Gardening

Posted on September 30, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2075, Garden, Growing, Hard work, Life, lopping, Pruning, time memories4 Comments

In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

Gardening makes me feel fulfilled, it’s not always easy for me to do work on the garden at the moment. But when I’m a little better I shall try and get out and do some pruning. The buddlea need cutting back once the flowers have finished. The other shrubs that are shutting out all the light need to be trimmed. If necessary to cut some of the lower branches of trees so that we can let lots more light in.

It’s heavy work, especially the lopping of branches, they are tangled and twisted in and out of the garden, overgrowing the fences. Our neighbours are a bit annoyed with us, but we can’t afford a full renovation and anyway the garden is natural, with frogs and squirrels and possibly hedgehogs.

I’m pleased we have such growth, it’s fun to think we have grown such a lot over the years.

Hedgehog 2 years ago

Posted on September 28, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Environment, Food, Hedgehogs, Memories, Nature, Shelter, Time, Two years ago, Wildlife2 Comments

Two years ago we were having regular hedgehog visitors to our garden, but this year we haven’t seen any. We live next to a busy road and I worry about them. There was also an area of wasteland next to our garden that had brambles growing on it. That was cleared by a builder who removed all the vegetation from it, our garden is quite wild but there was old bits of wood to hide under. I think we will start leaving food out for them to forage again.

Methodism

Posted on September 27, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged co-operative, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2072, Memory, Methodist, Rochdale, Stoke-on trent2 Comments

What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

I’ve said before I’m not religious, I don’t go to Church or Chapel anymore, but when I was younger I did. The methodist way of prayer and praise was simple. Not much adornments, no artistic decoration, just plain white walls and brown wooden pews and pulpit.

That heritage is in abundance where I live now. Just not of here is a village called Mow Cop where primitive Methodists used to preach outside to their flocks of parishoners. I believe that John Wesley preached there.

Wikipedia

Wesleyan Methodist Church (Great Britain)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_Methodist_Church_(Great_Britain)

Gives more information than I am aware of.

Bethesda Methodist Chapel, in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, is gradually being restored to it’s previous magnificent state, after being left to rack and ruin over several decades. I have had the pleasure of performing there with a choir on a couple of occasions and have seen the improvement over the years. It is rather large for a Methodist Chapel and could almost be classified as a cathedral.

Other cultural heritage I am aware of is the formation of the first co-operative movement in the world. It was started in Toad Lane in Rochdale, England. Wikipedia probably has information about that too.

Art meme

Posted on September 27, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Art, Creativity, Design, Facebook memory, Fun, Life, Meme, Poster, Questions6 Comments

I wouldn’t normally post a meme here but I love this one. I think art is so important and yet life gets in the way of people becoming artists. There needs to be the freedom to create, I don’t think people can be a square peg squeezed into a round hole. They should be allowed to do art if they want to. X

Clematis and Canal roses

Posted on September 27, 2023September 27, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Bottle ovens, Canal, Canal roses, Clematis, Five years ago, Life, Painting, Pottery, Stoke-on trent4 Comments

Every so often I paint one of the iconic bottle ovens from Stoke-on-Trent. These were where pottery was originally fired with coal fires. The city would be covered by a pall of thick smoke, morning noon and night.

They sometimes had metal bands wrapped round them to strengthen them, and the old bricks can shine like gold when there is a lovely sunrise or set. Arthur Berry, famous artist of Stoke-on-Trent used to speak about the beauty of the potteries towns. He painted and drew abstracted views of the six towns. He’s known as the potteries Lowry.

This painting is of a derelict oven, I’ve painted clematis growing up it, rewinding the ancient landscape. The blue area represents the local canals, it’s shape mirrors the bottle oven. The flowers in it represent the abstract canal roses that are found adorning canal barges throughout Britain.

Yin yang cats

Posted on September 26, 2023 Posted in Cat, Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Art, Batik, Cats, Colourful, Design, Fine Art, Layers, Printing, wax resist, Workshop, Yin yang2 Comments

My attempt at wax resist printing that I did with the brilliant Belinda Latimer a few years ago. I enjoyed trying to do Batik in her workshop, creating layers of colour. I also did a print of a couple of fish that I called Pisces had framed in a deep wooden frame. Another example of my experimental art practice.

Art

Posted on September 25, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Artists block, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2070, Digital drawing, Drawing, Life, Painting, Sketching, Thought6 Comments

What could you do more of?

I have been ill and down for a while and I need to start feeling better and reclaim doing some real art. Yes I can work on my small phone screen and create small pieces of digital art, and yes, over the years I have done a lot. But I begin to need to paint again. It must be a good sign? I’ve got to stop being frightened of creating, fear of failure is holding me back. Will I ever get through being blocked? At least now I can admit I want to.

Corner

Posted on September 25, 2023September 25, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Art, Bricks, Collage, Digitally manipulated, Door, Fun, incollage, Life, Photos, Window5 Comments

Exercise in perspective. Digitally manipulated photo of a door and window. It’s created an apparent corner where non exists. I tried rotating the image four times until I was satisfied with this picture. I used the incollage app to do it, I was previously using the old Instagram layout app.

Floating building

Posted on September 25, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Blue, Building, Collage, Facebook memories, Photo, Sky, Spode, Stoke-on trent, symmetrical2 Comments

A picture I created five years ago. Collaged from an angled view of part of the old spode factory in Stoke on Trent. I love it because it looks like it’s floating in a beautiful blue sky, with patterns of wispy clouds creating a tracery of waves like the tide coming in around the buildings. I should do more….

Poison words

Posted on September 24, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Confidence, cruel, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2069, Memory, Nasty, poison, Thinking, Time, UncaringLeave a comment

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I used to be hurt when people said things to me to upset me. I would take on board what they said, and it could lead to several sleepless nights, or mistrusting my judgement or feelings.

After a few years of this I talked to a new friend who explained a way of getting through or over the uncaring words.

What they said was imagine the nasty words are poison. The words are absorbed by the victim (in this case me) and the poison works it’s way into the mind of the person they want to hurt. This affects that person’s confidence, thoughts, security.

But in the meantime the person doing the poisoning walks away scot free. With no effect on them, able to go and place poison elsewhere, spreading their cruelty and getting a rise out of others.

The trick is to realise what they are doing and train yourself to ignore their jibes. Inoculate your mind against their poison and learn to stop their tricks before they can get to you. It really does help.

Mallaband-Brown

Category: Memories