Green Grafitti?????

A Facebook message - "you gotta look at this, its just right for you".  Yep, it was Margaret leading me astray again.  This time its Green Grafitti.  Google it, its amazing.  The idea of a subversive grafitti, paint it on, cant tell its there, then in a few weeks where you painted grows moss.  Wow !  Then clean it off with lime juice and its not supposed to harm the wall underneath.  That latter I'm not sure of, when I scrub moss off our paving there's definitely damage, however I haven't tried limejuce.....yet......

Well time has gone by and at last, now the weather is hot and likely to be dry and totally wrong, its time for a test run.  Any sensible person would wait til autumn, or the beginning of winter - but you never know your luck, after all the seasons are a bit topsyturvy really.

Step one find some moss..... we have lots, many different kinds.....

And just as I said, its dry, despite the rain we've had.

Step two, wash the dirt of the roots of the moss. 

Bend of Islands moss obviously behaves quite differently to European or American moss.  It did not want to relinquish one grain of precious dirt.  Again a sensible person would  soak it for a while.  Me, I want results now!  So I got a squirter and tried a bit of pressure, none of this "carefully" stuff for me.

The little patch of dry stuff had at least  three different kinds of moss. One example I'd seen on the net had several different textures and colours so today I decided just to use the finer moss at the bottom of the picture and experiment with the others later.

Next step, add the moss to a mixture of yoghurt, water and  corn syrup.

Even the fly on my hand was puzzled.

Now for the moss shake.

Obviously,an artist has a reputation, so no way is there going to be anything in a  public space until there's been an awful lot  of experimenting.  No problem there's plenty of opportunity here.

First of all the rock garden around a shaded pond

Hoping the moss will contrast against baby's tears in the dirt in between

Then there's the spaces between the slate paving....

The bottom of a flower pot - that should be interesting, in all the web photos the moss only grows exactly where the moss shake is painted or stencilled.  So will my pot look rather silly with a mossy stripe on its bottom, or will it look even a little bit natural?

The white coating is where in the past I have painted to milk to try and get moss to grow (not very successfully).  The wet terracotta is the new stripe.

Last of all the side of a garden seat.  Its an old very weathered sleeper with deep ridges on the sides which ought to be just perfect for mossy inserts.

Having had a lovely afternoon  in high humidity painting on my moss - we've now got  38' and a northerly wind forecast for Thursday.  

The instructions on the web say paint  and come back in a couple of weeks to see how its growing, spray occasionally in warm weather.  Somehow I think I'll be wetting it a lot more than that!  That is if it isnt just too hot anyway!

Not good on the patience thing, will it be like watching the grass grow..........Let you know in a couple of weeks.....maybe......

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