Worry

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

I was going along, minding my own business, when things started to go wrong. You know that you want to carry on the same way as you have done for decades, but it’s impossible.

Life is a process of getting older, bits don’t exactly drop off, but they stop working properly. Illness and health can have a massive impact. Sometimes you can feel better, other times you feel worse and that causes problems and pressure to deal with.

Youth is a wonderful thing but it’s over so soon and we don’t appreciate it until its gone. The trouble is, if you enjoy your youth you might not last to see old age!

Decluttering

Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

I haven’t lost my marbles, yet!

Or any other thing!

To spring clean or not?

But my stuff is mine

It comforts me

Makes me feel whole.

It’s there on my list

Things to do

Choose books to keep

And to loose.

But I can’t move

I am stuck

In sadness and grief

Unable to change my life.

Rose

Soon I’ll know if the roses I planted last year have survived the winter. I put in five of them. Climbers and ramblers. I wanted them to grow on the remains of the hedge our neighbour (a builder) had torn out and made our garden vulnerable to being burgled two October ago. I’m hoping they will make a prickly, but beautiful barrier. I love scented roses and I might try putting a few more in this spring. You can get bare rooted ones that you just use a slit trench (push the spade into the soil and make a slit) to plant. Fingers crossed.

Four leaves

Four leaf clover,

just green and neat.

Splattered with dew or rain

Contrasted against black

How to describe it more?

Thin stem from its centre

Leaves splayed out lobes.

Striped with thin veins

Each curved gently

Upper surface dips downward

Four fan shaped

Instead of the usual three

Lucky?

Memory of the one I found….

Photographs, Esther Chiltons weekly prompt.

I wrote this about her prompt.

My precious photos are of and with my hubby. Sometimes I sit and cry, sometimes I laugh at silly memories. Photographs captured that moment when we walked across a stream. When we returned hours later the tide had come in and the stream was a deep salt water channel. I lost my bike pump into the water and when I got it out to use again it had gone rusty. Photos can be like that. They can fade. And memory fades too, so photos make it easier not to forget.

Attached

Being ill and not seeing many people has made me fed up. I’ve taken solace in some books, like the Martian by Andy Weir and We solve Murders, the new mystery by Richard Osman. But I’ve become attached to my phone. I feel lost if I’m not checking out posts on Instaounce and Facepost! And in close second is TV and YouCone. I’ve become engrossed by old sci-fi programmes.

I want to break this habit, I need exercise, but it’s not happening at the moment! Too many dopamine hits? Boo x

Does he know?

What way is he going?

Where he will end up?

On Mars or in the English channel

In Canada or the Gulf of America….

Has he got the knowledge

To lower the price of one egg?

Or is he looking for the Golden goose.

He plays with words and obfuscates.

But does he know what that means?

In the meantime the world trembles

In fear, shock and disbelief!

How did they chose him….

The ballot was real

Are they crazy

We all

Wait.

For four more years….

Carpet

Section of a painting I did about 1993. It’s interesting to look at how I painted the pattern on the carpet. It was actually a large rug on a terracotta and black tiled floor. This was in our old rented house which was quite delapidated. The cellar underneath this room was very wet and the mortar was rotting. It was held up by an acroprop and you could see the floor was bowing downward so we didn’t use the room much and I used it as a studio. When you changed a light bulb you needed to take insulation tape with you. The wire was cloth covered and would fall off when you changed the bulb. There’s a lot I could say about that old house, but that’s it for now. It is funny how a painting can evoke so many memories.

Wooden

Sliced wood. How do you make a veneer for furniture? Cut through a slice of wood four times, glue it onto some backing wood  like pine and add three more pieces rotated so the result is a symmetrical pattern.

This is what my grandfather, who was a carpenter, did for my mom and dad as a wedding present. He gave them two wardrobes, one large and the other smaller. He used a carcass of probably elm or beech and then used Walnut, polished and stained to a dark glossy finish. They were beautiful. As a child I used to go and look at them. The pattern and colour enthralled me.