“I fancied I saw a thin blue smoke rising amongst the stems of larger trees in front of me; and soon I came to an open spot of ground in which stood a little cottage, so built that the stems of four great trees formed its corners, while their branches met and intertwined over its roof, heaping a great cloud of leaves over it, up towards the heavens. The cottage, I now saw, was built of the stems of small trees set closely together.…

“I had just time to see, on the edge of the denser forest, a single large ash-tree, whose foliage showed bluish, amidst the truer green of the other trees around it. A shadow as of a large distorted hand passed slowly over the little blind, and then as slowly returned in the opposite direction.

“‘He dares not come nearer than he is now, for any of those four oaks, at the corners of our cottage, would tear him to pieces; they are our friends. But he stands there and makes awful faces at us sometimes, and stretches out his long arms and fingers, and tries to kill us with fright; for, indeed, that is his favourite way of doing. Pray, keep out of his way to-night.’”

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

Which is your favorite?

I love blue flowers - there aren't that many.

I like the word “cwm”, the way it's spelled and the way it sounds as well as the meaning. I would love to have a solitary retreat in a cwm like this. But this is my digital artwork, not a real place.

When I was growing up in Japan the cherry blossoms would bloom just in time for my birthday in early April. It was a windy time of year, and there would often be showers of petals falling.

This is what you would see if you lay down on the ground under the cherry tree in my Cherry Tree Concerto scene.

This is a rework of my earlier picture, Purple Jubilee with a different color scheme. I don't actually care much for yellow myself, but I try to branch out and use all colors on occasion. I know some people really like yellow and blue together …

I had planted a couple packets of wildflower seeds in my window boxes, but the list of flowers only had the scientific names, so I didn't really know what I was planting. Well, now I know what cosmos is and that window boxes aren't the best place for it! But the cornflowers were my favorite. I didn't know how many different shades they were. This is not a photograph of my window boxes, but the cornflowers blooming there inspired me to make this virtual cornflower field in Vue.