Green

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Such a calming colour. Green in plants is caused by chlorophyll in their leaves as sunlight converts water and air into sugars and starches.

Green, the colour of the Amazon and other forests and jungles. The colour of growing crops and leaves on flowering plants. Cool and tranquil, shady and soft. Then cactuses spiky, full of fluid, green against the rocks of deserts and hot dry lands.

Green means life, it means various other things too. Green for go, green for someone new to a job, green when you feel ill or queasy. Green seaweed, green on trains, the green walking man light on pedestrian crossings. So many things. Green was a livery for different train services. British rail trains used to be green. Even science fiction has green blooded Vulcans and a character called Green Lantern. Green for different alcoholic and fruit drinks. It’s interesting where you can find it.

What would we do without it.

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Dry, sore hands

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Washing my hands regularly, using sanitiser, washing up liquid. I try and use moisturiser but it doesn’t help. I keep going with it though. I really want my hand to heal. But every time I wash up, even with gloves, makes it bad again. It started on my little finger and spread. I’m fed up with it. Been going on for months.

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Collaboration on Cezanne

Nine if us from the Orme art group collaborated to do this copy of a Cezanne still life. Each had a chosen oblong to copy. Mine was the sixth. With part of a peach and a glass.

Interesting how it turned out. I used permanent markers and a bit of watercolour paint. My colour pallette was limited by the colours of the felt pens. The other tricky thing was pattern matching, getting the fruit to line up and the colours to match. I think we did a good job. Wouldn’t mind doing another one. X

Back yard view

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Doing what we always do this time of year. Cram the back yard full of flowers. We have a big patch of land next to the house, but it’s full of trees and shrubs and fruit trees and a couple of small plastic greenhouses with tomatoes. But the back yard is visible from the kitchen and living room and I love a riot of colour. The baskets are mainly from a nursery, but some managed to survive the winter. My hubby even planted an iris in one of the baskets. We’ve put a couple of lilies in the far end so the cat can’t get near them (poisonous to cats).

They will grow and get blousier. It’s amazing that the brackets can hold three baskets in one go. Water the top one and the lower ones get watered too.

I will post more images as they grow.

Camouflage

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Cat hiding, but not very well. His eyes give him away. Golden and gleaming. He’s getting well fed and sleeps in the shed. I’m trying to get our own cats inoculated so they can go out in the garden and meet him. I hope they will all get on. Then he will have to go to the vets and be inoculated too. The plan is by winter this abandoned cat will be part of the family. We can’t get anyone else to take him in and he deserves a home. In the meantime he’s having a good life.

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Fog round my brain

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The fog around my brain

settles gently like a cloud

touching my shoulders

as if sitting on hilltops.

The grey fug tightens round my head

stopping me from thinking

and moving

tying me down to my own space.

Glued down with sticky oozes

thoughts trapped in flypaper.

Mind chilled and frozen.

Sliced into shattering slivers.

Stopped still

clock stopping

held in abeyance

until the world starts spinning

me pinned to it

like the proverbial butterfly on a wheel.

 

Walking around and about.

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Don’t worry I said, I know where I’m going… We walked up one moorland fell and down into the valley of the next. Walking on tussock grass was hard on the legs, each lump was seperate from the next. The ground was springy with matted sphagnum moss as well.

The sun was getting lower in the sky. The path was hard to follow, and I was getting nervous. We hadn’t seen anyone in our travels and I could not see the road that led to our destination. Matt had parked his car next to a pub on the moorland road and we were heading vaguely west towards the setting sun.

It was then that Matt had the brilliant idea of looking at the map. He’d not bothered earlier, but now it was getting late and drinking time was running out. We all peered over the map, Matt muttered something as he looked over it. What did you say? I asked. Just follow the cat he laughed. There laid out in front of us was a dotted line, following the contours of the fells. Definitely cat shaped. And as I looked I could see the pub marked just where its up raised paw was swiping at the string, the line that indicated the road!

Matt laughed. We’ll be there in ten minutes. Cheers I said. Let’s go.

Zoom 🎶 singing

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Last night we had fun trying to sing together as a group on Zoom. It was a laugh, we all tried to sing together but the delays on the line meant that most of the time we were badly out of sync with each other….

Then my cat jumped up and kept getting in the way. She was walking backwards and firwards in front on my camera, so I grabbed her for a couple of minutes, I must have looked like a Bond villan! My friend who was hosting the meeting, tried to play music for us to sing to, but we couldn’t here it. At one stage he had three screens and two mice and keyboards on the go trying to get it to work. I admired the effort as it was the first time he had tried to do it!

Next week we will have another go, but it might be best to mute everyone and just sing along with someone leading the choir. As it was we were too busy falling about laughing instead of trying to sing the tune. I’ve never heard Molly Malone sung like that except as a raucous chorus in a pub on a boozy night out. It was a fun night though with friends.

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Just a pre lockdown photo.

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In February I was painting scenery and props for our local pantomime, Aladdin.

We were acting in front of about 140 people for four performances. One on Thursday and Friday, and a double performance including a matinee on Saturday. To think just a couple of weeks later we were in lockdown. I saw hundreds of people over those few days, and then no one for three months except on the way to and back from the shops.

I wish I could go back in time? Go back to a time where there was laughter. Fun, silly jokes, time to be with friends. Life was much less worrying then, despite global warming and pollution! I wonder what will happen when things return to normal if they do?

Canal view

 

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Photo taken by my friend who went for a walk with my hubby yesterday. The Trent and Mersey canal. Near Middleport pottery heading south west along the canal. He saw a group of swans swimming along the canal. There are apparently Carp, Roach and Pike in that section of the canal.

He actually walked thirteen miles! A half marathon. He’s feeling it today. I’m impressed and amazed. I’m afraid a mile is enough for me. I think I need to do more exercise and seeing the photos I’m jealous of the walk he did.

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