New paintings and regular art updates.
Our big cat has a runny eye. He’s been diagnosed with conjunctivitis. The problem is that the first lot of eye drops irritated his eye and so we have been back to the vets for a gentler treatment. We have come back with an ointment for his eye and liquid antinflamatory drops to add to his food as he can’t have it on an empty stomach.. Now I’ve just got to catch him twice a day!
For information about cat care try finding the @katzenworld blog here… Not sure of its address…
Little buds into purple flowers or bracts. The flowers on our new hydrangea are coming out. They were a surprise. Hydrangea usually have blue or pink flowers depending on the acidity or alkalinity of the soil. I’ve heard of people putting copper nails in the soil with them to change their colour. I don’t know if it works as its probaby a old wives tale? A good garden plant and can grow into a small shrub.
If humans had taglines, what would yours be?
I had to look this up:
“In entertainment, a tagline is a short text which serves to clarify a thought for, or is designed with a form of, dramatic effect. Many tagline slogans are reiterated phrases associated with an individual, social group, or product. Wikipedia”
I would say I’m a “pattern loving gal”? Does that work as a tagline for me? I add patterns to most of my art, and the older I get the more I seem to do it. The three words explain my feelings about art. My genuine enjoyment of entanglements and textures. My enjoyment of and involvement with pattern in my art and designs.
I cannot think of any better description.
There is a website called blitzortung.org you can open up, and if you look at the live maps you can see lightning strikes as they happen. The site covers the whole world but you can zoom in on it.
Tonight it got very dark and cloudy and we had a few flashes of lightning with rumbles of thunder about 5 to 3 miles away (10 and 6 seconds), Light travels fast, sound follows, so 2 seconds equals a mile away.
We just had some heavyish rain but the storm petered out. Looking at the lightning map, the storm split up into two. The storm stopped about three miles away from here
, but a branch of it was heading towards Crewe. There were over 5 thousand strikes in an hour!
I’ve been interested about lightening since I was talking to an elderly lady about 25 years ago. She said she was in her house several years before that. She had the window open because it was so hot, suddenly a ball of lightening came in through the window and bounced off the floor. She didn’t explain what happened afterwards, whether it just dissipated. But clearly it was not too traumatic. I have heard of ball lightning, so it might have been true….
Snuggle, buggle..
Gooby goo
Twoozle
Prettle
Plip.
Names I call my cat?
Tweest, cara, snook..
Pootle, pools, sook…
Flimp, shust, flust..
Pooku poo two..
Just be with me always
My sweet
Jubby lue!
Made a birthday trifle, raspberrysugar free jelly with blackberries and port, strawberry blancmange with a bit of sweetner, whipped cream with chopped strawberries and grated dark chocolate.
Now that’s what I call a trifle!
Monkey made by willow weaving, tree trunk carving, bottle kiln shaped bug hotel and a large house shaped bug hotel. These are in the entrance compound of the Monkey Forest before you actually walk around the money enclosure. It’s interesting to see the different ideas that the sculptors have come up with.
Macaque Monkey at Trentham Monkey Forest. We visited today.
The monkeys live in a forested area south of Trentham Gardens on the A34 in Staffordshire. It’s near the city of Stoke on Trent.
Two troops of Barbary Macaque monkeys live in the enclosure. They are being raised to support the species which is in decline in North Africa. The climate here is equivalent to there natural home which is the Atlas mountains I think.
This year they have had eight babies. They are thriving. You can walk around in the enclosure but you have to follow strict rules, getting no closer than 2 meters, not trying to feed them, not touching them, not taking food into the enclosure.
We really enjoyed it despite the heat of the day. Seeing a baby that was less than a month old climbing up branches was amazing. It was a god walk up and down hills and along a stream in the cool of the forest.
Original pattern from 9 years ago. I’ve just duplicated it to extend the pattern. It was originally drawn on a site called Sketchfu which sadly closed a few years ago. As a pattern lover I liked the simplicity of the site. You could draw a lot of things with a few circular different sized pens.
What are the most important things needed to live a good life?
Obviously we all need the basics of life, food, water, shelter. Without them people would struggle. They are the basis of a good life. But on top of this I think education is important too.
The more you learn, the more you can do things. Simple biology is useful for growing crops, understanding how to maintain and feed them, how to breed them so you get better crops over the years.
Learning languages can help you to understand other countries, their communities, the ideas behind their beliefs. And also help prevent things like xenophobia. The more you understand the less anxious you should be.
What about mathematics? You would struggle to run a business without basic arithmetic and if you want to understand marketing or the reach of your products you probably need an understanding of statistics too….
Fishing? Ecology would be a good subject.
Designing cars? Either Art so you can draw a design and work out how it would fit together, or engineering if you want to get down to the nuts and bolts…
So many things to learn, and in some places that could cost a lot of money. So I think education should be free and paid for by the richest people in society.
Of course not everyone is educated to a reasonable standard. But it’s generally understood that the better educated you are, the better off you will be. You might not have a rich life, but hopefully a good life, a life of knowledge, discovery and understanding. And an improved wellbeing.
Mallaband-Brown