Painting and gardening in collision, or partnership

One of the bonuses of following Twitter (thank you, Quinn, for encouraging me to get into it a couple of years back, very good addition to my life) is the amount of incidental learning that happens.

Today, in the course of following some French language timelines, partly because the material's interesting, partly to try to revive my reading French, I found a great post about moss paint.

I've vaguely heard about this, usually for purposes of clarting up flowerpots, not my taste, really, but this was really interesting, in that I have a section of fence which needs something to happen.

It's where the climbing rose canes go all bare as the rose climbs and flowers at the top all the time, very nice, but there's a kind of desolate effect against the fence, while the roses are posing against the sky.  Can't put in another shrub, too much competition for the roots, and a danger of cutting down the light anyway.

But, here's the notion: painting with a solution that will enable moss to grow, in the design of my choosing, now that might work. A lovely mossy green background to the canes would be much better than what's there, anyway, that's the idea.  The mixture enables the mosses to live and grow on the surface they're painted on.

So I followed the recipe in French, nice how it's all coming back, and ran out to collect moss locally. Meaning  within a fifty yard radius of here.  Under trees, outside my back gate.  So from the viewpoint of greenness, not disturbing the mosses destructively. It also gave the mosquitoes a chance at a good breakfast.
 

Then rinsed them, took a while to get all the little pebbles and earth off the roots, and found a couple of lovely tiny wildflower specimens which I have to identify, one now planted in with a houseplant.  

Then mixed with water, yogurt, spot of honey in the absence of corn syrup, and a little bit of cornstarch, can't hurt. Here's the mixture

and here's the paint

This afternoon, once the sun's off the fence, and I have time to find a bit of charcoal, I'll draw a design there and paint it with moss paint.  And hope we don't have a massive downpour right away that washes it off again.  The sugar content will probably ensure a visitation of ants, but they're harmless.

Good adventure, this, no harm done at all to the environment, and if it doesn't work, nothing lost anyway.

Other good news:  I'm invited to do a display of my artist books at West Windsor Library, in November this year.  They have glass cases, so I'm getting a couple of them, the only way really to safely display handmade books.  So if you're in the neighborhood, do stop in to the lobby and enjoy them.