I love that my home is in a place where I can leave out an honesty pot with plants for sale!

People ask if the money gets stolen. Sometimes plants go and there is no money in the pot. Invariably it appears within the next day or so from someone who didn't have money on them at the time but didn't want to miss a particular plant, or it has been put through the letterbox (perhaps by people who can't believe it won't be stolen!)

In over a decade of doing this the change I keep in the jar was stolen once only, and the thief was kind enough to put the lid back on the jar and leave it by the roadside. I reckoned they must have needed the 80p more than I did....

What do you like or dislike about the area you live in?

It is almost September and thoughts turn again to indoors. I've been asking myself what is so special about home that makes me so pleased to come back to it even after just a couple of days away.

One of the things I love is creating cosy, intimate pools of lamplight at dusk or bedtime.

Are your thoughts also turning to home?

Or perhaps you are anticipating Spring..

What makes your house home for you at this time of year?

..for sharing your thoughts and insights on Kondoing over the months!

I have so enjoyed your company and your conversation on this journey. It has helped me along to know, through your comments that you were having fun with it/finding it difficult/getting stuck at times/flying through it/plodding on doggedly - whatever.

Each time I look at the book I find something I had not noticed before and this evening I came across -

The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.

I feel I know myself (and some of you) better for having done this work. There have been some quite profound changes - not bad for a book about tidying!

Hurrah for Marie Kondo!

  

For quite some time now I have been posting on Fridays about the process of what has come to be known (not just by me) as Kondoing.

I have faithfully followed the book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying and yes, it has changed my life! Truly. Lighter, freer and more buoyant (those swimming metaphors again).

I'd like to say I've finished Tah Dah, but I still have the category photographs to do and I'm saving it for dark winter nights. Instead of dreading the task which I did at the beginning of the process, I am looking forward to it. I have bought a rather nice picture frame in anticipation....

It has been a brilliant experience.

I know some of you are doing it too!

Has it changed your life in any way?



So what will I write about on Fridays?

Venice I think (see this post)

Women of Mass Dedication!

That's what we are. (Did you make that up Angela?)

Dedicated to growth, love, support, creativity, peace, and making the world a better place in the face of loss, illness, wars and natural disasters.

That's not to leave out the many men who do their heroic bit.

Poet Mary Oliver said

I love this world, even in its hard places.

I agree with her.

 
Re yesterday's videos, both advertisements -

The strange thing about the 1960's was not that western art was becoming more commercial, but that western commerce was becoming so much more artistic.

Andy Warhol

Would you agree?

..if you find yourself anywhere near Edinburgh before the end of the month!

I loved the two main exhibitions at The Scottish Gallery, and we went to look at the Venetian Old Masters in the National Gallery.

Charles Jencks Landform at the Gallery of Modern Art looked serene in the rain, although the weather was lovely except for this hour or so. (Good café in beautiful garden too.) The exhibition Heads - drawings, paintings and photographs - was so absorbing I didn't get further than the corridor they were displayed in. Wonderful. It included an Augustus John drawing that looked like a Raphael.

I've added a couple of links to yesterday's post.

I expect a lot of Edinburgh residents find the Festival disruptive, but we were with my 95 year old Edinburgh resident Uncle (I've mentioned him before. He is the one who when asked if he ever takes taxis said 'I will when I'm older'.) Uncle John attends concerts, opera, theatre and book festival talks. He is stimulating company, interested in politics, economics and philosophy as well as the arts. We try to keep up with him!

Do you have a favourite arts festival?

Or a favourite uncle?

So clever!

You may have seen it already?

But it's worth seeing twice :)...

Click here.

And while we're at it - here.

The Festival 2015.

Quick dash.

Six galleries, one concert, one meal out and a ride on the Edinburgh tram.

More when I get my breath back!

There will now follow a short intermission.

Enjoy whatever late sunshine you can find.

Maybe it was the Marie Kondo clearing which made space in my head for the idle thought which popped into it one quiet evening and made me ask Barry

Will we go away for a month again this winter?

Yes.

To Venice?

Yes.

Hmmm. How can I make this happen I wonder....



I took the title for this post from a fascinating blog I just discovered via Cornflower Books - it seemed so apt!

Am going to live in Venice for a month (my rather grandly named Writing Month) next winter!

Soo exciting.

Golden treasure.

Now before you say anything about Marie Kondo I can explain.

I have only rented it.

 

In my euphoria yesterday morning I spotted this tea service in the window of The Glory Hole, a charity shop beside the pier at Blairmore where we were having coffee.

