Blog Archives

Simply Holiday..in Suffolk....

31/8/2012

Suffolk and the Snape Proms and the weather were all wonderful!

The music was sublime. Steven Isserlis is a delight to watch as well as a joy to listen to, with his flowing curls (Simon Rattle, Stephan Deneuve - what is it with musicians and masses of curly hair?) and his beautiful hand gestures, he presents a romantic figure, waving his bow like a wand, sometimes bowing without holding the instrument at all, sometimes lifting one foot clean off the floor, then the other, and leaning so far over that you think he might just fall, all the while gazing into the distance....

In the lecture the day before the performance he and pianist Robert Levin talked about their instruments - a modern reproduction of a piano from Beethoven's time, and a Stradivarius cello, and they illustrated some aspects of the programme with wit and humour. It is clear that there is a great rapport between them and the lecture was excellent and whetted our appetite for the concerts. The concert hall is beautiful with a mellow warm accoustic. Go if you can! It was worth the long journey.

Have just discovered Steven Isserlis has a website - click here (not up to date, but interesting all the same..)

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Simply Holiday....simple isn't easy..

30/8/2012

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Simple isn't easy really.

I find when I come home from a holiday, my head full of new images and ideas, my bags full of laundry and guidebooks and cards and gifts and other sundry things, and a pile of things awaiting my attention, that all of a sudden I am overwhelmed with a to-do list again.

Where to start? I think as I survey the stuff everywhere....

I remember an old trick - start with the flowers, then get to work making everything else live up to the beauty and the style of the flowers. I cleared the kitchen surface of everything except this new pot (my one purchase from Snape Maltings - I was very restrained!), filled it with all the dill left in the garden, enjoyed looking at it and photographing it then set about the rest with a lighter heart from the joy of it.

I wonder how long I can keep it this simple?

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Simply Grow..more posies....

19/8/2012

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Single leaves of cosmos..

make a nice little nest in a tiny glass,

to support a few delicate stems..

Now for a blog holiday..backsun, as Rabbit said....

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Simply Live....

18/8/2012

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I know it's the same photograph as yesterday but I simply love this hare! I like the way it looks me straight in the eye. It looks alert, but also perfectly physically relaxed, not twitchy. Confident but not arrogant - utterly self possessed in the best possible way. Completely comfortable in it's own skin.

Everything one would like to be in fact.

Funny how much you can project onto a piece of clay...

Made by Patrick Jenkins. £90. I may have to buy it.

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Simply Chill....

17/8/2012

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Dolce fa niete.

The sweetness of doing nothing.

When did you last try it?

I'm going to do some tomorrow.

Why does it sound so innocent and romantic in italian I wonder...

an exhibition of small sculptures begins tomorrow in The Boathouse..

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Simply Grow..herbs for posies....

16/8/2012

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dill

Oops!

mustard

These are the flowers..

clary sage

that were meant for this post (I've shown the other ones before).

plus candle

A pretty muddle!

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Simply Live..creatively....

15/8/2012

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'It is one of the hardest things to stay free and keep being open'.

Ivan Putrov of prinicpal ballet dancer Polunin's decision to leave the Royal Ballet aged 22

'The artist in me was dying a little bit.'

Sergei Polunin

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Simply Beautiful..for bees and for people

14/8/2012

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Papaver ruprifragum seeded itself here on the gravel area when I used to sell plants from this patch.

The bees find them first thing in the morning, before the petals have even uncrumpled themselves - fourteen flowers, seven bees this morning....

..sometimes three bees in each flower. We reckon to have about 2000 flowers from this clump each year!

Having been pollinated early in the morning, the flowers drop their petals throughout the afternoon, but for the whole summer each day brings a dozen or more new flowers.

Perfect.

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Simply Paint..and make a statement....

13/8/2012

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It's common practice for galleries to hold 'artist's statements' about the artists whose work they show.

This is my statement about my current work:

What is my work about? Colour, colour, colour, light, air, wide spaces, gardens, flowers and unashamed optimism....the poetry of it, not the prose.

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Simply Paint..first Boathouse Flower painting....

12/8/2012

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'Soft Light. Coriander.'

The photographs I've taken of the coriander were taken on bright sunny days, but the painting was begun on a day of soft diffuse light and the flowers seemed to float in the air...

Oh, and irresistable is the 17C way of spelling irresistible (knew it didn't look right yesterday!)

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Simply Paint..the flowers at The Boathouse....

11/8/2012

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I'm so enjoying working in The Boathouse at Caol Ruadh, surrounded by flowers which I've been bringing from the garden at home..

cornflowers and dill in a cornflower blue pot which I found in a charity shop..

More blues in a big lime green jug - I just keep adding more and more - any day now it will all collapse!

I can see a new series of paintings - Flowers in The Boathouse....

Irresistable. Enough to keep me very busy for some time.

Check out the blog on Caol Ruadh's website here

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Simply Live..dangerously!

10/8/2012

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This is one of the many beautiful pictures in the wonderfully titled book Women Who Read Are Dangerous.

The sun is shining - it's another beautiful day....I may just go outside and sit in a deckchair, under the roses..

The romantic painting is The Artist's Wife in the Garden at Skagen by Peder Severin Kroyer 1893

My clean used copy of the book, from Amazon was £11.55, however I see that it now costs £115 new, or from £40.20 used! Checking out trains from Glasgow to London I found the price was 'between £12.50 and £142'. I don't understand modern economics - does anyone? Is that part of the problem?

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Simply Grow..an Olympic meadow?

9/8/2012

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Sadly not - unless you have 25 sq mtrs to spare!

I'm thrilled to see Professors Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough getting the recognition they deserve for their pioneering work in wild flower meadows. I first knew of them when I was studying Landscape Design at the University of Manchester and have watched their work with interest. They established a social enterprise business called Green Estate Ltd, see here and developed seed mixes under the name Pictorial Meadows. The mix they created for the Olympic Park (see here) is so gorgeous I thought I'd grow it in my little cutting patch - see my post 7 August.

But the smallest amount they sell covers the aforementioned area!

I suppose I could try to mix my own for my 4 sq mtrs....

Someone who has been to see the meadows said 'amazing, beautiful, miles and miles of them, and the perfume wafts all over the place'.

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Simply Home..

8/8/2012

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Scott's house.

Living simply?

Solar powered (of course!)

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Simply Grow..for cutting....

7/8/2012

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The cutting patch in the back garden, which was inspired by Sarah Raven's book The Cutting Garden which I've had since 1996, gives huge pleasure.

It's about 4m x 4 m divided into four. In each quadrant I grow different things....and I like to try out new ideas each year.

This year I painted the canes red and grew red sweet peas Winston Churchill (not scented alas), with red poppies and cornflowers. I also added some sweet pea Matucana for it's strong scent and rich purple colour.

First thing in the morning I like to go down and stand in among the poppies, which are five feet tall.

When my eyes are saturated with the reds, and the pinks on the lime green wigwam...

..it's a kind of a shock to look at the blues in the next quadrant - they look ghost like and strange.

Nigella Miss Jekyll .

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Simply surprising..it's not sex, money or in-laws....

6/8/2012

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A recent blog post by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project reviewed research into divorced people's views on what is really important in a marriage.

It turns out that what is most important is simple kindness, affection and respect in the simple day to day encounters - covers it all really!

Read Gretchen's article here

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