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tired out

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people walking

That’s not what I’ve been doing this last week, in fact almost the exact opposite! I think I have realised what has been wrong with me. A bout of tonsillitis. It’s tired me out, I feel washed out and slightly dizzy. Today I actually left the house and did some shopping. I needed to get some watercolour paper and new drawing pens. I’ve been meaning to do it for a week. I had to get my hubby to come along to help me carry things and ended up spending far too much on some plants for the winter months in the garden. I also haven’t done much of my college work and can see it spiralling away from me. Will I catch up? seriously I need to be better now. I cant afford to get too behind with the course work.

life! sometimes it sucks.

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt, old.

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My hubby, forty years together and we are both getting old. Various marker pens on cartridge paper. He didn’t keep still or I would have done a better job on it. I’ve bought a few more permanent marker pens. Some are OK, but some seriously smell of something like acetone? I used a silver pen to try and add grey to his hair and reflections/highlights on his face.

Using photodirector on a cat

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Rather a painterly effect. The cats fur has an interesting pattern in it. The newspaper layers are defined. The surface of the box has a slight mottled effect. This was all done by using the style tool and choosing effect number two. The background colours add to the composition. I would have liked to get the cat looking more directly at me, but she wasn’t playing tonight! She does like perching on boxes as you can see. I think it looks quite good.

You know its coming…

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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!

Flowers from a friend

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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….

Some of this years pears

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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.

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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.