Just half an hour from home is Benmore Botanic Garden and my sister and I had a beautiful walk there in lovely sunshine yesterday. I had exhibitions there and Barry was a garden guide, so lots of happy memories.
Just half an hour from home is Benmore Botanic Garden and my sister and I had a beautiful walk there in lovely sunshine yesterday. I had exhibitions there and Barry was a garden guide, so lots of happy memories.
0 Comments
..hello Spring! And Happy Easter everyone. (I have never been able to take a good photograph of this painting. It is called Freedom and is a very vibrant, clear yellow,) ..find me having that all-inportant first cup of coffee at the bedroom window. Often with pen and paper. I love a slow, thoughtful start to the day. Do you, when and if you get the chance that is! I hesitated to press Publish on that last post. I am still not sure if it was the right thing to do, but war weighs so heavily that I feel compelled to mention it although I know it is not the kind of content you expect here. Being an informed citizen is important but watching people kill each other, as it hapens, crosses a line... Meantime, thankfully, the tulips suffuse with yellow and the chaffinch visits the bird feeder. Beautiful.
..has been fun to do. Maybe a bit premature but away with the fur throw and the brushed cotton bedding and in with a bit of spring colour (extra layers still to hand of course!) I do think what you see when you first open your eyes in the morning should delight you..picked from the garden and sparking joy.
Since I wrote this earlier today it has snowed! ..and a variation on the kitchen shopping makeover. Free and very easy. Is there a place in yourc home that could do with a bit of a refresh? Maybe a shelf in the siitting room, or a corner of the bedroom? Or a table top in your entraneway. Decide on a colour you love that will give you a lift and go around the house and into all the cupboards to find objects of that colour and make a little arrangement of them in their new space. This surface in the sitting room has had the same things on it for years, and although I still like it, they say a change is as good as a rest and I think there is some truth in that.. I had not intended to chamge the painting until I remembered a series of green paintings I did when I was learning how to use Chinese brushes then I just had to add the red candle - a little bit of opposite colour always sparks joy, and it echoes my red 'chop' which I used on the chinese brush inspired paintings, and which reads 'still learning'. What colour will you choose, and I wonder what you will find.. A morning of sunshine, kind words of encouragement from lovely blog friends and all is well.
First lunch out of doors this year. I hope you had sun where you are, and time to relax in it. ..and a totally free and almost instnat kitchen makeover. When I unpacked the shopping today I kept out on view everything that was yellow and put out of sight everything that wasn't. I put things I wanted close at hand in a yellow carrier bag and hung it on a handle. I found my yellow apron and chose a few yellow cards from my lovely collection.
Just for fun. Next week it may be red. Or green. Tomorrow I will go and find some branches to put in the yellow pot. Thank you for all the recent links to colourful shoes ad slippers! I have recently discovered Kettlewell Colours and am awaiting my second order from them. They do have a sale on just now.. Meanwhile there is colour around the house to enjoy.
Here in UK we are having some horrible weather. I hope you are not affected by power cuts/floods/wind damage/transport diruption etc. I can get a bit cabin-feverish and sluggish staying indoors for a few days (especially when I had some interesting plans!). So it has been baking cakes and clearing cupboards for me. It might have been nicer to photgraph the cake!
How is your paper clearing challenge going? I have at times felt a little embarassed that I have to devise 'games' to make myself do the tedious chores but I have now found scientific justification for such methods. It goes something like this. Each tiny micro-goal achieved (each tick on the to-do list for example) gives a small hit of dopamine. Lots of small hits of dopamine produce adrenaline. Adrenaline gives you energy to achieve more goals and before you know iit you are feeling good! Yes? I didn't get very far! At the end of the drive I waited for the bus. It was still dark so I had my phone in my hand so that the driver would see me. Bitterly cold though the snow had gone, and so slippery underfoot. The bus never came. Black ice on the roads apparently. So I lit the fire and some candles and cooked a nice breakfast, baked a cake and cooried in. The shed door is frozen shut, as are the lids of the bins and the compost bin. Everything is silvered over and slippery underfoot. Just going out of the door feels like a wee adventure! But a thaw is forecast and I will be venturing a little bit further afield for a few days. Back soon. Have a good weekend and stay warm. Don't try to feed a heron who comes to your back door! The heron seemed to be looking at me so expectantly, so trustingly and patiently. I thought 'it must be hungry'. Having no fish (or frogs or voles) handy I foolishly held out a handful of suet bird food. Well, my fingers must have looked like nice little fishes! That neck is long, that beak is sharp (I felt it), and it was so fast I only just escaped with my fingers intact. I'm afraid it went away hungry from my door. It's not been back.. ..was standing in the garden and when I came in to fetch my camera it followed me up the steps! There are a lot of herons along our shores and they are often seen waiting very patiently for dinner to swim by. I didn't kmow that they also eat newts and voles and frogs. They nest high in the trees here and look rather incongruous sittting in the branches. This one looks like a juvenile and stayed around for 20 minutes or so, seemingly unafraid.
