New paintings and regular art updates.
By a waterfall, in the countryside, with friends. A little picnic, some cheese sandwiches, a flask of tea? An apple or a banana. Sunshine, a scent of flowers on the breeze. Driving a few miles further than I have for the last few months. Out of the city. Where my feet can touch grass. Where my eyes can be dazzled with colour and the clouds are as white washed cotton. I want time to go back. Before pandemics and Covid, before corruption and death..
Is it too much to ask?
I’m playing with Photodirector. This part of it is called ‘splash’.
You can outline an area and make the background black and white. Then I changed the hues in the app. The buddlea in our garden are a slightly more red colour. It’s also changed the green of the leaves slightly too.
I think people should play with different apps and learn how interesting they can make editing photos. Not just to enhance photos and airbrush them but to get creative and have fun.
Another one has flowered, sitting in among the nettles and the convolvulus. There’s monbretia in there too.. What’s its newer name? Crocosmia I think. Its like when Fushias suddenly became Surfinias and Geraniums started being called Pelagoniums to differentiate them from the perennial ones.
I went on a walk on Tuesday and found myself pointing out the names of garden plants to my hubby. I don’t know why. I saw a couple of plants that I didn’t recognise.
What is this. From a distance I thought it was a fushia?
Our garden has paths through it now, down to the pond at the bottom. We also seem to have a spring coming up in it. The trees have grown massively because they are so well watered. I Saw a couple of house sparrows picking up bird food on the ground this evening after a long cold day of rain. I went out when it brightened up and took some photos. So good to have a woodland glade in the middle of a city!
The abandoned cat who is virtually ours. He definitely has adopted us. He’s wheedled his way into our lives. He gets fed regularly, sleeps in a bed in a shed, and comes and sits on your lap when he feels like it. I will try and get his microchip altered. His owners went away and left him. He would be in the house, but I have two rescue cats already. I’m getting them vaccinated next week and then we can try and introduce them to each other. Things could get difficult.
I do love him, he’s worked his way into my heart. These photos of him were taken in the garden this afternoon.
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We put up two little greenhouses for the tomatoes this year. We’ve given them plenty of food and water. It’s a bit shady, not the usual place we put them, and they have grown leafy, but with very few flowers, and they don’t seem to have set. It’s getting too late for tomatoes now. On the other hand the local shop gave us some very withered and dried up small tomato plants yesterday but they have fruit growing on them. Weird… Anyway I guess I’m lucky we had other produce xxx
She went for a walk in the trees.
Climbed up the branches to the twigs
Stood on high in airy splendour.
Caught up in crows feet,
She flew up to the chimney.
Stuck there in old mortar.
Then a Magpie saw her.
A short hop to his nest.
Now she’s unpacked
And admiring the gold and pearls
In his gaff.
Blossom on the trees turned into leaves and a wonderful crop of cherries.
We also have a lot of pears growing and a few apples. The elderberry Bush is starting to fill with fruit and the blackberries are ripening on their bushes. The only thing I miss is gooseberries. My hubby has eaten them all fresh off the plant!
Yes spring was good this year. Good to think of something other than a virus!
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This year we have a good crop of pears on the tree again, the tree almost fell over last year because of the weight of the crop. It now has a post unfer the trunk to support it. The pear cro is already ripening with the skin turning slightly yellow.
Our pears are usually quite big, we collect them in September generally, but they might be ready earlier than that.
With pears they are generally unripe, unripe, unripe, unripe, ripe, mushy. They go from being hard to soft virtually overnight. I’m thinking of poaching some of them. Should be nice.
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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Mallaband-Brown