Don't you just hate it when you make a resolution and the very first day something stops you from doing it?

I was too unwell to have breakfast outside today. I was too unwell to have breakfast.

Nothing too serious - but flu-like symptoms and my body just saying Stop. And Sleep.

So I did.

Getting better, but taking a little blog break just the same and leaving you with a question...

Do you find it hard to stop even when you know you should? Even when it is what you'd tell anyone else who was unwell to do?

In A Year To Clear which i am still enjoying Stephanie Bennett Vogt asks the question How do you make things hard for yourself? It was interesting to contemplate that today and even more interesting to ask Why?

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I plan to have breakfast outside every day it isn't raining till the start of winter.

I  had just finished when there was a light shower..I grabbed my notes before the ink ran on my list of tulips..

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I've copied the dates of the most notable meteor showers from the stargazing website onto my calendar. I managed to miss the Perseids in mid August - the only one I usually look our for, and the most spectacular.  I have memories of sitting out in the dark garden  with the girls and their friends wrapped in blankets (with hot chocolate of course) counting the shooting stars.

Magical.

Now is a good time for bargains in garden things and I was quite thrilled with these lanterns in the local supermarket for an amazing £2.50 each.

I bought five thinking they will look good on the steps and the porch but tried them out on the dining room table last night. They are a simple design and well made of white enamel.

I went back today and bought the last three! Won't they look lovely down the middle of the outside table?

I am hoping for a few evenings warm enough to have, if not supper, at least a  glass of wine outside. Or a hot chocolate...and some stargazing?

The cosmos are still flowering! I deadhead them frequently and they just keep producing and being visited by the bees and the odd peacock butterfly.

I've never grown anything as tall in my three black pots before and I like the way it has screened the seating area and made it into a sort of separate room/

It has rained heavily all day today but yesterday, wearing a thick jacket, I breakfasted outside - french toast (eggy bread) with strawberries. cherries. pomegranite seeds and yoghurt. Yum. I enjoyed it so much I went in and greedilly made another serving.

What is still flowering near you?

There's something about sitting for an hour and a half

on your favourite rock on a warm day

with a picnic and an eight year old

that makes you feel all is well, and life is worth living.

Stones to slide down the rock face. Listen to the sound as they hit the water - plop boom vloop schlop plip high pitched low pitched, big splash tiny splash heavy light hard soft sticks long thin wide narrow float sink tide in tide out which is it skimming building balancing wet dry creatures ducks arrowheads cavemen ammonites fossils food drink smell wind sun  seeing the world in a grain of sand I've drunk all my water I'm thirsty can we go home now

ok

Thank you for the warmth, wisdom and virtual hugs in yesterday's comments.

You lift me up.

On a hard day
when Grief is my companion
I let him hold me.

A before breakfast walk.

Simply..home.

A quiet walk on the shore. Time to think.

Thinking is the hardest work. That's why so few people do it.

Agree?

Disagree?

:-)

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A quiet day at home.

One of my favourite books is one I bought at an extremely busy time of my life -  children, full time work and study.

It's a particularly lovely edition (paperback, now well worn) with beautiful photographs.

Tao abides in non-action
Yet nothing is left undone

I couldn't claim then or now to understand the meaning but I liked the ambiguity and the apparent acceptance of mystery. I found it very calming.

Still do.

With the recent bout of clearing and talk of emptiness and space I find it grounding to look at this book.

Do you have a book that brings you calm?

..both literal and metaphorical. I love the atmosphere in Edinburgh at festival time.

Music in the streets, lots of free performances by young hopefuls at the Fringe, top names and prestigious shows (Rembrandt at the National Gallery which I will go back and see) and the Dovecot has a good cafe and shop and a selling exhibition of contemporary jewellery which we didn't have time to see....

I think next year I should find somewhere to stay for a week.

Have you been? Or do you have a favourite festival?

I like the message on the Edinburgh Festival posters.

Grace and I had a happy day there yesterday.

We chanced upon Indigo Yatd Gin Garden for a coffee while we decided what to do (it was too early for gin!). We loved the decor..

