Safer than running round the garden with a three year old.
 
I slipped and fell on my face on coarse gravel!

Cut cheek, a lot of bruising and sprained wrist - I may be gone for a few days till the swelling and pain subside. Am hoping that the bag of frozen sweetcorn applied to face will mean I won't be too black and blue tomorrow....

Oh no! It hurts when I smile!!

Do you like to spend time alone?  See this post by Marcie Scudder. It resonated with me, and the photography is superb.

I'm enjoying reading Barbara Sher's It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now. Very thought provoking, and quite amusing.

And now for something completely different! Choosing shoes....I am greedy and would like nos 2,7 and 12 please. Which three pairs would you like?

Thanks for the link Lynne.

A big thank you, on this the third anniversary of my blog, to those of you who read it, and especially to those of you who have stayed with it all this time.

It has been the greatest fun to do..

I truly value your interest, and your comments, so thoughtful and so encouraging.


Since I am doing a review of the blog this month I thought it might be good to link to the second anniversary post here, and to the first anniversary post here.

Although I don't know who most of you are (though I know from the stats that you number in the hundreds every day - it's amazing!) I do feel I know those of you who leave comments and think of you as like-minded friends.

As in previous years, I raise a glass to you all tonight....

Your health!

I had the lovely experience a couple of years ago of a flight in a sea plane over the area of the west of Scotland that we live in - a special anniversary treat.

The weather was glorious.

Our village is just visible left of centre.

Looking down from several thousand feet, the logic of the way man uses the land here struck me as pretty intelligent really, all things considered. The Shore Villages, each with their pier, are strung out along the level land on the shore, there is  deciduous woodland on the lower slopes and the hillsides are forested.

The rivers and lochs are fished.

Sheep, and some cattle graze the glens. There are no arable crops. The odd rough field may be cut for hay.

On the barren tops are windfarms I didn't know existed!

Everything links up, the springs and lochans, burns and rivers, the paths and farm tracks and forest roads and shore roads, the ferries, buses, trains and cars...the orderly houses and factories, schools and hospitals.

This is the ferry which we take to go to Glasgow.

Single track, B roads, A roads, trunk roads motorways....

The plane lines up with the river and you come, at a very steep angle, over all the bridges and land right in the heart of the city. I stopped taking photographs at this point - it was too exciting and I wasn't going to miss the thrill of the moment!

Back to where we started, by the Science Centre in what were the old shipyards.

From that different perspective, what I came away with was a pleasant sense that, actually, everything was working pretty much as it should.

Current thinking has it that we have trashed the planet but maybe, just maybe, there is hope yet!

I certainly felt it that day.

http://www.lochlomondseaplanes.com/

Around ten of us planted about 1500 snowdrops this morning in Coronation Wood. (see yesterday's post.) It was freezing !

I've been re-reading my posts under the category Live Simply.

Hankering after nature and a more simple life, and wanting to paint full time, I came to live in a wooden house in a small village on a single track road on the shores of Loch Long in the Cowal region of Argyll, in Scotland, described here.  I'm not sure I was really very clear what the plan was, except that it had something to do with the real and the authentic....and headspace..

No, I don't mean online, I mean shopping in your own cupboards..to brighten up a dull January day.

Around this time of year I often feel the need for some zingy greens and yellows around me. A quick rummage came up with this for the table - no cost except the daffodils for £1.

Will you see what you can find?  Next week shocking pink I think!

Shopping in your own wardrobe is a useful concept too, for another post perhaps.

I find myself thinking small in January. I like to look at tiny details of things, and find that approach spreads to thinking small in everything. No big plans, ambitious new ideas, fantastic dreams or great adventures. Instead there's a kind of contentment - enjoying, treasuring the simple daily things - stacking the wood, stocking the fridge, lighting the lamps and candles, drawing the curtains on the dark nights, placing flowers, making really good food. Reading by the fire. Writing more than painting (the studio is so cold!)

It's all a bit lazy, and before long I will get bored with it, but I've decided just to go with it for now....it's my winter hibernation instincts.

But the days are getting longer....

How do you respond to January?

Optimists or what?
We had solar panels fitted today, in the pouring rain..but, they are generating electricity as I write, in the pouring rain!

Encouraging....