by Winslow Homer

We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm.
And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things,
like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora,
or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin.
It's worth being cold for that.
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
Two 19th century illustrations that were drawn by Winslow Homer for a couple of different publications. The first drawing (top) is titled "Cutting a Figure" and appeared in Every Saturday in 1871. The second drawing (bottom) is titled "Christmas Belles" and was first published Harper's Weekly in January 1869.

You can download the free 6" x 4" @ 300 ppi JPEGs without any watermark for cardmaking, collage or framed art projects by clicking here (lone lady skater in a desered patch of a frozen pond) and here (group of ladies racing away in a horse-drawn sleigh).


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.