Picassoish horses

Willow and papier mache horse.

The props for the penkhull mystery plays were made using willow withies tied and glued and then covered in paper and glue and painted white, then volunteers decorated them. I had fun giving a couple of horses a Picasso feel. I don’t remember if it was me or another volunteer that painted this one. There were four horses for an apocalyptic scene! I think we made a monster too but these are the photos from 9 years ago off Facebook memories.

Chomped cherries!

Pecked at!

We just gathered some cherries off the ground because the rain and wind has knocked a lot off the tree. This is about a third of them that were too bruised, damaged or pecked. The rest have just been washed thoroughly in salty water and I’ve put them in the fridge to eat tomorrow. I will thoroughly rinse them again first.

The plan is to get a broom or a stick to try and pull some more down and collect them in an upturned umbrella. I hope the weather doesn’t intervene in the meantime! Praying the wind doesn’t whip up and blow them off. There’s still plenty left for the birds…

#movement

One of the Art groups I’m in wanted us to post a picture based on the prompt #movement. This was from my imagination after swimming with a wild dolphin called Georges. It had swum into a bay where we were caravanning and stayed around after the rest of his pod had gone. There was a notice the next day saying you shouldn’t swim with him because he was over friendly and dolphins can pass on pneumonia from the droplets from their blowhole. Anyway. I loved painting this and have great memories of swimming with a dolphin!

A quiet bench…

Bench at Westport lake last year. It was taken on a drizzly day like today. It’s good to see the weeping willow tree a bit further round the lake sweeping like a curtain across the side of the waters edge. It brings back memories of another one I knew….

I used to hide under a weeping willow when I was a child. It stood on its own in a park and I would sit with my back against it and imagine I was in a green tent or hiding behind a green waterfall. I had many adventurous thoughts sitting there in peace and quiet.

Relaxing on a bench is good when you have a view like this at Westport. After you have walked half a mile it’s nice to stop for a chat. Or a sandwich and a cup of tea. Refreshed and calm you can carry on with your walk. By the way there is a bench appreciation society page on Facebook for those that are interested….

Cutting down power usage

Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?

We have an old car, it’s about 23 years old (not as old as the morris in the painting), we can’t afford to replace it. But don’t really want to because of all the resources locked up in it. We only drive short distances now and did less than 1000 miles last year. I rarely have to fill it up with fuel. For local trips we usually walk. It’s a struggle to carry things, but it’s exercise.

I have a bike but I’m too wobbly to use it. But it may well be given to a charity so it can be reused, it would be good to give it to a good home. You only have a short window of adulthood to be adventurous but as you get older it gets harder. My mind is mostly fine but my body is getting worn out and ill.

Apart from that we planted a lot of trees on our garden which have become mature over the years. I’m sure that must offset our carbon footprint. We try and grow some fruit and vegetables too. We also try not to use much gas and electricity. We rarely buy clothes or shoes…..

I could go on. I don’t feel deprived. I’ve never flown and don’t want to and I rarely travel more than the occasional 80 miles to visit relatives. I hope all of this is a good way towards living a sustainable life. We could do more, we try.

Earthquake, what Earthquake?

Richter scale

/ˈrɪktə/

noun

GEOLOGY

  1. a numerical scale for expressing the magnitude of an earthquake on the basis of seismograph oscillations. The more destructive earthquakes typically have magnitudes between about 5.5 and 8.9; it is a logarithmic scale and a difference of one represents an approximate thirtyfold difference in magnitude.

Last night around 8pm there was a small earthquake near Tean in Staffordshire. It registered 3.3 on the richter scale, and houses near to it felt a jolt and their windows rattled.

My friend just asked if we felt anything? No, we didn’t feel a thing. We probably get more shaking from traffic driving past our house. Apparently the UK gets about a thousand earthquake s or tremors a year, and most are only 1 or 2 on the richter scale (or 30 or 900? times smaller). So although 3.3 is high in the UK it’s not bad. I think we may have had a 5 a few years ago.

I couldn’t find an image to use so I drew a ‘geological’ abstract instead, trying to draw something like a fracture or fault moving in the rocks below us….

Old painting

My friend Apple has a restaurant and also a coffee shop. The shop has been closed for a while because of the pandemic, but now things are calming down she’s trying to reopen it. After three years she’s putting a lot of work into creating a social and friendly space for people to meet up. She’s given herself a month to get things sorted out. I was talking to her and found this photo of an old painting I did based on the painting Proserpine by one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. I can’t remember the actual artist.

What I did was to try and copy the painting and add an apple instead of a pomegranate to relate to my friends name. You can’t see but I also painted Apples coffee house at the top right on a sign. Sorry the photos a bit blurry!

Flower head

Pottery head I made over twenty years ago. It’s planted up with straggly snapdragons this year but this photo from two years ago looks better. I really need to get out in the garden but I don’t seem to have the strength to sort things out at the moment. I’m fed up and I know gardening would help but the heat over the lost few days has made me really weary. It’s been close to 30°C. At least my hubby has been watering plants. Today? We are expecting heavy rain showers, so the plants will get a little water.