More botanicals

1|  The rose campion a friend gave me a few weeks ago revealed its intense magenta flowers while we were away. Returning from Germany's heatwave and its abundant gardens to grey skies and the worst rain in months, we were in a funk for a day or two, but these pops of colour helped.

 2|  We also came back to a courgette the size of a baby and have incorporated it into every meal (and a cake). And we are eating tons of salad, but so far have only two varieties in our polytunnel. I want to grow chicory - I love bitter leaves, and the above is one of my favourite salads, chicory with orange, walnut, balsamic and apple cider vinegar and honey.

Search for the pioneering photographer and botanist Anna Atkins in Google Images, and you get lost in this sea of cyanotype blue - her work looks so modern.

3|  I was sorting through papers in my studio and accidentally formed this lovely juxtaposition of two of my obsessions - 'Las Meninas' by Velázquez (on a transparency I must have used for a presentation in college; I noticed the image is flipped horizontally here!) and botanical illustrations (this one by Edward Minchen, I believe). I am displaying them temporarily on a shelf in the hope they will spark an idea, or simply to enjoy them for a while.

Flower power

 Jasmine for the garden

 Florals on a jumper (from Part Two)

Peonies that never opened fully

Essential oils and tea from a local herbalist

Last week, on our way to the midlands to visit friends and family, we stopped at a lovely garden centre for presents and got a jasmine plant for our garden, which is a dream come true for me (if it survives the wild west of Ireland - the very helpful lady there assured us it would and gave us advice on how to plant it). The car journey for the rest of the day was an aromatherapy experience.

Sleeping with the window open and the intoxicating scent filling the bedroom may not happen for a while yet, unless I sleep in the shed, as we put the jasmine beside the door to the shed, where it is sheltered. Between the stock (another strong fragrance), the jasmine and the lavender, our garden is fast becoming a feast for the nose. 

Another favourite, though not as fragrant, are peonies. We have a few in the garden, but the ones in the photos came from a florist. They never opened fully, but I love the tight ball they start out with. 

John got me some essential oils and a specialty tea for clear skin (hint?) from a local herbalist. I had asked for neroli and rosemary, and he kindly added sweet orange oil, so I have been burning a lot of orange-focused blends to sweeten my time in the studio (it badly needs it, as a piece of furniture in there still smells musty from the damp in the last house - John calls it 'the smell of stale ideas' hovering in the studio, and I am determined to conquer it on both levels).

In the kitchen | Quark bread and coloured walls

 Kitchen work-in-progress

Bread-making work-in-progress.

Illustration by Heather Gatley in this book, which has nothing to do with the bread and which I feel ambivalent about.

One of the things I wanted to get back into this year was making my own bread. Ideally sourdough, but I haven't started the starter yet. I used to make wholemeal spelt bread all the time and have stocked up on spelt flour, but I wanted to try some new recipes as well.

The other day I had to use up some quark that was past its use-by date. I always pick up quark when I see it in the shop, as it is a German staple, but then I never know what to do with it apart from eating it like yogurt or the two ways our family used it - German cheesecake, and potatoes served with quark whipped up with sparkling water and chopped chives and seasoned with pepper and salt.

A quick search online yielded quark oil dough, which apparently is a well-known substitute for yeast dough. In Ireland you cannot buy fresh yeast in the shop, only from bakeries on request, if they are happy to give it to you, and I prefer not to eat too much food containing yeast and haven't bought any dry yeast in years, so I was interested in how the quark oil dough would turn out.

There are various recipes, all very similar, but I didn't follow any particular one - I used around 180g quark, 4 tablespoons milk, 8 tablespoons oil (rapeseed), 1 egg, 350g flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt to make a braided bread (updated to add: I bake it at around 160 degrees celcius for about 20 minutes, though it might take longer, depending on the oven; with our oven, if you followed the recommended time, you would burn everything). You can add some sugar and raisins to make it sweet. It was so quick to make - no waiting, unlike with yeast - and came out well, despite my half-a***d kneading and braiding (hence the rustic look). It took only a few minutes to put together, still tasted fresh the following day, and we loved it, so this is where any leftover quark will end up from now on, and it will be great for making pizza. It is fluffy and moist, and I can imagine substituting kefir for the milk (inspired by my sister).

In August it will be two years since we moved into this house, and we still have a lot of work to do. The kitchen is one of two rooms where we left the old floor, and we also kept the kitchen that was there, but painted it (as well as the airing cupboard, on the left in the photo) and took out all the hanging cupboards. It is the only room that has colour on two small areas of wall (everywhere else is some shade of white, pale grey or charcoal, or - half the house - still unpainted). A few weeks ago, with the help of John's brother-in-law, we finally connected a lamp to the cable that was awkwardly sticking out of the corner between the blue wall and ceiling. Usually there is a small armchair in that corner by the stove - currently in the sitting room, as we had visitors and not enough seats -, so it is now a reading corner.