New paintings and regular art updates.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
Anti HS2 – SOC (Save our Countryside)
Save the Colne Valley
Xandra Gilchrist
I’m drawing at home with a little group called band of sketchers on Facebook. It’s an offshoot of urban sketchers and it means that I draw at home every couple of days. I avoid going out much these days as I want to avoid coming into contact with people.
One day I will feel better, but for now I’m hiding in my little shell and avoiding coughs and sneezes.
I have enjoyed keeping my drawing skills up. A lot of the sketches are done really fast, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. Our small group are challenging each other to learn new techniques and improving our observation skills.
I make no apology for sharing this from Facebook.
Let’s say you woke up with a terrible cough, a fever, and severe body aches. Immediately, you rush to the testing station and unfortunately, you’re told you are positive for COVID-19. For the last two weeks, you’ve been unaware that you were infected and you’ve ignored “the rules.” You’ve gotten together with some close friends for pizza, had a few people over, even visited a park and a beach. You figured, “I don’t feel sick. I have the right to keep living my normal life. No one can tell me what to do.”
With your diagnosis, you spend the next few days at home on the couch, feeling pretty crappy; but then you’re well again because you’re young, healthy and strong. Lucky you. But your best friend caught it from you during a visit to your house, and because she didn’t know she was contagious, she visited her 82-year-old grandfather, who uses oxygen tanks daily to help him breathe because he has COPD and heart failure. Now, he’s dead.
Your co-worker, who has asthma, caught it too, during your little pizza get-together. Now, he’s in the ICU, and he’s spread it to a few others in his family, too–but they won’t know that for another couple of weeks yet.
The cashier at the restaurant where you picked up the pizza carried the infection home to his wife, who has MS, which makes her immunosuppressed. She’s not as lucky as you, so she’s admitted to the hospital because she’s having trouble breathing. She may need to be placed in a medically-induced coma and intubated; she may not get to say goodbye to her loved ones. She may die surrounded by machines, with no family at her bedside.
All because you couldn’t stand the inconvenience of a mask; of staying home; of changing your familiar routines for just a little while. Because you have the right, above all others rights, to continue living your normal life and no one, I mean no one, has the right to tell you what to do.
Written by Anonymous. Copied from a friend and shared. Please do the same.
I don’t know what species it is, I can’t get very good closeups with my phone but I think it’s a Bee, however it could be a hover fly? The back end of it doesn’t look fuzzy enough. But it has yellow and black bands on it. So does anyone know?
Whether bee or fly, at least its something that pollinates plants, and that’s what we need to protect in the world. Imagine a world without pollinating insects? There would be a lot less fruit and vegetables unless we were to hand pollinate or create machines that could do it. But we don’t need that. We need to protect what we already have! Banning pesticides that kill bees, like nicotioides. Farming responsibly and safely. Its a difficult balance. But we must make it happen.
I must stop staying up and watching TV late at night. I’ve got into the habit of watching a TV series that is streamed every night. I used to watch it a few years ago and when it came back on I started watching. Virtually every night.
Why? Comfort. I can relax when I watch it. I get taken back in time, I like it. But it’s late at night, sometimes later than others, that has consequences, it means I get up late. I know I don’t go to work anymore, but half the day has gone.
Luckily the series ends soon. And this is the last series. Only another three weeks and I won’t be watching it anymore. But I am glued to the screen at the moment. What will I do without my little addiction. What else will tickle my fancy? I’m just glad I don’t have a subscription to a video streaming platform, or I will be lost.
Mallaband-Brown