Hay-fever

Today is dry and windy. I might go out later but the pollen count is very high. I’m allergic to grass pollen. It started when I was a child, I would wake up with ‘sleep in my eyes’ gunged up with mucus. Then I did a painting in situ in the school playing fields, I was drawing and painting a van dumped on the field. In the week it was there I sat and drew it most lunchtimes. By the end of that week I had full blown hay-fever! I think it was because the grass was really tall and was distributing pollen.

Nowadays there are much better antihistamines, eye drops and nasal sprays. Thank goodness, the situation without them would be horrible. I walked past a garden full of overgrown grass a few years ago and I could not breathe! Sneezing, running eyes, all of the symptoms. I had to buy hay-fever tablets straight away to calm it down.

Turn around?

When you hang up a hanging basket make sure it’s facing the right way! This was a bit heavy and we just hung it up without looking which was the right way. It needs turning 180° but it will have to wait. It’s been watered and it’s a lot heavier now. Mind you there are begonias about to flower on this side, I might leave it a few days and see how it develops. Gardening is great, you can never tell exactly how things will turn out.

Rain clouds

Big puffy cloud seen in Newcastle under Lyme this afternoon. We did get a heavy rain shower afterwards and apparently there was a big thunderstorm a few miles away. The UK sits just in the right place to get weather from the North, South, East and West. With that and the jet stream moving about above us means that we can get ‘a year’s weather in a day’ as the old saying goes. In some places, such as the lake district, where they get a LOT of rain, they even make a joke of it and sell postcards with cartoons about rain and wet sheep on them!

New work

New painting, based on the lower photo of Dorothy Clive Garden waterfall. I’m working from a filtered photograph of it that has added texture to it. I will try and post an update later. I was trying to find an image to work from for the afternoon at the Orme Art Group today. I was worried about the yellow and green and purple colours, are they to muddy….? But now I’ve started adding a pop of red in places I’m happier. It is something that is making me happy, so I will carry on.

Wet cat

Like a stone hung from a chain, I can tell the weather by our cat.

Wet cat, it’s raining

Cat looks white, snowing

Cat covered in white dots? Hailing

Cat hot to the touch? Sunny

Cat in a cloud? Foggy

Cat with hair on end? Windy or angry!

OK, silly post! I wrote it because the cat just came in and he’s as wet as an otter in a stream (exaggeration)! ❤️

Constitution

What is a constitution and can it be changed?

I’m not going to mention current politics in America, as I’m not an American I don’t have enough knowledge of how it works. But I am going to question whether something has to stay the same in perpituity (forever).

There are some commandments in the bible that are no longer followed, for instance two thousand years ago people were told not to eat shellfish. This was probably sensible then, but as time has gone by and hygiene has improved, this command is no longer relevant.

When some constitutions were written many things were not possible, or not invented – space flight, open heart surgery, flight, trains, etc. So if you follow a constitution set in stone you might not be allowed to use some of these things. Flight being only allowed for birds and bat’s for example.

But if a law is wrong, why not change it? Why not modernise? Why then go back to old fashioned ideas? If you go back where do you stop? Do you take away the vote for everyone but the rich? Do you stop women going out to work? Bring back slavery? There are places in the world where a woman may not drive a car unless accompanied by a man.

Then when you do have rules they get broken, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. Humans are not perfect. They can make bad decisions, act illegally, cause trouble.

So what can we do? Try and act fairly, act with consideration for others, be polite, try not to overreact to others, but have an opinion, and try to care. That’s all I can come up with.

I like snakes

When I was little we had a talk at school about snakes and reptiles. At the end the person giving the talk gave us a chance to hold a snake. A lot of the girls were scared, they thought they would be slimy and cold. I don’t think I was scared so I put my hand up and got called forward. I ended up with a snake wrapping itself round my arm. The scales were dry and shiny and beautifully patterned. It was so interesting that a few years later I was at a nature display and held a six or eight foot long python across my shoulders. I also went to an open day a few years ago and held this snake (well it wrapped itself round me). I’ve also found that I quite like tarantulas. I would not have either as a pet, but I do think taking a look at things like this isn’t as scary as it looks, as long as they are not venomous!

Don’t forget

Memory is a strange thing, time passes slowly, but quickly. The Ukraine is still under attack, its people being shelled and murdered by Russian forces, not a special operation but open war. But we forget, we see it as less newsworthy because we get bored. Meanwhile people get trapped in factories where they have taken shelter. Families are ripped apart, the elderly and disabled are left behind because they don’t have the ability to escape. Mass destruction of the infrastructure continues. Why is Putin allowed to continue? He makes more threats and we are unable to make him stop. Of course the fear of reprisals is part of this. If you don’t remember the attack is continuing how can you help?