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..may become shorter and/or erratic as I try to tie up the loose ends of my ever busier life! Blgging, gardening and painting and seeing friends, not to mention the odd lazy hour in the hammock are my happy experiences as my world becomes ever more colourful...  Mainly green and yellow but with great explosions of colour to come. May your days be rainbow coloured. And happy.
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Hammock, hat, headphones and home baking, and just enough heat to relax right to the core....   Freedom makes me happy. Have we ever appreciated it more? Have you given some thought to what make you happy?  A white aquilegia appeared in the hedge  lily of the valley  whie campion  viburnum Maresii  geranium Celtic White  geranium sylvaticum (I think)  ranunculus aconitifolium  I rarely feel thirsty. So I forget to drink water. How can I forget that when I do drink a few glasses of water a day I feel more alert, less sluggish and therefore happier? Pouring a big jug of water in the morning and leaving it sitting out in the kitchen reminds me.... Such a simple thing!  Work in progress. The start of 'Story Book Snow'. It's wonderful to be back at work in the studio. After a day of warm hugs with my lovely daughter I had the best ight's slleep I have had for weeks, if not months. Slept right through, no nightmares. As part of my new Happinesss Project (see yesterday's post) I decided that sleeping better might restore my joie de vivre. I can get to sleep ok, and I can waken at my preferred time of 7.00. I use an alarm but often waken just before it goes off. But it's the wakening at 3 am that is the problem and for a number of weeks when I did get back to sleep I would have nightmares. Horrible nightmares. This was happening even on my lovely rrelaxing stay on Colonsay. I had to fix this. Going to bed earlier didn't help. I already had a nice bedtime routine, my bedroom is calm and lovely, I avoided watching the news before bed. A friend suggested I try a herbal sleep tablet and I used it just three nights and I think I may have broken the pattern..... But hugs are better! What works for you?  I try to make the guest room peaceful and pretty and look forward to having guests again! ..for my PPSD. To treat what I figured is my most worrying synptom - the loss of joie de vivre - I have decided to revisit Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. I know I have lots to be happy about. There are lots of little sparks of joy, but it's as if they rarely burst into flame anymore. As ever my inner critic asks Isn't it selfish to think about your own happiness when so many people are suffering? Gretchen Rubin also asks this question and reminds me that studies show that happy people are more altruistic, more forgiving, generous, helpful, charitable, have better self control and are more tolerant of frustration and are more able to make other people happy. I have often thought that the only guaranteed way to increase the happiness in the world is to be happy myslef, so on that basis I will embark on a new Happinesss Project. Will you join me? What is there to lose after all? When I first used this book I did it over a year, took what was useful to me from it and it was a big (and rewarrding) exercise. This time round it will be a mini project. I am listening to the book on Audible and finding it amusing and entertaining. I am jotting down ideas that I think will be useful to me. The first ones are about energy and vitality...  I think this angelica is having a Yay nonent! PS Turns out I had a Yay moment myself today! The huge happiness boost of a hug from my younger daughter - the first in 15 months. Sending you virtual hugs and hoping you get real ones very soon. The cause of the condition I am calling Post Pandemic Stress Dusorder or PPSD is of course Covid 19. (See yesterday's post for symptoms). A highly contagious virus has swept the world with frightening speed. I think part of me is still in shock! It has changed our lives in ways we never could have imagined, and never would have wanted. How have you reacted? Someome said they went into 'neutral' which is probably a very useful strategy for coping, but a year is a long time to be in neutral. Another said she lived in her own head. It's possible to have too much time to think. I dampened my feelings a lot and that might be why I am feeling that I have lost my joie de vivre somewhat. Books will be written about the subject. But not by me! Adam Grant's post in the New York Times describes 'Languishing' - a very apt word for how many are feeling. (Thank you Angela for that.) Is there a treatment? A cure? That's what I am thinking about now....I am so eager to move on. Tomorrow - my new project. I am suffering from PPSD. Post Paandemic Stress Disorder (I just made that up!). Are you? The symptoms are a kind of malaise, feeling not depressed, just a bit low. A lack of energy or enthusiasm as in not getting your hopes up too much. In case you get disappointed. Again. A friend cancelled an outing, the weather forecast said warm and sunny and it was cold and wet, I was planning a long awaited trip to the city and they reinstaated restrictions......and so on. Nothing too serious but a kind of weary resignation was my response. A loss of joie de vivre might sum it up. Those are my symptoms, yours may well be different if you think you have this condition that is. I write from an area with three cases and zero deaths and can begin to think 'post-pandemic'....  The wisteria has lots of buds this year.
