My life is quite chaotic at the moment. Lots of things to do, plenty of time, but lack of inclination to do things. Procrastinating is my favourite pastime!
Everything is tangled up. I’m trying to organise and assess things, but failing. Thinking and worrying is not helping. I think I need to meditate or do some relaxation. It’s not that I don’t want to do things, but I think I’ve had my head in the sand for so many months, I don’t know how to drag it back out. I know this is self reflection, and I hope its a good thing. Writing it down might give me a push.
Grief has not helped. And now other people I know have died and that has knocked me back. I don’t want to think of the end of things. But I guess we should all make some plans? Sorry this is a bit random, maybe talking will help though.
I’ve just got round to drawing Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt beauty. This was a narcissus flower I think at Rode Hall on Sunday. I was thinking of drawing bluebells but my photos were a bit blurred.
Abstract face finger painted with the Artrage app on my phone. I like the way the different brushes and changing the roughness of the surface and grain size gives it a real textured surface. I added lines on the eyes and mouth rising a roller tool that left a line if you dabbed your finger on the surface of the phone. I also added spirals on the edges of the picture, I was trying to make it look like material. If you turn the pen up to 100% metallic the colours get darker.
It looks like blossom, but it’s actually a puddle with trees reflecting in it then wind born bits of twig and flower petals floating on top. I thought it looked interesting and unless you look closely it’s really hard to tell what’s going on. Anyway this is from Rode Hall again. I also took lots of pictures of benches dotted around the grounds. I might post a few photos here. There is a Bench Appreciation group on Facebook that I shared them to. I wonder if there is an abstract nature page for this sort of photo?
One plant we tried to grow in the garden was Gunnera, seen here at Rode hall. It’s a large leafed plant with a spiky surface. It grows in wet conditions and the leaves can get to 2 or 3 feet across. This was by a large pond that has a waterfall at one end flowing down a stream to the lake. There are a large variety of plants at the hall but this is a favourite.
We also noticed there were rhododendrons in flower today, which means we must visit the Dorothy Clive garden to see how that is growing.
We finally got the weather for our walk around the grounds of Rode Hall. It was lovely, calming and peaceful. I know it’s strange, but I wondered where the musical backing track was….. But there was beautiful birdsong.
This was the last day of the actual bluebell walks, but they are obviously still there for a little while. There is a Rode Hall website and I’m sure there will be details available for visits there.
List the people you admire and look to for advice…
Issac Asimov, three laws of robotics
Carl Sagan, pale blue dot, astronomer and scientist
Noel Fitzpatrick, exceptional veterinary surgeon
Marie Curie, discovered Polonium and Radium
Sir Patrick Moore, famous amateur astronomer,
Sir Oliver Lodge, invented the spark plug
Dr Jane Goodall, primatologist
Rosamund Franklin, jointly discovered DNA, British Chemist
David Attenborough, naturalist, broadcaster and environmentalist
Chris Packham, Environmentalist and broadcaster
Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, discovered Pulsars
Mary Anning, discovered fossils.
Albert Einstein, General and Special theories of relativity.
Richard Feynman, American physicist. Wrote ‘Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman’ and other books.
Is that a long enough list? I like to try and understand basic science, I don’t know enough, but I try and get some understanding. I think Asimov got me thinking about science at an early age. He not only wrote science fiction, but books about chemistry and other sciences. So I found out about the early chemist’s, physicists and astronomers. By reading his books they introduced me to Carl Sagan, who wrote books such as Cosmos.
At the same time I used to (and still do) watch ‘The sky at night’ on TV. So I learnt a bit about astronomy, but also about people like Jocelyn Bell-Burnell who discovered pulsars, and other scientists including Issac Newton.
David Attenborough introduced me to gorilla’s, in his TV programme ‘life on earth’ and so I heard about Jane Goodall and her work with primates.
Finally in the 1970’s there was a TV series that dramatised the lives of Marie and Pierre Curie. Having read about her in Asimov books it was fascinating to see what she had been doing in the early twentieth century.
It’s a random list, but it helps me explain my interests…
I don’t have any pictures of the Coronation of King Charles III today as they will all be copyrighted.
I didn’t watch it except for the royal carriage taking King Charles and Queen Camilla back to the palace after the service in Westminster Abbey. The British do create a marvellous spectacle, ceremony or pageant. Not everyone is a royalist in the UK. But we still call ourselves the United Kingdom.
I was amazed at how many people slept out in chairs just to have a place there. And the weather was typically British for the occasion (raining).
How do you sum up something that happens so irregularly. The Queens Coronation was 70 years ago and who knows when Prince William will be king? but he is next in line in the succession to the throne. This is despite King Charles having a sister and brothers. The rules of who gets the crown are laid down in history.
Mallaband-Brown 