New paintings and regular art updates.
It rained very heavily a few days ago.
I wrote this poem in response :
Rain flowed down the hill
Flooded the gutters
A wall of water
In the midst of it
A man on a mobility scooter
Drove it through two feet of water
Flash flood wheel chair hero!
The man on the scooter was videoed, it made the local TV news! Legend! I think it’s on tiktok in Stoke on Trent.
Reddish sky in the morning
Shepherds take warning….
And they should! A few days ago we had a red dawn, this photo was taken as it faded.
The sky soon clouded over and later we had a deluge! Water flowed down the hill so fast and deep that it overwhelmed the drains and poured out of gutters onto the pavements. At the back of my house it came down the window in a sheet of rain and the water snuck into the wall and plaster around the window frame. I’ve never seen anything like it.
There was a flash flood in the centre of town with rain water up to people’s car headlights. Shops that were safe at the front had brown water knee high in their store rooms….
It might have been a microburst but it was very stormy. The winds were blowing trees about. It was more than the usual thunderstorm. Thankfully it blew over after about twenty minutes.
Climate change is here. I don’t know how places like Jamaica and Cuba and Haiti coped with last week’s hurricane. I feel so worried for them.
WhatsApp photo of a rainbow a friend sent me. For some reason it appeared in my gallery. I get all sorts of photos from friends and I wouldn’t normally share them, but this is Yorkshire terraced house rooves with a rainbow above them. I like the sunset. You can just see an arc of colour in the sky.
The rainbow is above the houses, and the fronts of them are catching the sunlight. It shows how the sun must always be on the opposite side of the sky to a rainbow. The prisms of the rain drops scattering the light.
When I was younger I saw a rainbow coming down to the ground in front of me. It was about 50 yards away. As I walked towards it, it moved away at walking pace. Then I started to jog and it moved away at the same pace as I was travelling.
It was fascinating, and it stayed in my memory, so everytime I see these beautiful light shows I appreciate it.
Another #bandofsketchers prompt was wet, after taking a photo of rain on my window I decided to try and interpret it as a digital sketch using Artrage app. I usually finger paint but as I wanted more control I used my stylus.
Yes it’s raining a lot here in England, so wet I dare not go out. I’m not allowed to get my face wet or get water or grit in my eye.
I really want to go out and do some shopping. I need to get cat food, but it’s still raining after about 12 hours. But I can hear the cars splashing through the water outside the front door. It’s only 2 or 3 steps to my car. But I need to use a brolly and my walking stick, so by the time I’ve put them in the car I will get soaked. Luckily I’m parked right by the pavement so I don’t need to step through a rushing river of water that runs down the gutter. The grates for the run off are full.
Anyway I’m off to grab a coffee… Decaff of course.
Most of my hanging baskets have survived a very dry summer as I watered them every few days. But I made the mistake of thinking the rain that has been falling heavily for the last few days would suffice. And because I have trouble negotiating around the yard I haven’t done any watering! Big mistake. Because I had two hanging baskets hung underneath another two baskets. Usually when I water the top ones the water runs into the bottom ones, but then I also do the lower ones to make sure they are thoroughly wet. The rain just didn’t penetrate and the two lower baskets are now badly wilted. I doubt they will be able to recover as the nights are getting cooler and the growing season is almost over. They have also gone to seed. Drat!
But the photo shows one of the healthy ones…. If only I’d done the watering!
Send us mares tails that precede rain.
Send clouds full of water
England’s Green is fading
Brown fields abound
River levels dropping
Paddle your canoes no more
Canal boats stuck in place
High and dry on mud!
Give us a cup or two of rain
To water our parched countryside
Let the land drink
Again.
I didn’t notice but one of my orchids has flowered. Not a good photo, lots of camera shake. You can just see there are a few lower buds yet to open.
Today I got soaked walking 100 yards to choir practice. I can’t drive and I struggle to manage with a walking stick and a brolly, so I left it behind It was drizzling when I went out but it came down heavy as I walked along. So much so it was raining into my eyes. I was told not to get water in my eye that had been operated on. I avoided doing it in the shower but unfortunately the weather got the better of me. Still I have antibiotic eye drops to put in.
Which reminds me I’d better water the orchids.
Oh for some rain, but today came the news that there is an amber heat warning for parts of Britain. That means there is some danger to health for people, especially for the vulnerable ones. There might be a cooler week next week, but that doesn’t mean rain.
In other news we had reports that we can expect temperatures of up to 40°Celcius in future years, that’s a lot higher than we are used to. Britain has a maritime weather system, meaning weather coming from all directions and all sorts of types. Rain, wind, sleet, hail, snow, sun, fog, mist, drizzle, gales, thunder and even tornadoes and water spouts, we get it all!
It’s been just too hot and humid. I’m tired out so I’ve eaten far too many ice creams over the past two or three weeks. Even when it rains it stays warm and it’s very humid too. I don’t know when it will let up. I keep sleeping in my chair and I can’t sleep in bed because I either feel cold or hot. Tomorrow it might be thundering. (us brits don’t understand humidity, we call it puthery round here)…..
Mallaband-Brown