Day 1 of being back to 1 girl. The fizz summer that is 3 grandchildren has dropped to the more normal level of 1.
Still fizzy, just less so.
So two fizzy girls are returning home and I have photographic memories to be processed and forwarded on. One fizzy girl invited us to a car boot picnic last night. Car boot picnics are all well and good when you are two, but adult heads need a little more headroom when eating chips and drinking ginger beer.
Normal blogging routines will re-establish.
It seems that I am not the only person/ thing to have a vivid imagination in this house. Last night Hugo got me up for a wee and something spooked him in the top corner of our yard. It didn’t move when he gave it a good telling off. I took a picture in the gloom of midnight using the night settings and there was nothing remotely frightening to be seen.
Of course I was wide awake at this point and decided to write a newsletter and get some admin done, which thankfully had me off to sleep again in less than an hour.
For no particular reason, when I reviewed the photograph this morning,. I asked the randomised AI feature on my phone to reproduce the image. The randomised AI image trawls through my recent photographs and looks at the post-production tools I have used to edit them. It comes up with four suggestions. The hit rate of success is delightfully low for use as a stand alone editing tool but interesting results can happen and be useful in a much larger creative project.
Yesterday I was at an art exhibition, struggling to take good photos in a beautiful but awkwardly lit gallery. A subject for the next blog. All those photos of paintings gave my yard aspirations!
With the sea five minutes away I never have a fantasy of a plunge pool in my yard but clearly the yard has its own dreams and aspirations.
It has been a really busy 3 days setting up and running an art exhibition. Hardly time to draw breath or write a regular blog that is not exhibition centric. But today we hit the halfway point. The Private View was held last night and now we have 3 days of welcoming our guests and taking some time to enjoy the experience that has been created. I have lost count of the fabulous and fascinating conversations that I have had, but one when the hanging team were exhausted has stuck with me. Almost as a mantra for life.
We were installing art within two huge spaces in a Grade 1 listed building. The obstacles and impediments of the hang were demanding and often required improvisation.
Two artists, up high ladders were nattering as they worked.
“We are just going to have to bodge first and finesse after”
Bodge and Finesse. My new favourite word pairing.
So much of life could be described in that way. I would argue that often, to finesse is bodging and that bodge is the epitome of finesse.
Normal, less arty blogging starts next Tuesday.
Does my blog affect my art. I wonder if it does? The map above is the map of a very regular walk. Today I am not so sure if my art and my walk are in some way linked. I have never noticed this map before. It could be new. I was rather charmed by the little footsteps as they reflect my regular circular walk.
The walk this morning was fabulously colourful.
Domestic admin/yardening followed the walk, planting roses and garlic, but later I put some finishing touches to an ongoing painting.
I can’t help feeling that the centres of my final fantasy flowers look a little like footsteps.
And my choice of colours are pretty similar to the boats I chose to photograph.
Co-incidence is a wonderful thing. The serendipity of life is a major factor in my blog writing.
Until this popped up yesterday I had no idea I had been blogging so long. The early years went through a few transitions and I really only found my niche when I accidentally hit on a prolonged daily blogging regime. Like many things in life Covid-19 caused a three month course related project to become open ended when the end point,the second part of the course failed to happen for two years.
15 years and 1000 editions of the current blog feels like an achievement. Not epic or outstanding, certainly not life changing for anyone beyond myself. I have become much more observant of the minutiae of a moment or tiny details in the bigger picture.
This picture of a snail appeared in the blog in 2017.
Much more recently Snails and I have been pondering companions as I undertook the white wall painting in the yard.
The two snails nicely demonstrate the different textures and directions of life. The last snail posing occurred this week. Not such great focus on the snail.
But this is where blogging, and my love of art and odd photography collide. A Surreal celebration of 15 years or a thousand blogs. Courtesy of my unpredictable photo manipulating app.
Below is the snail of the moment.
A snail just waiting for something to pique her interest. The USP of my blog. Just waiting for something however small to spark a few words
It’s been a week of damp,grey days and yesterday was the dampest greyest. I found a two year old photograph of a watercolour depicting mussels to illustrate a greyish post.