 As the hardier seedlings gradually go out into the garden, I am beginning to thnk about prettying it up for summer. I like to use earthenware pots as much as possible. I love the proportions of the 'long toms' in the second photograph. I bought them in the supermarket, and the fuchsias I am growing in them. I am missing visiting garden centres but Morrison's have served me very well! I had lunch in there today with a glass of wine and a coffee. Nice. ..there are bluebells too. I am so lucky to live in this spot.  ..is a bluebell wood!
Tonight I will post photographs of it. Promise. This morning there is a problem with that, but the sun is shining, it is warm out there and the garden is calling me so loudly that I have to obey...... Sometimes, if I waken early and the sun is out, I will have two breakfasts. Some coffee and toast, savouring the deep early morning silence. A few birds sing and the cuckoo calls further up the glen. Later I will cook something more substantial.. I love a slow start to my day.  My bithday flowers have lasted three weeks! I added the camassias from the garden.  Have a happy Sunday!
As I reclaim the studio space I also have the feeling of reclaiming my life! Do you feel like this too? It feels like a big moment. Perhaps it is space in your head you need to reclaim. Byron Katie might ask 'Whose business are you in? What are you about right now? Is it time for a new start, a new beginning? As we wait for the government to tell us who we can hug and when (!!) is it time for a reset? If you could change pne thing about your life, what would it be? Now could be the time. It's exciting to remember that we can choose to make a fresh start now if we wish..... We still have that freedom. We just need to claim it. Some of you will know my other blog which I wrote more or less weekly, between 2010 and 2013- fredawaldapfel.squarespace.com/ In it I write about being an artist, and there is also a piece called Why Invest In Art. I hope you will find it interesting! I am currently reclaiming the studio by removing the plant propagator, the recycling, and everything else that has accumulated in there that has nothing to do with work! Focussing.   To be an artist, said Raoul Dufy, you should first get the mundane things of your life in order. I thought, somewhat cynically, when I read this that he meant get a wife (which he did). However I have been very busy getting my house in order during this strange year. Repairs to the chimney, the porch, the soffits, downstairs inside the house painted and all of the outside of the house painted, replaced old cast iron downpipes, guttering cleaned and drains cleared, steps and paths power hosed, hedges cut, paths cut, fences painted - and the red gate and the yellow gate....and now the shed is being rmended. SO....    There was an 'incident' with the incoming tide at the causeway which joins Oronasy to Colonsay....thankfully we survived to tell the tale!       Apart rom on the ferry and in the one shop on Colonsay, there was no need for masks or social distancing and we were relishing the freedom.... I mistakenly typed joliday - but in fact that was quite accurate. We had a wonderful week. There is quite a variety of habitats on the small island of Colonsay (population 135). Sandy beaches and rocky shores, mountain and moorland, forest and woodland, machair and salt marsh, and on the estate of Colonsay House formal gardens, so there is a corresponding variety of wildlife and flora. The island also hosts a remarkable number of small festivals. See here.  Beaches to ourselves. Beautiful Kiloran Bay  Claytonia, or purslane flowers in deep shade
 A couple of meals out! The Hotel is currently for sale if anyone is up for a new adventure... I am on the lovely island of Colonsay! A holiday cancelled from last year, but after two Covid tests, a lot of planning, a drive through heavy rain to sunny busy Oban and a beautiful early evening two and a half hour sail on MV Hebridean Isle we finally got here.
However broadband is slow/intermittant/non-existant, so posts and photographs may have to wait until I get back home..... have on our first day had warm sunshine and heard corncrake and cuckoo, and seen violets on the sand dunes and bluebells in the woods, and marvelled at the skeleton of a fin whale which was washed up on the shore in 2017 when we were last here. A storm is forecast for today, but then more sun. It's exciting and beautiful to be here. Have a good week wherever you are. |
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