Little pool

Snowdrops surround the dam at the end of the pond at Rode Hall on the snowdrop walk at the weekend. Some of the daffodils are already up and we saw cyclamen and Helibores too. Spring is just round the corner and unseasonably warm weather has reached us from the south. Tomorrow we are expecting colder, more normal temperatures with possible snow showers. It’s no wonder the birds and insects get confused at this time of year.

Fell asleep!

Argh! I’ve been out all afternoon working on some paperwork and I got really tired. I should have gone out this evening, but I fell asleep and woke up a while ago, feeling dazed and confused as the saying goes. I don’t feel like going for a walk, I think I’m allowed a rest. I feel very guilty, but if I fall asleep I must be tired? I know I shouldn’t miss things but I couldn’t help it. Now I feel like sleeping again. I should write a limerick!

Please forgive my tardy brain

I should go out, but what a pain!

I just fell asleep

My dreams to keep

I want to go to sleep again!

Winter stew

I just made a vegetarian stew for dinner. I could have made Staffordshire Lobby which is a beef based stew, lobbing all sorts of things into the pot. But I used a meat substitute, Quorn pieces.

Basically I put two small chopped potatoes, two small sliced carrots and half a sweet potato, peeled and sliced, into a pan and covered them in boiling water. I let them simmer for a few minutes, then chopped up a small red onion, chopped some slices off a cabbage (about a sixth of it) and two sticks of celery sliced up. Then I added half a pack of Quorn and a couple of teaspoons of Lazy Garlic. I let everything simmer for about twenty minutes. Then I added a couple of vegetable stock cubes. Let it cook for a few more minutes before serving with a hunk of brown bread and vegetable spread. I didn’t add salt, but if you do add it on top of the stew when you serve, that way it sits on the food and doesn’t get absorbed into it. That means you don’t eat too much salt. You can also add pepper at the end.

Rode Hall snowdrop walk

Rode Hall snowdrop walk is lovely at this time of year. The snowdrops are in full bloom and other spring plants like Heli ores, Cyclamen and Daffodils are also in flower or coming into flower.

Rode Hall is off the A34 in Staffordshire, near Rode Heath village. They charge £6 per adult to walk round the grounds on the snowdrop walk. There is a lake and a wooded area. The hall sits in beautiful grounds with a walled kitchen garden next to it. They have a monthly market which is next due on the 4th of March 2023.

Water is blue

How do i know the water is blue? Surely it’s transparent. But look at the sea. As you go deep into it you can see it stays blue until you go deep when it’s black. Then look at water at sunset. It stays blue even when the sky turns red doesn’t it? And in yellow white sunshine its very blue. Not green, not yellow, not red, not purple – Blue.

Posting at 4am

🕓

And….. The insomnia has kicked in again! Achey arm, scringing toes, too warm, aching back. Thoughts whirl and I can’t rest. Thought of putting the radio on for quiet or white noise, but I can never retune the thing and if I have it on low my instinct is to struggle to hear the news. Plus my sleep aponea mask sometimes hisses in my face. I’ve had a new mask but the hose connecting it to the machine is the wrong size and sometimes disconnects if I turn over in bed. Sorry to moan…

Throw down

At the end of a sketch out artists do a throw down where we lay out all our drawings for each other to see. There are fourteen sketches here but I think there were more people attending than that.

There are lots of things to sketch at Keele, there is Keele Hall, various interesting buildings and different architectures. There are also a series of small lakes and an observatory which I once visited, but can’t remember where it is. The number of buildings on the campus has really increased in recent years. There is now a full blown science park there. It’s a long way from when it’s campus was the base for an old British comedy called a very peculiar practice. Based in the 1980’s.