We also used the back garden as a drying greeen...

We planted a few birch trees. They were meant to be the white-barked 'Jaquemontii' but turned out to be the faster growing and taller native birch - however this did mean that they soon became strong enough to support what turned out to be my favourite thing in the garden - the hammock!

A bunch of mint makes a simple (chemical-free) air freshener - a little rub with your fingers scents the whole room....

I watched a robin take a long bath in this shallow dish of water this morning. As well as bathing in it, birds drink from it, the swallows need it to make mud for their nests, it brings the sky down into the garden and reflects things in it. You can also tell at a glance if it's raining. It's an important addition to any garden however small. (I am scarifying the grass - it always looks worse before it looks better!)



When I am trying to make a decision I still find What would be simplest? my favourite helpful question but here is a good one from Gretchen Rubin -

What is the value of what I'm going to get if I...........?

I am so lucky to have a bluebell wood across the road from my house.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I look our of the front door and see this

I have to go shopping for chocolate tomorrow...!

..with myself.

Best china and linen napkin, good food and wine, real coffee, chocolates, a card of two marvellous women and a good book.

I am reading my way through all the novels by William Maxwell. This one is So Long, See You Tomorrow.

Have you been on a special date lately?

Or read a particulary good book?

Flowers to match the spring pillowcase make me smile.

It's the little things..

What can you put on your bedside table that will make you smile?

..one of these trees hit the forest floor the huge CRUMP reverberated through the house.
The larch trees, some infected by phytophthora, have been felled in the last couple of weeks. They are opposite the house and it is quite a shock to see them gone from the skyline as they were 80 - 100 feet tall and I really liked them, as did the crows, red squirrels and siskins.

I'm really glad that there are a number of deciduous trees between the house and this area of the forest - beech, willow, sycamore, horse chestmut and holly screen me from the scene!  More felling is planned. It is commercial forest...

We'll probably get more bluebells.

..flowers for cutting is one of my greatest pleasures. Having a garden just big enough to be able to pick from it without leaving a great gap is a joy. Currently I have daffodil Thalia, tulip Purissima, forget me nots and blue camassias and I've had several small arrangements without spoiling the effect in the garden.

I happened to move a small lamp and find the way it lights the flowers is quite dramatic...

..now and then.

Although I trained in Printed Textiles at Glasgow School of Art, in my home I like plain and simple, and pattern only on things which are brought out occasionally..and usually one at a time. William Morris, Arts and Crafts, the Bloomsbury set and Liberty? I love to visit these kinds of interiors but would not want to live in them. (Too much visual stimulus! I would find it exhausting.)

.
Opening all the windows in the morning makes me feel more alive.

If it's cold or wet it may just be for a few moments.

On really hot summer days (we do get them occasionally!) the doors may stay open too.

I love that.

(Taking photographs for the blog makes me feel alive!)


What makes you feel alive in the morning?

a couple of Maori words to my New Zealand book.

Kia kaha means I beleive be strong, keep going.

I am also reminding myself that the negative words don't negate all the positive words - they still stand.


Snow on and off all day meant staying at home, with coffee and a book. I am enjoying William Maxwell's writing in The Chateau.  Perceptive, reminding me rather of Henry James. he evokes post war France in a way that has me reading a few pages, then doing something else (emptying a drawer of the freezer. baking Italian pastries) while thinking about the book, then going back to read some more.

Still blowing a wintry gale here! Cleaning the bathroom this morning I took down the snow picture and the red comb and towels and put up my all-time favourite card with some zingy towels and yellow bits and pieces..

Will you be making a little change somewhere in anticipation of the new season?

I did the cleaning with a little extra care and attention, mindful of all your interesting writings on yesterday's post...cherishing the space. Feeling gratitude.

and a few hardy little snowdrops

 
A free makeover for your kitchen?

Next time you bring your shopping home put everything that is green out on display and everything else in the cupboards.

So you have green apples, green veg, green washing up liquid, green carrier bag, and if you can add a green towel or teatowel and a green plant or two and any dishes with green on them you have a new look and a colour co-ordinated kitchen for no cost....and the next time you are shopping for washing up cloths or sponges buy green, and green soap etc etc. Fun and free. If you have a pinboard a few postcards or greeting cards in green, or pictures cut from magazines will add to the gorgeous effect.

You can of course do it with any colour, and in any toom - I do it with red in the kitchen at Christmas) and am about to try it with yellow and grey in the sitting room for spring.

Colour, as Cath noted in yesterday's comments, can really lift your mood.

i'll be moving this little painting from the hall. It's by Christine McArthur and has the delightful title 'Where There's A Fish There's A Lemon.

