Rhododendrons are lovely

Posted on July 10, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged booms, Gardening, Growing, Life, Pink, Plants, Rhododendrons, Saplings, Shade2 Comments

But they don’t last long. The huge clusters of blooms soon brown and fade. They are great at the right time of the year, but then they are just big green bushes and they need underplanting to make them look more interesting. Here there are wild buttercups and ferns which were just growing below the rhododendrons. Mostly they shade out other plants and in some places they are cut back and removed because they are not native to the UK and they can spread and can be invasive. The shade they cast stops native saplings growing.

What to give up?

Posted on July 9, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1992, Gardening, Harmony, Hedge, Laurel, Life, Nature, Plants, Tree2 Comments

What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?

If I had to give up something it might be one of my trees at the bottom of the garden. Why? Because the neighbours don’t like it, it is a huge laurel bush/tree. It shades our garden and their garden too. I won’t be cutting any others back though. I like our little nature reserve. Laurel bushes are evergreen so they give shade and shelter to birds and squirrels all year round. But they do block out the sun. The trouble is ours is about forty feet high and thirty or so wide. It’s also right next to our fence line and about six feet away from theirs.

I know there have been huge legal battles over hedges and trees, and I don’t want to fall out completely with my neighbour, but I also cannot afford to have it pollarded or pruned. We will have to see what happens in the future. I hope it doesn’t get to legal action!

Repair

Posted on July 9, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, Colourful, Drawing, Life, Recycle, Repair, Reuse, Sketching, stitching, threadbare, Worn out4 Comments

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was repair. I’m currently trying to sew up jeans that are falling apart. I’m trying to do tiny stitches to hold things together. Left side, actual stitching, right, my attempt at a drawing of it!

Repairing split jeans

Posted on July 9, 2023July 9, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blue, Colour, Cotton, Jeans, Life, Memory, Painting, Sewing, Thread, threadbareLeave a comment

My old painting jeans. They are years old. When they started to split I started to sew. One patch of sewing covers another. Trying to keep up with the holes!

Mostly sewn with cotton reel thread, a few strands of embroidery silk. My stitches are no longer neat and small. My shaking arm makes it hard to hold the material while I try and stitch. The yellow is the latest cotton. I will swap to another colour soon. I just need to catch the rip below the pocket before it gets any worse. It’s really threadbare…

This is like the story of the old broom. It’s had three new stales and two new brush heads… But it’s still the old broom you always knew… X

Classical

Posted on July 8, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged ballet, classical, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1991, genre, Life, Memory, Music, operas, symphonies, Time2 Comments

What is your favorite genre of music?

Stravinsky, Holst, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Mozart, lots of older and more modern classical pieces. Including opera, ballet, symphonies and anthems.

I particularly like the Rites of Spring, and the Planet Suite. But almost every piece of classical music cheers me up.

But one of my difficulties is I can never remember what half of the melodies or composers are called. I will remember the music when I hear it, but ask me to name specific pieces and I struggle. Oh I know Ravel wrote the Bolero and Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake (I hope?), but I have a blind spot. I can remember some physics or biology, or information about art and artists, but music of any genre? I really struggle. It’s not in my head. And yet if I’m singing with the choir, I don’t remember the song until we start singing, then suddenly its there, words and tune. I must have a strange brain.

Weighed

Posted on July 8, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Balance, Ceramic, cloakroom, Life, Photograph, pots, Scales, Spode site, Weight4 Comments

In the washroom at Spode studios site. A series of plants and objects are clinging to life on the old brick windowsills. I like this in particular. The two ceramic pots just look right sitting on top of the weighing scales. The frosted glass sets it off. It’s OK in the summer but in the winter it’s freezing. The plants still survive though.

Washing and hanging baskets

Posted on July 8, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Drying, Flowers, Growing, Hanging baskets, Life, Plants, Rain, Scent, Washing, Water, Weather5 Comments

It’s a struggle to dry my washing in the back yard at the moment. The washing line snapped and I’ve tied it back up but it’s a bit saggy. It is also surrounded with hanging baskets which are a riot of colour and lovely scents which I hope will infuse into the drying clothes (although it’s already rained this morning!). I can’t fit a dryer in the kitchen even if I could afford one, or afford to run it. Just hoping the day stays dry now.

Vaccum packed!

Posted on July 7, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Clothes, Crochet, Laundry, Life, Random, Spring clean, Tidying, vaccum bag, vaccum cleaner2 Comments

I’ve been trying to make space in this jumbled, untidy house. I hope to get some plastering done in a damp corner, but stuff is in the way. I bought vaccum laundry bags ages ago and they got added to the pile, but now? I’ve rediscovered them. I used four yesterday and just got four more. They are ideal for storing bulky bedspreads and jumpers. I have two crocheted square throws that I have had for years, one made by my mother in law and one by me. I’m bothered that clothes moths might get at them so I bagged them up then squirted a bit of fly spray in. Finally I sealed the bag and applied the vaccum cleaner to the valve. The shrinkage is amazing! So satisfying, it still weighs a lot, but it takes up a lot less space!

Rom com?

Posted on July 5, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged boy meets girl, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1988, Fred and Ginger, Hepburn and Grant, Life, Romance, sleepless in Seattle4 Comments

What’s your definition of romantic?

We’ve been together for decades, so the romance? It’s a bit depleted now. We could have date nights, but we stay in a lot of the time, particularly now the cost of living crisis has got so bad.

Hubby sometimes brings me breakfast in bed. A slice of toast with a dot of butter and a half boiled egg. At least he tries. I sometimes take him a cup of coffee upstairs but I shake to much to carry much.

So what makes me feel romantic? A good, old fashioned romantic comedy. Not anything modern, but something silly like Bringing up baby, with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, or something slightly more modern, like Sleepless in Seattle. Maybe an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers musical? Or something like Singing in the rain?

They all appeal to me, a film where you get slightly weepy, watching boy mets girl, hates girl, falls for girl, girl then hates boy, threatens to leave, he rescues her from a storm/ alien attack/ obnoxious family situation….

Basically anything like that, cheerful, kind, obvious, gentle. Romantic…

Forest

Posted on July 5, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, Carving, Drawing, Fun, Life, macaque, mother and baby, Sketching, Tree trunk5 Comments

Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was forest. Catching up with Sundays prompt. We recently visited Trentham Monkey Forest and in the entrance compound there are some sculptures including a mother and baby macaque carved from a tree stump. I’ve done a sketch of it for the prompt.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Life