Lotus

I love lotus.

I fell in love with these plants as soon as I saw one in the Auckland domain hothouse garden in the 70s.  There were these dinner plate-sized leaves coming straight out of the pond with these gorgeous, billowy, pink, cloud-like flowers floating above.

It has been a dream of mine to paint these beauties on large pieces of paper and although I use a lot of artistic license and google imagery, I still need to draw from life to capture the lotus mojo.

We see a lot of lotus on our travels all over SE Asia.  However, without being able to dedicate some serious hours to looking and drawing and requiring space enough for a large sheet of paper it's not really feasible.

I planted one just after Christmas when my first attempt failed in a pot.  I am so excited to see one of the leaves finally pushing up through the water to stand tall.  Hopefully others will follow.

It will be another year before it flowers though.  Back to google.