New paintings and regular art updates.
Oh I do like a good hanging basket. This is one from a couple of years ago, I think it was one I planted myself. The red flowers are pelargoniums although generally they are called geraniums. The purple ones are Petunias which are also called Surfinias. It’s interesting how names can be changed for fashion or trademark reasons.
Two years ago we were having regular hedgehog visitors to our garden, but this year we haven’t seen any. We live next to a busy road and I worry about them. There was also an area of wasteland next to our garden that had brambles growing on it. That was cleared by a builder who removed all the vegetation from it, our garden is quite wild but there was old bits of wood to hide under. I think we will start leaving food out for them to forage again.
So, we have equal amounts of day and night today according to this.
Days will get shorter than nights until the Winter Solstice around the 21st of December 2023, then lengthen again. In the Southern Hemisphere the days will get longer until their Summer Solstice.
I don’t like the lack of sunlight and the change from British Summer time to Greenwich Mean time also gets to me. We lose an hour of evening daylight in October, although we get lighter mornings. But studies in the 1960’s or 1970’s showed that overall there were less accidents when they kept British Summertime for three years. Sadly the change was abandoned.
Maybe we could revisit the idea? Saving an hours electricity in the winter evenings might even help the environment?
What’s your all-time favorite album?
‘The chances of anyone coming from Mars are 100 to 1 they say’. I think that’s how one of the pieces of music starts.
I’m not good at remembering music, but I really enjoyed this album. It was songs interspersed with narration by Richard Burton. It was very atmospheric, the voice of Burton was really extraordinarily in telling the tale of the invasion of Earth by Martians. The songs include Forever Autumn sung by Justin Hayward in 1978. I think that is my favourite song on the album.
I have to admit looking it up on YouTube because I couldn’t remember the title. But hearing it took me back to the student flat where I sat with a cup of tea going cold as I listened to my friend playing the album on a cassette player that they had copied it to.
Hearing it again gave me goosebumps. I’m glad this prompt came up and reminded me of good memories.
My first ever digital drawing using a mouse. I did it in 1999. I actually got it in my local open art exhibition. I guess it was unusual at the time although it is rather rough and ready. I found it on my Facebook memories. It isn’t as bright as the original. I’m not sure what happened to it.
I do love how my hanging baskets grow. They build up and then splurge like a firework exploding in slow motion. Petunias (Surfinias) and Begonias are the main flowers, then small flowers and trailing small leaves. There are also fushias in some of the other baskets.
I rely on the small nursery where we buy them to create a wonderful summer spectacle. They never fail to give me joy over the summer. I usually plant up other flowers to fill in the gaps around the yard, although my touch has been lacking with everything that happened over the last several months. My hubby has added some extra plants, sunflowers, clematis, montbretia, a few osteospermums. Missing are pelagoniums, I think they were bought before I even thought of getting some. Still it’s been a good display. I will try and get some closeups if I can safely get out of the back door.
Have you ever podded or shelled peas?
When I was little we used to sit in the back yard and shell the peas dad had grown.
The garden was on the other side of a path that ran behind the houses. The yards were covered in slate blue coloured bricks. I would sit with my mom and siblings, she would hand out peas in the pod. I remember you pressed along one side of the peapod, the seam of it split and a row of beautiful peas sat along the other edge, then you hooked them out with your thumb. Sweet green peas falling into the bowl. Many peas didn’t go into the bowl, but into my mouth instead. It was a pleasure to eat them. They never tasted sweeter and fresher.
Other things that went on in the yard? I remember it snowing in February. Mom collected fresh snow off the yard wall. She used the water to make her pancake mix for Shrove Tuesday. I think she thought they tasted better than using “corporation pop” ( tap water). Probably because of chorine in the tap water?
Memories, they spring to mind without volition.
She left us almost a year ago
Gone somewhere else, I don’t know.
A face I’ll never see again
Unless on a screen that isn’t used
And only occasionally appears
As a memory of a reflected moment…..
She thought that?
She agreed with that?
A smile twitches my lips
She agreed with me?
Then the memory fades
The face crumples
I cry again.
Wandering backwards and forwards on crutches to the bathroom and my armchair. I can’t help remembering when I was younger. We would set out on a cycle ride or a walk. We used to visit the North of Manchester, around the pennines. Into Wales and see spectacular mountains. Up to Yorkshire and around Ingleborough. Up steep slopes on our bikes then down one long winding valley that took us seven miles back down to our campsite (I was pleased with my map reading that day).
Being ill or injured is difficult. I can’t ignore it, but I guess I have to be a patient patient! But I want to do simple things like washing up. When I can support my weight I will, then cook, the eventually I will have to tidy up, hubby is trying, but he doesn’t quite get organisational ideas. Like putting shopping in the fridge safely! Or how to cook chicken when you have never done it in your life! Time heals I guess.
I wish I was out and about, that I could just stand at the sink and do the washing up. But I guess it’s less than five days since I pulled a ligament in my foot and about eight since the car door slammed into my other leg and cut a hole in it.
What are you curious about?
How does the person setting a prompt come up with a question. And more interesting than that, how do you ask it politely.
The questions set are open to interpretation. Are you honest, but giving away your data to someone who shouldn’t be allowed the information as they might steal it? Or are you insincere and keep all those bits of information to yourself.
The questions have to be generic, I guess. Able to be answered quickly and simply, or answered in a more complex way. When we answer, is the information going to be misused? Or will it just sit here in the blogasphere, ignored, waiting to be discovered. Maybe that’s why we answer these questions. To leave our mark on the world. Or leave a seperate question instead.
Mallaband-Brown