New paintings and regular art updates.
A pleasant view
Seeing green lawns
Milky and blue
skies
An English summer.
Strong stones
Arch over the path
Steps up a curved seat.
Rest here in the shade
Sit for a while
Remember other summers
Long gone.
Stately homes visited
Capability in gardens.
Had the pleasure of hanging the flower baskets and planting up some pots today. I’m expecting as they settle down there will be a mass of more flowers. Last year the baskets were still partly in flower in December!
We bought home a boot full of hanging baskets today. We went a bit mad and ordered a few too many. With these and the ones on the back seat we had eight in the car. We have got to go back and collect two more. I hang them two at a time, one under another so that when I water the top one the bottom gets watered too.
We order them in April dand then wait for them to grow for a couple of months. They are usually ready for collection in the second week of June. It is mad, but I love them. They finish off the garden. Now I’ve got to hang them!
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was ‘take a break’ so I chose to draw this image from the front of the 2021 National Trust Guidebook. It’d just drawn in coloured pencil, charcoal pencil and fine liner black ink pen.
I need a break! So I would take it at Bodnant garden near Llandudno in Wales. It’s a National Trust garden. A beautiful place which drops into a wooded valley and is surrounded by the Welsh hills and mountains. We are missing the laburnum walk that will be in flower now. I hope to go there soon.
Sigh, it happened. Our intrepid outdoor cat has led my two indoor cats out into the great big green world of our garden. He is a bit of a cat burglar. Strong claws had forced the cat flap mechanism round so that the flap opened both ways. He must have come in for food overnight then forced it to get out. His Foster brother and sister were both ‘not in the house’ when I got up. That deafening silence that indicates ‘absence of cat’.
All I could do was call and whistle. Five minutes later, outdoor cat and Foster sister came in through the open door. Five minutes after that, Foster brother saunter up. You’ve been out I say, who me? He stares in innocence. I open the cat flap for him. No he wants the door opening. Finally they breakfast…. Now they are sitting tapping the cat flap again! Argh… Inevitable!
When you look out the window and wonder what to do with a long, multicoloured mobile that twirls in the wind. I took a zoomed in, pixilated shot of it, then put it through photodirector to add texture and tipped it from the vertical. I think it looks like the photo has been taken through textured glass. I like the wrinkled, dappled effect.
One of our indoor cats snuck out the back door today. We didn’t realise as my hubby left the back door open just while he popped out to get the milk in. I knew she was out when I went to give her some cat treats and she didn’t come running immediately.
My hubby is loud, and she runs and hides from him, so when he went out shouting her name I knew that wouldn’t work. I put my coat on and shook the bag of treats near the back door, then tried looking between the back fence and the shed. No sign. Still shouting her name I called and called, no answer…
I came in to calm down, I did the washing up to take my mind off things. I decided to give her a few minutes peace to let her settle wherever whe was. Then I went out and called her again….
Mew! Mew! She was miaowing loudly, but where? Sounded like the neighbours garden. You have to go out our front door and down the alley… Mew! I could hear her, but not see her. She mewed constantly as I called her, I looked behind old bits of wood, and an old door propped against the fence. Mew! I climbed over a pile of old branches into the next garden. Mew! Not in their shed.
Mew! The cat noise was coming and going, as if she was moving around. But where? Not behind anything? Maybe up? There she was, she must have climbed up a bush to get onto a kitchen extension roof!
She doesn’t climb, except up stairs, but she got up there. Mew!!! Come down little cat? After a lot of cajoling she came down just after the neighbour offered the loan of a ladder! She scrambled and slid down the branches… And shot off into our garden! I ran round and back through the front door, through the house and let her in the back door. She ran upstairs. Then she came down again and had some food, as if nothing had happened.
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Tiny, white.
Hint of pink
Shades of green
Soft yellows
Dots of paprika orange
On a denim background.
Green stems
Hold them together
Like a couple holding hands….
Not sure what plant these pods are on. I just found the photo on my memories, I must have taken it because it was interesting. To be honest it’s not a good photo, so it could easily be deleted. Maybe that’s frost? I shall try and find out what it us. Might be good to try and grow it again.
Blurry photo in the garden, freezias in a big blue pot. I need to do some weeding, we have too much ivy spreading across the ground and random bits of blackberry bushes that are thorny. Nettles are welcome in the garden for butterflies but they keep encroaching into the flower beds.
Spent the afternoon in the garden weeding and helping drill a hole in our garden gate for a padlock and chain (we are still upset by having the motorbike stolen and want to make it more secure). Also did a bit of college work… Better do more!
Mallaband-Brown