My favourite season is Spring. The anticipation of warm weather to come. Flowers and buds emerging after a bleak winter, and birds, bees and animals taking advantage of the newly green fields.
But to be honest this year the, spring seems to have started, but winter is still here in July. Low temperatures, low pressure and 80% of July’s rainfall in just 10 days in the UK has made for a dismal start to the summer. The jet stream is south of us scooping down cold and wet air from the Arctic.
Meanwhile Southern Europe is baking in record breaking heat with numerous deaths.
Hopefully it will turn into a mild autumn. Unless the weather morphs into a more wintery scene…..
Do you sing for pleasure, to earn money, to learn something new? Or for mental or physical health?
Singing is good for lung health. It can strengthen both your lungs, chest muscles and help improve your voice. It helps with breathing and can help control your worries. I’ve found it helpful with controlling anxiety. It doesn’t cure it, but it calms it. Yes you could get stage fright, but singing with a choir helps because you are singing with others and that supports all the participants. You learn together and grow together. After about 20 years of singing with the group we sound pretty good. New people join and the group changes, but we all enjoy going or we wouldn’t be there
Some songs are earworms, rolling round and round in your head. Others are hard to pick up. We sometimes drop a tone or sing flat. It’s hard as a low singer to hit the high notes. Some songs are really annoying, but others in the group love them. But as we are all different then we all like a variety of music. Participating is good for you. I’d recommend it to anyone.
I love images of space, they excite my artistic imagination. I’ve just been watching The Sky at Night, a BBC TV programme about space and astronomy. They had a special programme about the James Webb space telescope as it is the second anniversary of it sending back the first images it took.
JWST has superceeded the Hubble telescope as the foremost in imaging distant stars, nebulae and galaxies. It can see back in time almost to the big bang. And that was 13 billion years ago. It has been able to image data that indicates exo planets, and on a few occasions has actually been able to work out the chemical constituents of their atmospheres through spectroscopy. It has also given us different ways to image our closest neighbours, the planets of the solar system, for example using infra-red filters.
I am really looking forward to seeing new images from JWST, and maybe even trying to paint some of them. X
Each year we have cherries and pears on our trees. The birds get most of the cherries but we get good pears, that is until this year.
We had a lovely display of blossom. The cherry and the pear tree blossomed first. Early in spring. Lots of flowers, pink and white. But I was worried because it was cold and wet and windy and I didn’t see many insects (and we don’t seem to have had birds nesting either). A couple of weeks later the blossom had faded and petals showered the ground. Then the apple tree came into blossom. The sun shone and bees arrived. Now I have no cherries, I saw the little stalks with tiny pips all over the ground, and no discernable baby pears. It’s so sad. It’s like they have given up now hubby is gone.
My only consolation is that there are lots of apples on the tree. But it hangs over into my neighbours yard and I am worried they will cut it back, and as there is a trellis fence in the way I can’t access the fruit. Drat!
I am annoyed. I put this glass down by my chair this morning after drinking some fruit juice. I went out to an appointment, came home, went to walk into the kitchen and caught the glass with my foot. Of course it smashed. It had a heavy base but the ridged sides were thin and delicate. Result, glass shards everywhere. I hope I have swept them all up.
I don’t know if it’s possible to make glasses like this stronger, it was an expensive glass and I’d like to buy a replacement, but dare I? Do I have to treat it like a rare jewel?
My hubby was born in the year that Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died and he was always admiring of Dylans poetry. Hubby had a wonderfully strong speaking voice, and I know there are cassette tapes somewhere in the house of him reciting Dylans poetry and short stories.
When we first met he played me “the burning baby”, a macabre story by Thomas that sent shivers down my back and raised goosebumps on my arms. It was mesmerising to listen to hubby read it, and he howled at the end with gusto. I think he should have been on the radio as a performer.
I just came in from shopping and suddenly the poem “Do not go gentle” by Dylan Thomas came into my memory. I’ve looked it up and copied it. It was read out by a friend at my hubbies celebration of his life. He had always loved it and I hope he would have been pleased that it was performed.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
If you can, try and listen to a recording of Dylan Thomas reading it. X
Play under a gazebo, Titchy Theatre. We had a good attendance and people seemed to enjoy the small, two page playlets. We had a variety of performances, one play imagined life as an elevator where different floors matched with ages of life and what people do then. Like childhood, aging, and even death. Another was about memories of tandem riding, and various memories of the riders, a third about a noisy neighbour. It was really good to see people’s thoughts down on paper, and the actors enjoyed doing it despite only seeing the scripts about an hour before the performance.
Does anyone know what this is and what mixes with it or can it be drunk on its own? I used Google picture or photo or whatever it’s called to translate the Cyrillic text. So I have the detail of what it is. I just wondered how safe it is to drink? I won it in a raffle so I don’t know anything about it!
I looked up a bit more and it said it has strong antioxidant properties, it seems to be a herbal drink. Has anyone ever drunk this and enjoyed it? Please let me know!
