You know its coming…

Posted on September 26, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Autumn, Cold, Dark, Earth, Equinox, Life, Long evenings, North, seasons, South, Tipped earth, World6 Comments

In the northern hemisphere at least. We’ve hit the equinox, when the day and night lengths are the same. Cold, arrives, now. Unless we get some late summer heat. There’s been hailstorm in the North East of England and heavy rain in Scotland. Across the Northern hemisphere there have been hurricanes in North America and Typhoons in Asia.

The other side of the world is experiencing Spring. The South is getting warmer as the Earth starts to tip its south Pole towards the sun. The tilt of the Earth means that we have seasons. If the world was at 90° day and night would be equal across the whole world. 12 hours of light, 12 hours of dark. No glorious late evenings in summer or long dark nights in winter. What an interesting world we live on.

And it’s not flat!

Leo

Posted on September 26, 2020 Posted in Cat, Fine ArtTagged Acrylic on canvas, Africa, Art, Big cat, Impressions, Leo, Lion, Lions group, Painting, Portrait4 Comments

This was a painting I did for the local Lions group in 2019. I paint cats, but not big cats, so it was something a bit different. I’ve seen art where people paint each individual hair on an animal but I am more impressionistic and try and get feeling into my paintings, to give them character. This is another acrylic on canvas. I’m glad he went to a good home.

By the way did you know that occasionally female lions grow mains too? Interesting fact.

Complicated

Posted on September 26, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Flowers, Icing, Ideas, Image, Layout app, Leaves, Photo, Poem, Poetry, SculptingLeave a comment

Tasty roses, like cake

Spread out like icing flowers

Sculpted into petals

Shaped and molded

Moulded? Moldering?

Complications

Convolution

Like a convolvulus

Flowers that multiply

Given in friendship

Pattern of mind and ideas.

Flowers from a friend

Posted on September 26, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Flower press, Flowers, Freesias, From friends, Illustration, Photo, Plants, Pressed flowers, Roses2 Comments

In exchange for some pears my friend gave me some flowers. I thought how kind, I wasn’t expecting anything back. The roses are a mellow red colour, and there are pale purple Fushias and white roses and some different white flowers.

Apparently the Victorians used to give different meanings to different plants. For instance Forget-me-nots. I think also Pansies and Lily of the Valley. I don’t know the meanings, but I know people used to press flowers within the pages of heavy books. Or even flower presses. The idea was to squash the flower so it became dried and flattened. If the person pressing it was artistic it could be used in artwork, some of them would be used for illustration purposes. I’m not sure how they would have coped with larger flowers like multi petal led or stemmed flowers. I guess they would have needed more steady pressure? Sorry, a lot of this is speculation. My mind wanders across different thoughts….

Floating

Posted on September 25, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Bluest, Bricks, Building, Floating, Poem, Poetry, Sapphire, Sea, Sky, Trees2 Comments

On a cloud or the sea

Waves washing you

Onto a beach

Bricks and lamposts

Windows and shutters

Chimneys and trees

Cold air and breeze

bluest of blues

Shattering Sapphire

Clouds smudged on the sky.

Brick spaceship

Alien building

Spinning out of control.

Some of this years pears

Posted on September 25, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Environment, Fruit, Gardening, Growth, Life, Nature, Pear tree, Pears, Sweet, Tasty, Twenty years, WoolworthsLeave a comment

We bought the pear tree as a small sapling from Woolworths about twenty years ago. It’s grown since then and every year it has had a bigger crop of pears on it. This year there must have been fifty. The tree has tipped over because of their weight and possibly the wind, so we’ve had to prop it up. The bark is cracked and coming off in places, and it suffers from black spot, but the pears are delicious. Some of them rotted on the tree, possibly from being pecked by birds. We’ve got most of them off the tree now and are sharing some with friends.

Trying to get the cat in.

Posted on September 25, 2020 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Abandoned cat, Black and white, Black and white cat, Confidence, Encourage cat, Home, In for winter, Indoor cats, Life4 Comments

We are trying to encourage the abandoned cat that we look after into the house as the weather gets colder. He isn’t very happy though. He struggles out of my hubbies arms and runs and yowls to be let back out again. We might have to consider opening the cat flap and having him in the bathroom over night if nothing else. We want him in a warmer situation than last winter.

I keep telling hubby that you have to encourage him in gently (the cat, not hubby) and let him settle down, until he gets confident. The two house cats don’t seem to mind him and disregard him, so that’s positive.

Hot apple bread.

Posted on September 25, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Apple bread, Baked, Cooked, Food, Homemade, Hubby, Loaf, Mad, Moist, Tasty, Thirty minutes later4 Comments

Bread (with oats, rye, multiseed loaf mix and tiny bits of pasta!) I think he would have added the kitchen sink. He did add larde chunks of apple and also pear. Had a bit hot with some butter. Well cooked, moist, not too crusty! I’m amazed!

Hubby making apple bread?

Posted on September 25, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Apple bread, Baking, Cooking, Flour, Food, Hubby, Loaf, Oats, Random, Rye flourLeave a comment

An explosion in the kitchen? No hubby making apple bread. There was flour over the draining board, the crockery drainer, in the sink, on the floor. He got me to scrape the dough off his hands it was so sticky. He had added oats and rye flour to a bag of breadmaking flour which had added yeast. It wasn’t rising very well but he added cooking apples to the loaves.

Now they are in the oven, cooking, I wonder how they will turn out? In half an hour I will know.

HS2 (high speed two) railway

Posted on September 25, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Ancient oak, Ancient trees, Corporate vandalism, Felling trees, High speed two railway, HS2, Life, Random, Sad, TragedyLeave a comment

From Facebook. I decided to share this here to show what stupid ideas our government have. This and many other ancient trees are being cut down because we (our government) wants to build a railway between London and Birmingham and then on to Manchester and Leeds. But the lines won’t go into the city centres, so you will have to travel to the new hub stations. They say it will cut twenty minutes off the journey time between Manchester and London! Wow. And to do this they need straight tracks because fast trains don’t like curves. Well, of course chopping down trees for that MUST be justified! Not that we can actually afford it or have people working in cities anymore.

The Hunningham Oak which is one of the ancient trees nominated for Tree of the Year now felled by HS2!

Thank you to all tree protectors who tried to save this once magnificent tree!

Some of the campaigns include these if you want to get involved….

STOP HS2
Save Cubbington Woods – Stop HS2
The Woodland Trust
Save Roald Dahl Woods from HS2

STOPPINGHS2

Anti HS2 – SOC (Save our Countryside)
Save the Colne Valley
Xandra Gilchrist

Mallaband-Brown

Author: artbychristinemallabandbrown