Apple a day

Apple found in our garden in December. I wrote about it in a blog about Wassails. We joined in a virtual Wassail at the weekend and drank too much cider. People posted photos of previous years Wassails when they walked about with flaming torches around the boundaries of the parish. No threats were made but there were so many of us we had to have a police escort and cars were stopped as we wandered down the road to the Penkhull apple tree. A few jolly hours to beat back the cold and the dark. In some places in the past they used to shoot shotguns at the trees to make them flower and bear fruit. There are other traditions where they beat the trunks of Walnut trees to get them to bear fruit. We’ve never had that problem with ours. The squirrels always find enough nuts and then we have to find places far away to plant the saplings, we’ve already got too many!

Doodles

I think I was trying to do abstract faces with lines here. Somehow the doodles at the bottom of the picture seem to fit with the contours above. I don’t remember the canvas so I probably painted over it. Sometimes what you paint is not what you want and you have to scrap it. Sometimes you fool yourself into thinking somethings OK when it really isn’t. I like some things and they just won’t work…. I may try and alter this in a digital app? Don’t know. I think this image is about three or four years old….

Not that bad…

Lockdown, I can only go out for exercise and do essential shopping.

But when you think about it, it’s not that bad. I’m not stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere with no one to talk to. I am warm, I have food, I cn talk to people on the phone or online. I might be getting a bit bored. But it’s not like in the past, when I was a child. On Sundays everywhere was closed. No one that worked in simple, low paid jobs, could afford a car. Very few eople had tv’s and there was only one channel and a few radio stations. Computers didn’t exist except in universities or in the armed forces. The air was dirty and polluted, coal fires were the norm to heat houses. It was a different world.

Now we are linked? Possibly too much. But if we stay away from each other as much as we can? Things might just get better…

He’s in again

In bed, if I lie on my back the outdoor cat now walks onto my chest and lies down. Paws on my hand, he will lie his chin down on my hand too as he goes to sleep. The only trouble is I can’t stay in that position all night, so eventually he lies at the bottom of the bed. He often wants to go back outside after two or three hours, but gradually the time inside is extending and outside getting shorter. And he’s put on weight and my two indoor cats have accepted him.

X

Digital crocosmia

Digital crocosmia

I like playing with images and these are two versions of a digital drawing using different options in photodirector.

This was my basic sketch in ArtRage oils which I drew over with Sketch app.

It might not be very good but it shows what you could do to make it more interesting….

Crocosmia Lucifer

I’m watching Gardeners World on BBC TV. They arr showing a compilation programme of the best bits from 2020. One section was about the crocosmia plants that you grow in the garden and the fact that their anticedants came from South Africa.

My garden has crocosmia Lucifer growing in it in the late summer, but its several years old now and I think it’s time to get new bulbs so I’ve painted this to remind myself to get some more..

X