...old idea...new painting....

One of my favorite summer flowers is the foxglove. It comes in a variety of colors: pink, yellow, purple, and white (some with gold flecks and some with dark purple). This perennial will grow in full sun or partial shade, and beware, this tall flower will scatter its seeds everywhere....hurray! free plants! It will rarely bloom before midsummer. Foxgloves has many folk names including fairy thimbles, fairy fingers, fox bells, witches’ bells, witches’ thimbles, and deadmen’s bells.

Rabbits apparently are repelled by foxglove. And in my own experience, those pesky little critters won’t eat the roses and vegetables which grow near the foxglove. Foxglove is also very disease resistant and will even help other plants around it grow stronger and more disease resistant. Tomatoes (and other members of the nightshade family) and apples are particularly effected by them.



Foxgloves have male and female flowers. The female at the bottom have the most nectar, but this decreases as the honeybee or bumblebee travels up the stem to the male flowers at the top. This encourages the bee to move on to another foxglove stem, starting once again at the bottom thus fertilizing the plant.



Foxglove is a protective flower, so growing them in the garden is beneficial for keeping evil spirits at bay. But old lore advises against cutting the flowers to bring indoors as this will anger the fairies in your garden. It is said fairies love foxgloves (which could explain some of the folk names) In many years past, a black dye was made from the leaves and was used to painting protective symbols on the doors.

For almost 200 years, foxglove was used to treat heart disease, but it is rarely used today. Foxglove is poisonous if too much is ingested. It is advisable to consult a herbalist doctor for the proper dose.

It's been SO long since I've painted! During the month of May, I usually spend most of my time in my garden...hopefully, I'll be posting more new paintings in the near future.