..with short forays out of doors to add to the nature table..tiny crab apples on the floor of Cornation Wood. It's interesting to see what the birds eat. They don't seem to touch the quince which are quietly rotting on the bush. Like Cathy's waxwings stripping her holly bushes, we have seen redwings and fieldfares from Scandinavia strip the rowan tree of all its berries in a few hours. Have any of you seen waxwings this year?
The little shop-bought narcissus are filling the house with the smell of spring! I wonder if you tried the looking/not looking drawing technique I described yesterday. It is much easier to demmonstrate than describe so I hope it made sense. You may find if you follow it with a more conventional representational drawing that it will be both easier and beeter than you hav dpne before. (I have fixed the link, and the commens on that post are most interesting too.) I'm having a rather unsettled start to the new year, still reminiscing about the old one. The highlights like the dinner party in Paris on my birthday (how romantic is that?!) and the low points. The death of a dear friend, a man who had goodness through him from head to toe like the letters in a stick of rock. A friend with a little dog in the village with whom I went walks has moved away to the city. She winkled me out of the house in all weathers and I do miss her. With the clearing of the Christmas decoarations I think I must let 2023 go. Perhaps the comfort of looking back is that you know how things workded out, whereas 2024 is the unknown, with uncertainty the only certainty! Letting go of both past and future and being in the present might be wise, and focussing on what is under my nose. I had planned to create a nature table for the solstice but the weather was so wet I hardly went out, so a nature table for January - a winter nature table might get me out of doors and out of my head. How is your year going and have you chosen a word? Do share. I was very glad I did the shopping yesterday. Assuming you don't have to go to work that day, what is your favourite way to spend a snowy day? I stoked up the fire and had breakfast by candlelight, fed the birds, took a little bare foot walk around the garden, listened to The Snow Child on Audible. I had some soup and some Christmas chhocolates and looked at my Christmas book and thought about my word for 2024... I had a thoroughly lazy and self indulgent day. It was lovely. :-) When I got off the bus, which drops me right by my house, I had my phone in my hand to use the torch (no street lights here which I rather like). There are no bus stops either, the drivers drop you where you request. I loved how the house was welcoming me so I put down my bags of shopping and took few quick shots.... It's very cold and starry and they say it may snow! ..and on with more down to earth matters.
Do you have a place you feel to be your second home? Not in the literal sense of owning property there, but in the sense of feeling at home, feeling you belong. York was my home for many happy years and revisiting it can be rather bittersweet, but the beauty of it and the layers of history so visible on it's every surface always enchant me.. I am not naive about it's problems. Like most cities it has homelessness and pollution, over commercilisation, rowdy hen nights and stag parties and crowds, but as in many English cathedral cities there is a sense of continuity and tradition that appeals to me on a deep level. Centuries of it, and York Minster has seen it all. I do like what Lia Leendertz has to say in her December podcast As The Season Turns about our desire to hibernate in winter, and I also plan to take up her suggestion of preparing a nature table for the solstice on the 21st. We have had little snow as yet and some brave sunny days. I love the way the villas and large houses on the shores of Holy Loch give scale to the hills. Large areas of the forest have been felled recently.
A winter blog break coming up - hope you will stay safe and cosy! There is something celebratory about it. I just love it. It's not expensive, it lasts for ages (though it has an unpleasant smell, which fortunately fades). It makes me feel happy. Here is last year's.. I couldn't bring myself to simply throw it away. Is there any thing makes you feel happy just by looking at it? Your comments on yesterday's post made me very happy. Thank you so much! |
Categories
All
AuthorAn artist seeking a simpler life - (but not too simple!) Archives
April 2024
|