Lunch in odd times

DSC_2553Baked beans and sweetcorn with added hot curry powder and breaded chicken fingers.

It’s not what I would normally cook for a meal, but it was definitely filling.

Not much else to say about it, except the sweetcorn was frozen. I served it on pretty Portmeirion pottery plates.

Well, I don’t think I’ll say anything more except it was orange coloured! I guess I could do a series of pictures of different coloured food combinations, green cabbage and brocolli maybe, with  green cheese sauce?

Perhaps not!

X

So much blossom

DSC_2545

As I sit quietly at home I’ve realised how good the weather has been, and how much blossom is on the cherry and pear trees. And then, my friends have all been posting photos of blossom near them. Clouds of pink and white.

I will try and get a photo against a blue sky, but I just wanted to share this. The bees have been buzzing so they are happy.

I was thinking how the blossom comes out before the leaves. Is that to make it easier for insects to pollinate the flowers?

Now we need rain, it’s been dry for most of the month. Without it the farmers, who are struggling with lack of workers, will struggle even more. Time will tell…. Cherry’s and pears will ripen, hopefully.

In the meantime the Russian vine we planted a few years ago has started taking over a couple of parts of the garden. It ‘rushes’ along, growing fast, and wrapping itself around everything. My arms hurt after spending a couple of hours trying to cut it back.

X

Keeping up

_20200414_181435

A forty year old photo of a river I took when I was young.

It reminded me to calm down, try and relax, maybe ignore the news for a couple of days and get some rest.

I’ve also had to leave some of the emails I get. I can’t keep up with all the notifications of news. I want to read everyone’s posts, but I have responsibilities that I need to take care of. Even in this mad situation you still have to cope.

So anyway. I hope everyone is doing OK. It’s hard to think of people stuck in their homes. Not allowed out. In lockdown. I imagined that the world was linked and that people would feel each others pain or loneliness. But of course that isn’t true. Otherwise when people in different countries went through famine or disease we would know and help them… But sadly it doesn’t work like that.

 

Easter egg photo

IMG_20200413_005350_341

My friend made a beautiful picture of some tree branches, she mirrored them (flipped one side to mirror the other) then somehow surrounded the image with a black egg shape which was fuzzy at the edges. It’s beautiful and complicated.

I asked if I could use the idea. But didn’t want to copy. She said yes. So I put two photos of helibores through layout, an app where you can add different pictures together. I had to crop the image in my editing app, I then opened it in another sketching one. I drew an elipse round one side of the image, and freehand filled the background in with black. I used a spray tool so the edges were softened. I made sure to narrow the top half to give it more of an egg shape. Finally I cropped the image so that only half an egg shape was in the image. I went back to layout and duplicated the image. Then I flipped one side over so that there was finally an Easter egg shape on a black background. I don’t know how my friend did hers, but I respect the effort she must have put into it, and I thought I would describe what I had done in case anyone else wants to have a go.

X

Two tier cats

_20200411_133700

Two cats are taking over the kitchen. The boy is up on the cupboard, while the girl races towards me as soon as I get my phone to take their pictures. I just managed to snap this before she got to me.

I want to get out later on and try and get a photo of the cherry blossom in the garden. It’s just starting to burst, but the forecast is for the weather to get cold again in a couple of days so  I hope the blossom stays safely furled till after the weather improves again.

Anyway the cat wants a love, so better go now. X

Citrus plants

DSC_2498

My hubby has bought some citrus plants and has them in pots in the garden. They came with the fruit on them. He took them inside the summerhouse for a couple of nights but he’s trying to let them harden off. One was a kumquat, whatever that is. I sort of think they were ornamental, but they say they are edible…. He just eats them whole! Anyone know what these are?

Anyway I might chop one up and add it to a gin and tonic!

X

Finding the sun…

That’s what my cat does. He lies in the sun and keeps himself warm, and hides his head under his paw (an idea from the poem about a robin). Apparently cats sleep about 16 hours a day, but usually somewhere quiet where I can’t easily find them. But this morning, there he was in a Ray of bright sunshine. I had to reduce the exposure because it was so bright I was losing details.

X

Clouds

FB_IMG_1576075688493

If you are bored, look up. You may be surprised at what you see. Clouds can be unicorns or dragons, fish or faces.

When I was young I would lie on my back and look up at the sky. Watching the clouds rush with rapidity or drift with stately slowness. Like the galleons I drew in my school exercise books. Then it was pirates racing to catch treasure ships.

Thunder clouds were mountains, or giant anvils, sometimes clouds looked like waves on the sea, or hills and beaches.

I gradually learnt a few of the names of clouds, cirrus, cumulo nimbus, stratus.  Each had a wonderful ring to them. Magical beauty flying high over head.

Later I learned a bit about chaos theory, and fractals. How if you magnify a bit of a cloud, the close up looks like the larger image. I heard songs like Cloudbusting by Kate Bush, and about clouds being seeded to make rain fall.

You see they are interesting creatures, even if they are not mythical beasts.

So, if you are interested, look up the cloud appreciation society. They have a page on Facebook. Their founder set up a group which people can join. They have a cloud of the month, and sometimes send out a newsletter.

With climate change, and the increase in severity of the weather, its interesting to find out how water vapour can be so beautiful and yet so wild.

X