New paintings and regular art updates.
Summer photo, a couple of years old
The red and green spark off each other
Scarlet red shines in the garden
Drifts of arching flowers in the bed.
Sunlight needed to keep them growing
Shade stopped them in their tracks.
Gone now, the memory of them still cheers.
What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
When I was fitter I used to swim. I’m not fast but have stamina so I gradually built up the distance I could swim. My preferred goal was breast stroke.
I found out that a mile was about 40 lengths of the pool so I set a goal to see if I could do it. I slowly built up the numbers, I was limited by the time it was taking me to finish it but after about two or three months I managed it. I have to say I never swam that distance again!
These were my plants in summer, now they are starting to wilt. I will be sad when they are gone. I want to time travel to next summer till the next lot of flowers can be planted. I might get some winter flowering pansies to cheer the yard up in the meantime.
I’ve bought loads of bulbs to put in the big garden for winter/spring. Somehow I need to get them planted.
What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
What would I do if I lost it all?
Cry for lost memories
Weep for my tranklements
Sigh for my paintings
Scream for my cats
But remember them all
The good times
The joy that they gave
And try to make a new start
A way to cope
Seeking for comfort
Hoping for help.
Loss can destroy
But hope can strengthen
Survival would be my goal.
When a billionaire takes over a social media company what do we expect? Impartiality? Caring? compassion?
Seeing what’s happening recently I am trying to decide whether to leave it. X I mean. Seeing him standing next to the Orange one on a stage is worrying. If he is endorsing right wing politics and banning investigative journalists then how many voices will be silenced? There is also a loss in the value of the company since it was bought by Musk. Doesn’t that indicate it’s changing status?
I’m not a big X/twitter user, I barely have any followers, which does make me wonder why I’m on it. I posted a bit of art and sometimes try and add witty replies, but is anyone even listening? Thinking about it.
Must be cold today
He’s sat on My knee four times
He’s just come up again
So at least one knees warm!
Oh! he’s just jumped down
Cold knees!
I decided to optimise my photos as I haven’t done it for a while. Now it looks like 50% of my photos were taken today. Plus they are all mixed up. If I go back a few hundred they were suddenly taken in March. I wish it wouldn’t do that, I’ve been searching for something for half an hour because I wanted to share it? Can I find it? No, so I just decided to post a photo of an old factory from a few months ago. And great to see an undemolished chimney.
How the sky changed colour last night, apologies for the Parkinsons shake. I was lying in bed with nothing to prop my phone on. The best photo I took was the last (in the middle) about 2am?I couldn’t see much with the naked eye, but there had been a forecast of auroras on spaceweather.com so I chanced a snap or two, they started as a normal blue for a 60 second exposure, but then over the next few minutes it gradually changed to green.
Note the sun is at solar maximum where the magnetic north and south fields are increasingly entangled and cause coronal mass ejections, solar flares from the Sun’s surface. This weekends aurora were caused by an Earth facing set of flares.
If the sky looks odd I take a photo now. Just one this time….
Reports say that aurora are due because of big solar flares so I decided to look. The sky looks cloudy, but I’m short sighted and have cataracts so I can’t really tell. Plus it’s too cold to go outside and I don’t want to trip up in the dark so I have a light on in the living room. Parkinsonism makes me shake so as this is a 60 second exposure it’s all very blurry. But camera shake does not change the colour of the sky to green!
Probably everyone is in bed but I give you…. It’s cloudy but the sky’s green again! 3.10 am 5.10.24 in Stoke, England from my kitchen window.
What’s a topic or issue about which you’ve changed your mind?
I voted when I was 19 and followed the family, we were tories, I wanted to see a woman prime minister. I had not left home and had no idea what the real life was about. Then I went to college. An eye opener. I had to live in an old house with no fire, just an open coal fire. The toilet was outside, I showered at the college, I realised that this was not unusual, people had to manage.
Most of my friends were caring, thoughtful and Labour voters. One was in CND, this was the era of protests against Cruise missiles. I saw what Thatchers laws were doing to people. You could see the rich getting richer, the poor, poorer. It was the era of the Yuppie. What can I say? I had to change. I’m glad I did.
My conclusion about this.? My family had held me in one way of thinking. Reality changed my mind. Don’t be afraid to think.
Mallaband-Brown