What talented young singers! A super lunchtime concert at the University of Glasgow yesterday.
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What talented young singers! A super lunchtime concert at the University of Glasgow yesterday.
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My friend showed me how to edit a photograph so that the subject looks spotlit. Shining a light on all things good and beautiful.. You in your small corner, and I in mine.        ..looking like a Dutch old master oil painting.  I have just cooked them. Lightly poached in water and some dark brown soft sugar - not too much - a shake of ground cinnnamon, a pinch of grated orange rind, they are best served hot with some good vanilla icecream. A little garden therapy. I can't help making patterns!   ..bringing the outdoors in and experimenting with the stagelight edit on my camera kept me away from the news today!  My self-imposed news blackout is about 99.8% successful I would say, and when I get the urge to listen to the news I try to find something creative to do instead. It's been fairly challenging...but nice. Posted under Simply Chill and Simply Headspace. I am a little shocked to realise how much of my own country I hardly know! I have just spent a couple of days in East Lothian with lovely friends who showed me the Kelpies, the Falkirk Wheel and the attractive town of Linlithgow. A kelpie is a shape shifting mythical water sprite in Irish and Scottish folklore.    Being in nature, being with friends, and learning to meditate will be my focus for the next ten days or so. I was a bit surprised at how often I thought about listening to the news today, and by accident I overheard one set of headlines beforre I quickly turned off. This may not be easy, but this evening I do feel a bit more peaceful and quietly got on with some paperwork that needed doing. I might well catch up with a few things.., Short blog break coming up. Be well. ..to this politics-free zone. I am planning a news blackout for the next ten days or so. I am refusing to be caught up in any hype/speculation/gossip/mass hysteria, exciting though it undoubtedly is! I do wonder if I can stick to this as I have always been interested in politics and current affairs, but I will try. In fact I will DECIDE and stick to my decision. I am finding being decisive very invigorating. Do you?  ..in the garden.! Time for change and some radical action. Since my post Deciding to Decide I have made a point of just being more decisive and I think it has improved my life! It is also going to improve the garden. Out with the honeysuckle which grew like crazy but rarely flowered, out with the self sown alchemilla mollis which quickly made enormous clumps, away with alstromeria which crocheted its way over vast expanses. What willl you get decisive about?  The drive s much wider than I rememberd! Weebly is a bit glitchy right now. I hope you managed to listen to yesterday's music - sometimes it plays, sometimes it doesn't, and last night it told me my photographs for this post were too big. They are the seme size as every other photograph I have uploaded here.... ..which lightened my heart. Enjoy. Maybe dance? Thenk you Sheena for the exxcellent photgraph of the Ruby-tailed wasp. Given that you werre up a ladder when you you spotted this amazing insect, you did brilliantly to get such a good shot! Have any of you evver seen one of these?  In all my decades of gardening I have never seen one and was very surprised indeed to read that they are not uncommon in UK. Apart from the ruby tail can you see the irridescence on the head? If it is autumn where you are, are you getting out your rugs and cushions ready for cosy nights in? I bought the scallop-edged cushion cover from H&M today. They do cushion covers and tea towels in beautiful quality natural fibres for very reasonable prices. This one is 52% recycled linen. At this time of year I find patterns and textures so conforting.   I often comment on how much I love and appreciate the real thing - original art, live music, real food, face to face conversations, the wind and the weather. The other day on the porch a surprisingly warm gentle breeze, just enough to move my hair from my neck was delicious. Standing under the moon, a log fire... My URL/online life is important to me too (this blog!) and the technology which helps me with vision loss - I am now registered partially sighted - is invaluable, and inproving all the time, but there is a dehumanising element to AI which is really disturbing. Why on earth would we want a machine to write poetry, or a robot to look after our elderly people?! Rather than finding a work/life balance maybe we should focus on our IRL/UPL balance? In Real Life I have holes in my socks. Lighten up Freda! ;-) IRL (In Real Life) I took a notion to make a little wild wreath, which went through several iterations..    The weather got a bit wild too and I wasn't sure the delicate thing would survive Storm Ashley, so I repurposed it.    You will have noticed how much mental evergy it takes to procrastinate. And energy is everything, isn't it. Over and over I go considering the pros and cons of this way versus that way, now or later, the rights and the wrongs, the ifs and the buts, the shoulds and the coulds and the maybes..I'm worn out before I have taken any action at all. I fear I have become very indecisive in even in small matters. In fact mainly in small matters. (In a crisis I am very decisive and clear thinking. Plenty practice this year!) But day to day I muddle along, spending a lot of time thinking for examle about what order to do things in. The other morning I got so bored with myself I decided to decide. I would make three very small decisions and carry them out. It felt good. I made three more - the energy began to flow. By the end of the morning I was sailing along enjoying being decisive. When I want to be, I am still a decisive person! It just takes that first decision - deciding to decide.  Even through the cloud layer the Hunter's Moon was bright enough to send moonbeams all over the garden. From a mere 222,056 miles away! It was too rainy at moonrise to get the full effect of the supermoon, but I woke at three and contemplated it accompanied by a cup of tea and a slice of cranberry and pumokin seed toast. Funny the things that make one happy. :-)
An almost eerie silence as I wait for the bus into town.   Invite a neighbour for coffee in two hours time.  Dishes done, fire cleaned and lit, table cleaned and set, biscuits baked - lethargy vanished. Smiles all round. ..but so too do the seasons. This is the fourteenth October I have blogged about! So I repeat photographs of the garden in autumn, the table decorations, the last flowers etc, but isn't it rather wonderful that we can be thrilled by autumn, year after year? I browsed through some previous Octobers in the (now very extensive) archive and 2015 seemed particularly nice... see here. A special thank you to those of you who have stayed with me all these years, and more! I have so enjoyed your company.  Nature's gift. Prunings make a free, effortless and elegant table decoration.
Every now and then I clear off a space - a shelf, an alcove, a table - and put just one thing there.  I love how dynamic this jar of branches looks. It has an evergy about it that enlivens the room - or to be more accurate, it enlivens me when I go into the room. Sparks joy in fact! Where will you try just one thng? |
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