When life gives you lemons make a gin and tonic was our favourite message. We've discovered we like a lot of the same things, so it was easy to agree that  Dovecot Studios should be our destination.

This is the viewing gallery where you can watch the tapestry weavers at work.

The building was converted from a swimming pool.

The current exhibition is a history of Liberty Fabrics.

More tomorrow...

I came across coach Cheryl Richardson and listened to some videos..

Here are some of the things she said which 'spoke to my condition'

she talks of  learning to sit in limbo, to wait, to allow what's next to come to us.

Of dismantling our lives and releasing the things which no longer feed us.

If we are clear that what we want is to feel alive.. that we want more aliveness...

Of asking ourselves 'What calls to me energetically and says do more of this?

See more here. 

Does it resonate with you?

Glasgow is hosting the European Athletics Championships and the city is busier than ever with diversions of traffic, lots of street music and a preacher with a microphone proclaiming that 80% of humanity will end up in hell!

But having enjoyed this programme I went to take a look at the newly refurbished Willow Tearoom by Mackintosh.

I absolutely love the elegant facade (remember this was 1903 and Queen Victoria had died just two years earlier and the woman who commissioned it dressed like this!)

Window like a piece of jewellery. Amazing.

I've not had tea there yet but next trip to the city....

NB It is not yet fully functional and there are other venues called Willow Tea Rooms. This one is in Sauchiehall St. The official opening is not till 7 Sept.

An act of extreme self care (I think I am in my Blue Period..)


NEWS FLASH  Grace reached the top of Ben Nevis yesterday (Sat).  Brava Grace!

Cool in summer, warm in winter.

I bought this lovely book in 1999 when we bought our wooden house.

..plod.

Sketchbooks and notebooks. First I divided them into used/unused. I have a stack to give away and I have almost finished looking through the used ones and am throwing most of them away but for a few sketches I like.  I have assimilated most of the ideas in the notebooks, and the shredder is red hot!

Quite a big bag of old artwork for the recycling bin. It wasn't hard to decide what to keep and what to throw, but it took a while and I was getting very weary of it.

Then about 5pm I just felt this wash of energy come over me.

It can only be because of all this clearing :-)

And yesterday's paradise moment still makes me glow when I think of it.

No more boring photos of my clutter.

Promise.

I look at nature a lot but the sensation of being in it and of it is different.

Instead of managing it (gardening) photographing it, painting it, thinking about it, I found myself just being.....gentle sunlight and warmth made me relax, the cosmos are thick and high and I was right in amongst them. I was deadheading them and having to do it quite slowly and carefully to avoid the many bees which in the brown centres of the ones which were going over were not easy to see. There are more bees in the garden than I have ever seen. I paused to listen to them and had the happy and  beautiful feeling of being  a part of it all.



Thank you to Lotta whose post inspired this one.

..to stop at this point.

The studio feels like a nice place to be again, I know where everything is. it's clean and organised and I'm a bit tired!

But...i know I haven't done the real work. The work that will move me on.

I am pausing to celebrate the happy things I've found, the good memories I have unearthed.

Every sale a little thrill and a little pang goodbye.

A lot of solo shows and some great supportive and enthusiastic gallery owners.

Photocopy of a very early flower painting bought by the framer before he even framed it.


I took four more collages to a local gallery yesterday as they had sold the previous four.

So back to it Freda!

Here are some of the inspirational quotes that keep me going.....

Outer order contributes to inner calm. Gretchen Rubin. I believe she is writing a book with this title.

The following are from Marie Kondo -

When you tidy you get your affairs and past in order too

Tidying is conversing with myself through the medium of my possessions

The whole point in both discarding and in keeping things is to be happy

when your room is clean and  uncluttered you have no choice but to examine your inner state

clean up your psychological space

the moment you start you reset your life

the true goal is to establish what you want


Do any of these motivate you? Or do you have any to add that might motivate me?

I thought I'd contrast Raven  an etching by Alan Stones with lots of rich colour...

Took a notion to do this before breakfast this morning! I know....a bit daft.

Do you find when you start making changes in one place you end up making changes everywhere?