That grey and yellow thing....A revival of 1950's styles in recent years first brought the grey and yellow combination to my notice, but not being a fan of that period I ignored it for a while. But I began to notice a rather lovely vibration between the two colours, especially if the grey was not a neutral grey - one made of adding white to black - but a grey with some colour in it, in watercolour paint Davy's Grey (yellowish) or Payne's Grey (bluish) and in fabric the colour known as French Grey (also bluish, sometimes purple-ish). With a very clear yellow as in daffodil yellow beside the pale grey kitchen tiles here it really works for me.

I went around the house today and see that I have quite a lot of grey and yellow things so I think I will gather them together and make it a new colour scheme for the sitting room for spring!

Michael Barclay's guest Sigrid Rausing brought a smile to my face and put the current political situation in a different perspective in her introduction to Ella Fitzgerald singing Anything Goes.  (This week's edition of my favourite programme Private Passions, around 12 mins 47 in on BBC Radio 3 - though I found the whole one hour programme well worth listening to. Fascinating woman.)

Still very much cosy-by-the-woodburner-listening-to-the-wind here.

And there seems to be a grey and yellow theme appearing through the house...

..we had a family meal and took down the tree and decorations and as I always do, I observed how badly this room needs decorated (never do it though! Maybe this year...).

I'll still have candles - but with fresh fruit rather than tinsel.

Have you cleared away Christmas?

For yesterday's book group reading I found a passage in A C Grayling's The Challenge of Things under the heading Darkness which covered, briefly, the history of winter celebrations. This point was one I had not really considered before....

And paradoxical as it might seem, winter darkness was traditionally a time of plenty - the harvest had long been gathered and stored, the pigs slaughtered and their flesh salted - and the austerities of spring, when supplies were used up and the year's hard work had to begin were far off. The dark part of the year was therefore a welcome season of holiday.

This Jubilee jug by Pat Culpin was the first thing I ever bought from an art gallery, and I can't help but compare the experience with my most recent purchase which was online. (Click on photos for full view.)

It was at a private view in a little gallery in the Ochil Hills near Stirling. I had a painting in the show and was thrilled to be showing in the same gallery as the artist Bet Low. The atmosphere was friendly and chatty, there was wine, there was a buzz about the place as the red dots were going up, and I thought this handsome jug would look very fine in our old cottage and we agreed to splash out.

I was very excited by it all and when we went back at the end of the show to collect it we were told that the Duke of Buccleugh had wanted it, but we were in front of him in the queue!

Buying from eBay was a very different experience. (See this post.)

I was confident I would like the print because I know the artist's work so well, and it was quite exciting to wait and watch then make my offer, but I did feel I had to jump through hoops - open an account, create passwords, navigate the site, and communicate with the seller only through eBay for security reasons. Part way through eBay decided that my email and password didn't match. I tried a new password. Still no success. Apparently it was the email address which was the problem (although they were still sending me emails - lots of them). To use the helpline I had to log in - which required my email and password. I was at the same time getting quotes from Shiply for carriage which ranged from £93 to £364 and meant lots more emails.

Thanks to the patience of the seller with whom I finally found a way to communicate directly all ended well, but the security aspects - and I fully appreciate the necessity for them - removed the pleasure of the face to face personal communication, the social side, of the gallery experience.

I have just sold the jug to a potter friend who came to the house to see it. We had coffee and a great chat about our favourite potters, being an artist and buying and selling our art.

I love this video of slipware maker Clive Bowen (20 mins).

..today on the Sound of Shuna

and on the way home, on a brisk cold walk between buses, a shot of the leaning Christmas Tree out on the end of the Coal Pier. It is so exposed. I wonder if it will stay upright till Christmas....

..at dawn and at dusk of late takes my breath away..

Yesterday saw the first snow on the hills this winter, and today around dusk I went for a winter paddle.  After the initial shock my feet felt wonderful! They are still tingling almost an hour later.

The little walk back up my path was gorgeous.

I love living here.

Glasgow Print Studio have an excellent feature on different kinds of prints (see here) and it was where my print was created by artist Elizabeth Blackadder in 1988.

I've always loved her work for it's vitality and honesty. Here is a video of her working. No pretiensions here, just brilliant observation, skill honed over many years of consistent work, and that 'je ne sais quoi' which makes the magic!

Have you bought any original art?

As I often say, there's nothing like the real thing....

There are not many posts in this category (as I have said before we were taught to be modest about them).

I went out for a walk at dusk and found the road like a river although it had not rained very  much, so i investigated and found the ditch which runs along the roadside blocked. Although by this time it was getting dark I couldn't resist going back to the shed for a rake and clearing  the leaves and mud that were blocking it - the satisfaction of hearing the water gurgling along again was worth it!

And I got a nice photograph of the house from a different angle as I walked back home almost an hour later..

Don't be shy and tell us of your latest good deed!


NB  I'm sorry that sometimes my replies to your comments do not appear directly below  but get mixed up and appear in the wrong order. So confusing Weebly!