Playing in Pomona's Pleasure Garden

My experimental paining, a combination of a landscape with a bit of architecture is finished, yey! And voilà…. Here is Pomona's Pleasure Garden. 

Pomona’s Pleasure Garden

Pomona was the Roman goddess of gardens, apple trees and orchards, she doesn’t really have a Greek equivalent but is often associated with Demeter. Pomona symbolises abundance and fruitfulness, she nurtures and cares for the trees and her attributes are a pruning knife or cornucopia. As I always love odd bits of information that then come together and complete a story, Pomona’s sacred Orchard is in Ostia, which I visited two years ago (without knowing the connection) and here I am living in a town completely surrounded by orchards, the smell of apples is everywhere. Pomona was celebrated at the beginning of November and there is often a connection made between the Roman festival of Pomona with its apples and nuts and the Celtic Hallowe’en. . 

Pomona would certainly have her hands full with the amount of pruning and cultivation of fruit going on around here and she obviously does her job well,  the old trees are bent and bowed with the weight of their fruit and the tree in my painting was still laden with fruit at the end of November. 

How do I feel about my painting, well I'm not sure, it’s very sentimental I think but also shows how I am trying to get a grip on my new surroundings. Hills, vineyards, orchards, there is a plethora of new images raining in on me and I think I'll need quite a while before I feel at home with my new motifs. Plopping in the church spire was interesting, a wee tribute to my town, nestling in a valley on the River Main, not sure how I feel about the architectural aspect or if I'd do it again. Also not sure about the apple trees but as I'm living in Pomona’s Pleasure Garden they may be difficult to avoid! Unfortunately, they don’t seem to make cider with all these apples, that would certainly help me to appreciate them more, instead they’re used for apple juice or ''most''. Most is very often translated as cider because it’s made of fermented apple juice but to be quite honest it doesn’t taste anything like the cider I know, it tasted and looked like dirty dishwater (not that I've tried dirty dishwater)  which was quite a disappointment because I'm not averse to alcoholic beverages. I don’t think Pomona would be too keen either, all that nurturing for a dirty dishwater drink! Oooh! I'd love a scrumpy now or even (a flashback to my youth here) a Diamond White. Just googled it, it’s still made, extra strength cider 7.5%, now I bet that would be more like Pomona’s tipple …. all that nurturing wasn’t in vain.