New paintings and regular art updates.
Old willow tree
Standing tall
Your long thin leaves
Now wave and fall
From green to gold
And yellow hue
Fluttering against
A sky of blue.
Then wind blows strong
Storm comes along
Your leaves are shredded
And stripped
To lie among
The fallen mulch
For slugs and snails
To munch!
For the last couple of weeks fireworks have been going off in the UK to celebrate bonfire night and possibly eid and Halloween too. But last night was the loudest and longest session.
I’d been out and was driving home. At the top of our hill I could see the flashes and bangs of massive fireworks across the city. The weather was clear and dry so I could see a lot of sparkling colours. I’m glad I went home, my poor cats were petrified. I’d forgotten to leave the radio on to drown out the noise. They soon settled down though x
I was driving so couldn’t take a photo but decided to try and draw an idea of a rocket going off in my Artrage app.
My paintbrush flittered quickly
Across the canvas
A blob of red and brown
A touch of white on a rotund belly
Fluffed up to keep out the cold.
An hour of painting
Green sprigs above
Snow below
Footprints trail
Sparse grass protrudes
Hop on the way
To Christmas.
It rained very heavily a few days ago.
I wrote this poem in response :
Rain flowed down the hill
Flooded the gutters
A wall of water
In the midst of it
A man on a mobility scooter
Drove it through two feet of water
Flash flood wheel chair hero!
The man on the scooter was videoed, it made the local TV news! Legend! I think it’s on tiktok in Stoke on Trent.
My old cat seems to be a bit better, he’s eating more and has gone back on to solid foods. He is more friendly and active too.
I thought his life was over, but he’s somehow stabilised. I’m hoping he keeps going, as long as he’s not in pain. The anxiety has settled a bit in me too. I don’t worry about going out as much now. I can’t explain the relief I feel. And he’s getting lots of love. He’s lying on the mat near the heater at the moment. Paws tucked under. Typical loaf position.
Old buildings in our city don’t always last. They are often left to rot. Trees and bushes grow out of brickwork, splitting the seams and unzipping the building. Making the ancient pottery a ruin.
Some places dismantle buildings. For example the Black Country Museum in Dudley, West Midlands, England. It often numbers each individual brick of a house, or factory, or school and rebuilds it within the grounds of the museum. It has working chain makers and underground canals that run through caves with fossils imbeded in the walls.
Meanwhile our industrial heritage in Stoke on Trent is gradually rotting, or is even burnt down by arsonists. We really should take better care of out industrial archeology even if it means donating it to the black country museum.
Reddish sky in the morning
Shepherds take warning….
And they should! A few days ago we had a red dawn, this photo was taken as it faded.
The sky soon clouded over and later we had a deluge! Water flowed down the hill so fast and deep that it overwhelmed the drains and poured out of gutters onto the pavements. At the back of my house it came down the window in a sheet of rain and the water snuck into the wall and plaster around the window frame. I’ve never seen anything like it.
There was a flash flood in the centre of town with rain water up to people’s car headlights. Shops that were safe at the front had brown water knee high in their store rooms….
It might have been a microburst but it was very stormy. The winds were blowing trees about. It was more than the usual thunderstorm. Thankfully it blew over after about twenty minutes.
Climate change is here. I don’t know how places like Jamaica and Cuba and Haiti coped with last week’s hurricane. I feel so worried for them.
Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
I’d invent “autumn bank holiday” for Britain.
We have lots of bank holidays in the UK but there is a big gap between the bank holiday Monday in August and then Christmas. I know America has a thanksgiving holiday and maybe we could have something in late October?
Not halloween! Not everyone celebrates that so I’d literally call it autumn day. To enjoy the change of the season. The mists and mellow fruitfulness. The changing leaves, autumnal flowers, the ripening of fruit, fungi fruiting, the start of animals gathering food for winter.
An outside day to explore and enjoy the season and a day of rest for the day, keeping a warm evening to enjoy seasonal foods.
My friend in our #bandofsketchers group asked me to come up with some drawing prompts. This is my reply. The list could be a poem!
“Sorry I’ve not been doing much again. I’ll try again soon! New prompts:
Ideas and dreams
Sugar
Black and white
Green and red
Purple and yellow
Orange and blue
Blurred
Stitches
Games
Holding on
Silly
Ripples
Fish
Floating
Suspended
Itch
Hobby
Strap
Festival
Flop
Book or booking
African
South American
Asian
North American
Australian
Shower
Sunny
Slope
Feed
Fright
Parrot
Hold
Amphibian
Resting
Testing
Opera
Bulge
Seaside
Steps
Happy
Miffed
Splatter
Gold
Metal
Chomp
Sold
Smell
I think these can be quite open? Hope this helps.”
What are your favorite websites?
I’m interested in astronomy and follow Spaceweather.com
It’s full of information about comets and meteor showers, solar flares and corona mass ejections that can lead to auroras at the north and south poles. There are so many different phenomena that you can find out about there, and images of astronomical events.
Take a look, you might be surprised ar what’s up in space and how it affects us down here on Earth
Mallaband-Brown