More cherries…

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Used a hoe to pull the branches down and caught all these cherries in a brolly today. It was sunny for a couple of hours and the wind had dropped so we took the chance and dodged the rain showers. Picked loads, but there are loads left on the tree.

Now I’ve got to decide what to do with them. I might add them to some gin. Or I could make cherry pancakes.

This is a glut of cherries. If we were not in lockdown I would be sharing them with friends. It’s the biggest crop we have ever had from the cherry tree. If I could freeze them I would but I think they would spoil.

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Cold and grey

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Cold and grey, day

Not got much to say..

Yet,

Grey as it can get?

You bet.

Till tonight’s sunset?

Maybe

We will see

Unless the sun does shine

Fine.

Then happiness will be mine.

So clouds roll away please,

Give us warmth and ease

Some pleasure we can seize

Till we can visit seas

And oceans.

Give us notions

Of calm and peace

Please.

 

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Bees…

Apparently they are more and more at risk. Bees pollenate the vast majority of flowering plants on the Earth, and their counterparts including hoverflies are also under threat.

What with? Insecticides, that are used to control insect pests. These include Neonicotinoids that have been found to disorientated bees (as well as killing them) so they cannot find food.  Without them we would not have fruit and vegetables. But unfortunately big pharmaceutical companies keep wanting to sell insecticides. There have been court cases that stopped their use. But they fight back.

If only we could use non invasive alternatives. Biological treatments that would eat pests. Like nematode worms, for instance. The problem is humans need quick solutions to save crops from things like locusts. But I think we should use these things sparingly. There are many ecological and moral questions and problems. I hope we can sort it out.

Yard sale at cherished chimneys.

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Cherished Chimneys at Longport, Stoke-on-Trent is a reclamation shop which specialises in chimney pots and tea pots. They were selling cups and teapots, chimneys and books, plants and beautiful ceramic decorations for roofs.

We bought a chimney stack and a zinc bucket for planting up. I want to plant the delphiniums we got in one of them. I also bought a lavender plant and a pelagonium. When I’ve tidied up the yard I will post photos, but I need to cut back the neighbours bramble / blackberry bushes that are growing through our side of the fence. I don’t mind the ones with flowers on as I can pick the fruit later in the year.

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Ride a white horse…

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Ride a white horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.

I’ve started to remember old nursery rhymes…

See saw Margary Door,

She shall have a new master

She shall earn but a penny a day.

Because she can’t work any faster.

They just popped into my head. They are things I used to recite or sing to myself when I was about six or seven.

I’ve asked my hubby and he remembers

“if you stand on a nick, you’ll marry a brick and a beetle will come to your wedding’.

And ‘I wish I was a wooly worm, with wool upon my tummy, into a honey pot I’d squirm, and make my tummy gummy!,”

Nostalgia!

There was a couple, Mr and Mrs Opie that collected them and they lived in Salford, near Manchester, England.  There is a whole collection of this type of verse there. I only remember this vaguely. They worked out that a rhyme could travel from the south up to the north of the country (Britain) in a week because of children repeating them. If I remember rightly. But I am getting older.

After Hokusai’s Great Wave

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my attempt at the great wave after Hokusai.

I’m writing an assignment about the artist Hokusai and his ink and wood block print, The Great wave, or The Great Wave off Kanagawa produced around 1830. He had previously painted two other great waves in 1803 and 1805. There is a collection of 36 views of Mount Fuji by him.

I found out that he had been influenced by an artist called Shiba Kokan, who in turn had been influenced by Western Art. The Portuguese first started trading with the Japanese as early as 1543 and later the Dutch came along and started to trade with them in 1609.

Hokusai’s first waves were not as stylised as the Great Wave, but over the intervening 30 years he honed his style. His wave painting has a low horizon which gives it a more western and also menacing feel. The wave towers over three fishing boats, threatening to swamp them, Fingers of water claw the air in a very fractal pattern, and a tiny Mount Fuji sits in the background, apparently encircled by a threatening sea and lowering clouds.

Did you know the wave emoji is based on Hokusai’s work, and this in turn is linked to the waving hand emoji. There is a site called emojipedia that gives lots of interesting facts about emoji icons.

I wont go into great detail about the assignment, but I had to link in semiotics and other ways of critically appraising art works. I was up till 4am trying to pull it all together!

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Playing with paint

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Oh I do like playing with paint. For example this is a little canvas I’m working on, it’s a WIP, (work in progress). I was thinking of adding some patterns and decorations to it. Maybe in the sky. Some stars, a comet, maybe a pattern in the glass. I haven’t decided yet. It’s another acrylic on canvas. I was trying to make more of a stylised character out of it.

Better get on and do some more work on things.

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Pool

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I use a piece of plastic to keep my acrylic paints moist between using them. A little bit of each paint sticks to the plastic. So I pressed it against a tiny 3 inch square canvas. I did it over and over, rubbing the plastic down onto the canvas and turning it round each time. When I looked at the result I thought it looked like reflections on a pool so added curves to look like ripples from drops of rain. Just simple…

I might turn the orange splodges into goldfish….

Eggs… Pancakes?

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My hubby keeps buying eggs but we are not using them up. They are getting towards the end of their life so I will be making an omelette for tea or even pancakes with blueberries and lemon juice.

If I’m making pancakes, I will make a batter from eggs, milk, and flour. I tend to use self raising flour because the pancakes puff up. I’m not one of these thin, crepes, type of pancake people. My mom used to make pancakes in February for Shrove Tuesday. She would add snow water to the batter (yes it used to snow in February!)

So if you want to make them I will try and write a recipe.

First get 2 mugs full of flour. Plain or self raising, this is for a few people so reduce amounts in proportion for one. Put in a mixing bowl.

Then add two or three eggs depending on the size of your mug. (Make a little well in the flour and break the eggs into it.)

Mix together and slowly add around a mug of milk. Add it slowly and stir it in. Keep an eye on the consistency, you want it pourable, like double cream, (heavy cream in America I think?)

Once it’s mixed just put it aside to rest in the fridge  (I don’t know why?)

Then get a frying pan, coat the bottom with a small amount of oil, or a spray frying oil or butter. Heat the pan up quite hot and carefully pour the batter in. Tip the pan to spread the batter out till it covers the base of the pan. If there is still wet batter on the top you can pull the pancake away from the edges of the pan with a spatula and let the batter spill into the gap. Turn it over with a spatula when it’s gone golden brown and cook for a few more seconds on the other side. ( You don’t have to toss it).

Sprinkle with sweetener or sugar and lemon juice when it’s on your plate. Add fruit to taste. When you’ve done one heat the pan again. You might not need to add oil as there should still be some left behind.

Continue till you have used all the mix. You can vary the thickness depending on how hungry you are!

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Happy cat

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They seek him here, they seek him there… And then I found him on top of the kitchen cupboard. Or on the microwave, sometimes on the laundry pile. Often asleep on my chest, keeping me in pinned down!

Snoozing for hours on end, keeping his nose under his paw. What a character. So sweet.

He’s not been well, he as got to have an ultrasound. I want him to get better, I really want him to have a long, good life. He has a heart murmur. Grade 4. The worst is grade 5. What can I do, his life may be shirt, but he is and will be loved.

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