Now you would not have been able to resist either, would you?

And no, I don't have anywhere to keep it.

Yet.

But I'm planning a few special afternoon teas....

Then I'll probably give it back to the Glory Hole to sell again.

Win win.

The shower cloth was my Mum's.

I've never used it.

Perhaps I will now - it matches so well and was clearly meant for this tea service.

Nostalgia rules!

I came out of the doctor's surgery this morning and was overcome by a burst of happiness.

No, I hadn't been told I am cured of some life threatening disease, it was more that I am still standing upright. And breathing. And know where I want to live.

I don't know what your surgery is like but ours have recently installed a TV screen and there was some reality TV show about a family in crisis because they couldn't quite make up their minds if the grass was greener in NZ and whether or not they should move there. There were tears, sullen teenagers, one partner reluctant the other gung-ho, elderly parents distressed ...you know the kind of thing. I tried not to watch but the other distractions were not much better. There are posters about every disease known to man warning what symptoms to look out for, what precautions to take, what emergency numbers to call, why I should have this vaccination or that, the contact details of support groups and where to hire a wheelchair or return your crutches, what grants are available  and how to wash my hands.
 
Don't we live in a wonderful country?

I just felt so delighted not to have yellow fever or the plague that I came dancing out of there and went and had a coffee and a scone at a wee café on the pier at Blairmore in hot sunshine and counted my blessings again.

Not fun this one - to spend 30 minutes a day doing something I have been procrastinating about - but very rewarding.

Just grown up/has to be done/just do it/ boring stuff, no Romancing The Ordinary here. Book those tickets, make that appointment, check the comparison web site, set up the new printer, get the chimney fixed....tick, tick, tick. The list is reducing and that is the reward.

More will be added, of course, some of it will be unexpected and unwelcome, but I can do anything for 30 minutes (well, not anything) and I allow myself to stop immediately the 30 minutes is up if I want to, knowing that I will make another 30 minutes progress tomorrow. There are times when you just have to plod, don't you think?

It's working for me. 

What works for you?

Fuchsia 'Genii' and heliotrope are doing well in the three big black pots this year....

I'm trying to be very methodical about taking cuttings from the new rose (see this post).

I've taken ten in the traditional way, ten are in water and ten are in potatoes!

You prepare it in the usual way - remove the growing tip and the lower leaves and in this case the thorns or it won't push into the potato (I used a skewer to make a hole first).

Then you plant the whole lot up to just under the level of the lowest leaves. The theory is that the moisture in the potato helps keep the cutting turgid and encourages rooting,,,,

But will I just get a crop of potatoes I wonder?

Has anyone else tried this?

 

While I take a short blog break I will leave you with one stem of persicaria amplexicaulis 'Firetail', an interesting link, and a hosta flower. I love the shapes of the leaves....

Have a lovely weekend.

Cath in the comments on this post said that her room seemed 'less loud' as she simplified and uncluttered it.

Visual 'noise' can be just as disturbing as sound, don't you think? Marie Kondo discusses it (page 93 in my copy of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying) where she describes printed information on things like furniture and boxes - words, words and more words - as noise. Maybe this is why I am happier with washing up liquids etc in the cupboard under the sink and not sitting out around it.

The noise of books was the subject of this post!

The more I simplify the more aware I am of the 'noise' of pattern and texture and I find myself reducing both. I don't know if I dare to have it, but the idea of a smooth white floor really appeals to me. My room at university in Sweden had a perfectly plain cream coloured floor which I loved (of course people take off their shoes when they enter a house in Sweden!) And in our town house in York we had a white tiled floor in the kitchen which lifted my spirits every time I went into it.

How simple can I dare to be?

On the Kondo front I find myself re-visiting some of the categories....and I still haven't got round to doing the freezer.

Tomorrow!

How are you progressing and are your rooms quiet or noisy?
I especially like the bedroom to be quiet.

I'm still pretending..

The perfume is so beautiful it almost makes me cry.

I wonder why?

Is there a smell which makes you tearful?

Apart from onions :)

See more about the fourth plinth here..

Although our gardens are only a fifteen minute walk apart, Jennie can grow very different things from those that I can grow, on her south facing, gravelly slope. Here are some of the delights...

I have taken 20 cuttings of the rose which I hope will be Rosa 'Freda Anne' (see this post) and will grow them on to observe its characteristics. So far we know it has glaucous foliage, is very floriferous, and has a strong scent. We know it is quite vigorous, but not yet just how vigorous and we wait to see what the hips will be like.

Very exciting..