A Pink Spring - After A Heavy Winter You Are Most Welcomed Back - Magnolias At Hopewood House, Bowral, Southern Highlands, New South Wales

It's hard to call Sydney a heavy winter but relative to the usual mild winters that we have, this one seemed a little wetter and colder. There were two days during August where I genuinely felt like wearing gloves but within about two minutes my hands were toasty and I realised I was just being pretentious.

Two weeks ago I went down to Bowral to have one night off to myself to have a long sleep and several shots of Jack Daniels in a hotel with a gas fire. I was tired from winter and feeling a little down and out.

Yesterday I had promised my time to a friend who needed to meet a musician that would be playing at the function room of his wedding. The trip was a very different experience to the one I took to the same area not three weeks earlier; not only did I receive some very good advice from my old friend about life, but it was also perfect timing as spring had arrived and from the depths and death of winter everything was beginning to renew again.

We managed to find our way to Hopewood House where we met up with Janet Storrier who is the other half to one of Australia's more prominent artists, Tim Storrier. Hopewood also serves as a studio for Storrier.

Whilst waiting for my friend I was meandering through the gallery adjacent to one of the function rooms when I immediately got excited at the dishevelled Sir Les Patterson that was standing in front of me as an oil on canvas. Sir Les, as was mentioned by Richard Carroll in a previous post, is one of those iconic Australian characters which Barry Humphries has made almost as famous as Dame Edna. Storrier's interpretation was no less amusing with half of Sir Les' last meal on his chest and trousers, a camelia or rose in his lapel, a lovely nonchalantly placed pocket square in pink with white polka dots, a gone troppo Darwin styled cream suit, a well worn shirt with no bones flicking the collar up and a tie that acts more like a bib. What's not to love?

Tim Storrier's Sir Les Patterson courtesy Twitter @ANZ_AU

During the course of our visit we were fortunate enough to be taken through the splendid gardens of Hopewood House where I was able to see that spring was certainly getting a grip over the landscape. Janet Storrier, our guide, pointed out a magnolia and I snapped a picture which I then used as inspiration when I returned to my Studio. I believe that Sir Les, that magnolia and the pink bow tie I that was on my desk when I returned were all lucky talismans that we need to give pink a chance this spring.

Spring 2014 - pink magnolias at Hopewood House, Bowral

Give pink a chance this spring - www.lenoeudpapillon.com
Superfine SIC Tess shirting cloth custom made shirt in white diamond weave with 50 Oz silk twill bow tie and limited edition print LNP pocket square.