Being mindful: Consider the Wisteria

Last year was such a blur the wisteria flowered and then unfurled its narrow green leaves with barely a nod from me.

So as a bit of practice for the Mindfulness course I’m doing at the moment I thought stopping and smelling the wisteria could be a good plan.

Drawing not ball throwing…sorry Rigby!

The couple of studies I made were revealing; the beauty of how the cascade of wisteria flowers winds around the stem, the rather mysterious placement of petals on its pea shaped flowers and the subtlety of colour.

The stems I picked to draw inside quickly dropped their flag like ‘banner’ petals. Drawing outside the upright banners gave the flower heads a completely different view from below. The bees too were enjoying the transient presence of the flowers.

Wisteria #1 -outline sketch

Wisteria #2 -detail sketch

Wisteria #3 -detail sketch

Wisteria #4 -finished

Wisteria #1 – outside study

Wisteria #2 – outside study

Wisteria #3 – outside study

Wisteria flowerhead

Some history and the dual nature of the Wisteria is covered in Eat the Weeds blog. The flowers only are edible  – everything else is highly poisonous  – including the flower stems. Wisteria is also considered a weed in many parts of the US due to its rampant growth and low demand on soil nutrition – but is a highly decorative plant in horticulturally circles with its beautiful fragrant flowers.

http://www.eattheweeds.com/wisteria-criteria-2/

Anatomy of the wisteria flower (two petals removed)

Anatomy of the flower from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesbania_punicea

Post dedicated to Mental Health Week in Australia – if you need some time to reset your brain the free 6 week course being run by Monash Uni at the moment on Mindfulness has been great- see https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-performance