New paintings and regular art updates.
Just when I think the plants can’t get bigger we get torrential rain and they grow! And it’s hot, they are happy.
I think our back yard is full. The hanging baskets are pulling the old fence down. But I turn round and my hubby has snuck an Ash tree in! I love it. I hope some of it survives into the autumn. I will continue to post pictures as it grows.
We even had three ripe blueberries today.
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rusty bedsprings
Slumped by the wall.
Used to support beans growing tall.
A line of washing shades the view
Helping ease the sun’s bright hue.
Plants bathed in heat
Wither and dry
Turning brown
Hope they don’t die.
Above all water of life,
Carried in the clouds
Stopping great strife.
Overall its a British summer.
Bright in parts, in others dimmer.
Some places have vines,
Others marrows,
As the heat of the day
Makes eyes narrow.
So interesting view
Shirts, trousers a few.
Dry in one day.
That’s all I can say.
It’s been threatening rain all morning. It was raining earlier, the abandoned cat we look after appeared bedraggled at the back door so he came in for a pouch of cat food before going off again. He’s definitely an outside cat.
We were expecting rain all day. My hubby was going for a walk but that has been cancelled. So he’s in the shed making cozy places for the hedgehogs and the cat to sleep in.
Rain. One year, many years ago, we were suffering weeks of rain. I told someone that an ark was being built on the top of the hill. They believed me! This country (UK) has so many influences from the North, South, East and West that we can sometimes get all types of weather in one day. The rain is one thing, but we sometimes even get (very small) tornados. Also hail storms, water spouts, gale, storm and hurricane force winds. High temperatures (rarely) but highest last year it was 38°C. Low temperatures, probably worst in Scotland around minus 20°C.
So yes, rain, some of the UK is very wet, certain villages like Seathwaite in the Lake District get some of the highest rainfall. Some of it is extremely dry. The South East of England around London frequently gets less water from rain than it requires so water companies are allowed to extract water for public use from rivers and aquafers.
On the whole I like rain. Except for late one night when we came out of a club and missed the last bus home. We had a five mile walk in the heavy rain. The water ran down my ‘showerproof’ coat. My trousers got soaked, and then the rain started getting in through the coat seams. Oh joy! Even my shoes were sodden… Memories.
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I’ve just been reading a Facebook post discussing whether spring water is better than tap water, on the premise that tap water had more minerals in it.
I know that in Britain the water quality is regulated and that government checks that quality regularly.
Water from springs perculates through rocks with minerals in them. Over thousands or millions of years they pick up the minerals as they are dissolved by the water (rainwater will also contain dust particles from the air, and organic matter from the ground before it gets into the rocks). Then it depends on the geology. That’s why we have hard water and soft water. In some springs the water can be hot. Some were used by the Victorians as purgatives as they contained high levels of things like sulphur. They were used as cures and remedies, the idea being that they cleansed the body.
Modern tap water contains a few additives like fluorine. But in measured amounts. My dad used to call it ‘corporation pop’. Not dangerous.
Work in progress, about A4 size, acrylic on canvas. I’ve got to work on the background. It’s now a commission as someone saw the start of it and liked it. I’m not sharing this on my Facebook page because I want it to be a surprise. I don’t think I will do a lot more to it. I want to resolve the head though. The photo I’m working from has a lot of dark rock and patterns around its head and its hard to see what’s happening. That’s why a lot of the surface is on is light so the lobster stands out a bit more.
I’m trying to make it look like it’s almost floating. I might add some light and dark bands, like ripples of light and shade being reflected down from the surface.
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I use a piece of plastic to keep my acrylic paints moist between using them. A little bit of each paint sticks to the plastic. So I pressed it against a tiny 3 inch square canvas. I did it over and over, rubbing the plastic down onto the canvas and turning it round each time. When I looked at the result I thought it looked like reflections on a pool so added curves to look like ripples from drops of rain. Just simple…
I might turn the orange splodges into goldfish….
Small red crab
Swimming in a rock pool
Waiting for the tide
To wash you into the sea.
Little legs paddling,
Scuttling sideways.
Sneaking past the gulls
To find your true love.
Barnacles surround you,
Seaweed lashes you.
Waves crash over you,
Still you scuttle
Creeping along the strand,
Till round a rock face,
You meet her…
And you both swim
Into the sunset.
Red and yellow
grey concrete
water washed
and slippery.
Leaf
warning tells me
beware wet leaves..
I just see beauty.
Oh dear! My hubbies minnows have been disappearing from the pond. He only put them on a couple of weeks ago. And there only seem to be three left.. There were six. The other thing he saw tonight was a large frog..
So I decided to Google ‘Do frogs eat minnows?’, the answer came back..
. Frogs living in captive setting will eat guppies, minnows and goldfish, provided the prey can be caught and is smaller than the predator. Frogs prefer live fish. Many frogs catch the fish they eat by quickly rolling their sticky tongues to capture the prey and then swallow the fish whole.
Er, we didn’t know that. I’m worried now that the rest will go. Hubbies going to try and rescue them, but I dug the pond four feet deep! How we deal with it I don’t know… We want a wildlife garden…
Last year, painting of morning glory flowers and some poppies. I haven’t grown much from seeds this year. We do have some lettuce plants, but they have probably been drowned by the amount of torrential rain we’ve been having over the past few days. Some places have had a months rain in a day! That compared with six weeks of sunshine in April and May. As usual our weather is topsy-turvy. Basically because of where the United Kingdom is positioned. We get weather from every direction, the Atlantic, the Arctic, Siberia, even dust dragged up from the Sahara. We are a weather magnet!
I want to go and get some seeds and see if I can grow some nasturtiums for late summer bedding, and the butterfly caterpillars love them. They are a nice, spicy, bitter and peppery orange flavour when added to salads and cold soups.
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Mallaband-Brown