The problem of the week has been the admin of a club I belong to. The problems are not matters of life or death but goodness they do take up some time. Much of the admin of clubs is constructive leading to a useful outcome.
Quite a lot is ‘ Niffnaff’ and some is people management, not always in a good way.
Sometimes problems are hiding in plain sight. This week the big problem of the week was caused by Testosterone and Ego. A clever script writer could write a drama or comedy set in committees in Britain, maybe elsewhere too. Where the best efforts of many are thwarted by an abrasive and/or disruptive individual, sometimes individuals. Although this week’s problem was male derived, women can also be egostic and disruptive in the same setting.
But with enough effort resolutions can be found and using the same mussel analogy. People working well together can move clubs, organisations and indeed whole countries forward.
All is well that ends well.
The yard has started to produce a small handful of strawberries. Today’s haul gave us two bums.
This week has been all about gathering things, mostly lovely conversations with friends. And also some stray thoughts because my life is all about gathering virtually useless information.
Strawberries are not called strawberries because they are habitually grown on straw to protect from slugs. The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon language when they had a descriptive name of Stray Berries because they throw off runners to create new plants.
I also learnt a new acronym. ‘ There we are then’ a really polite phrase that neatly responds to the news that someone has behaved in a particularly vile or unpleasant way.
Another offering from the yard for Friday is sharp evening shadows . White Agapanthas and my newly white painted wall.
Random thoughts for a Friday.
While I was away one of my photographs was having a moment in the sun as an edible cake topper at a Centenery Celebration The photo featured my home made bunting. If I had good enough baking skills it could have been a triple creative skill creation, a tri-athalon of making. Better for everyone that I stopped at two levels of creativity
We did a reasonable length dog walk from home and found the perfect counter point image to one I took last week.
Hot summer. Soft summer. The colours tell the temperature just as much as a thermometer would. Yesterday was a day of washing, drying, walking, food shopping and finishing our holiday reads. Back to the real world today.
Yesterday was a mindblower, I discovered two things I should have known for much longer than 24 hours.
Both facts that have evaded my ‘ Mine of useless information’ * and involve subjects starting with H.
* My mine of useless information was a source of consternation to my dad who had a normally functioning brain. Unless we were playing Trivial pursuit together as a team and in that scenario he could appreciate my value. My mum who was probably also a synesthete quietly accepted my quirks.
My two ‘H’ fails yesterday were Horticulture and Haircare.
Both subjects close to my head or heart.
Starting with the heart one. My mum adored Magnolia trees. My dad was very unsuccessful at growing them. As am I. Every Magnolia season my mum would look wistfully at magnificent examples in parks and public gardens. At home there would be a sorry tree of sticks and some leaves lurking somewhere in the garden border. It was probably symbolic of their marriage, high hopes, lots of effort, but some disappointments. I am certain neither of them knew that Magnolia Trees are hugely historically significant, evolving 95 million years ago,and shared the earth with dinosaurs but not Bees.
Magnolias are pollinated by beetles.
My other H is close to my head. Hair. I never knew there was a whole classification chart for curly hair. I am somewhere between 2C and 3A.*
Neither of these revelations are life-changing but you never know when a fact will come in useful. How did they reveal themselves?
A glacially slow walk around the Eden Project with an eager toddling grandchild. Time to read even the most obscure pieces of information. Time to appreciate the sunshine and buds of Spring.
P.S suddenly I am seeing curl categories everywhere .
How to make a silk purse out of a sows ear?
Or indeed how to write a blog from a pile of ironing?
Yesterday and the day before were days of catching up after the long weekend. Largely insignificant tasks but in this Winter and Spring of interminable rainfall the ironing stood out as a glimmer of something different.
Long ago when sunshine was a thing and washing could be dried outside, a load of white table linen was dried and then put away unironed. I decided to get the job done while catching up on podcasts. The minute the steam of the iron hit the crispy linen all the natural fragrance of a summers day filled the room. Sea breezes and the smell of an English summer. A few seconds of a hot July replaced the dankness of our current April.
In other news, I attempted some Dartmoor walking yesterday. I was defeated by really slippery mud and mist. Not for me forlorn,damp ponies or stoic sheep. Just a quietly arriving ferry close to home.
Surely a sign that Spring is somewhere close.
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