Always Learning

So, here we are in mid November, and in lockdown again in England. It isn’t as severe as the first time, schools are still open, people can go to work and can meet others outside.  For Dave and I, life is no different to how our daily lives have been all year and in most respects, it’s been a good one. The family are all safe, the garden has flourished and kept us sane, and I’m back in writing mode with the novel, and accepted a painting commission. Now, that is a challenge for me as my client begged me to do a painting of her pet dog Lia which sadly recently joined those over the rainbow bridge.

I’ve warned her it won’t be very good as I don’t do animals and am not good at drawing but my client has become a good friend over the past years and I didn’t have the heart to refuse. I’ve spent the past few weeks practising drawing dogs and now comes the hard part, drawing Lia. I’ve only a few photos to go on, none of which are close ups, so it’s going to take a lot of improvising. I only hope I can pull it off.

The weather here is still very mild and autumn has given us all a fabulous display of colours in the falling leaves. I’m not a great fan of this time of year, particularly now the clocks have gone back and we have short days and long nights, but since I took up painting, I do look at it through different eyes and can appreciate the changing seasons much more. But my heart does sink a little when I walk around our garden.

The front is mainly bare soil now as Dave believes in taking everything out, digging the ground and leaving it fallow for the winter, whereas I believe in letting nature take its course and leave everything to die back naturally as Mother Nature intended. Many plants are thus still in bloom. I have cosmos and marigolds still in flower, my climbing fuchsia is spectacular for its first year, the hellebores are shooting up buds for later in winter, and there are even Welsh poppies in flower. Okay, so the borders do look a little untidy, but I know the wildlife and insects appreciate the cover, the birds enjoy the seed heads.The other day I was delighted to see a rare bird enjoying the garden for the best part of a day. Not rare as in uncommon, but because it is the first of this kind, a chaffinch, I have seen in the garden and I’ve been here over 40 years! The photo isn’t very clear as I had to take it through the bedroom window as every time I opened the window, it flew off into the holly tree, so it’s the best I could get.

Despite having been growing plants for over 50 years, I am still learning something new. There was I happily telling a friend about my Christmas Cactus that has decided to bloom early when she pointed out my plant was, in fact, a Thanksgiving Cactus, a totally separate breed from the Christmas or Easter Cactus most of us are familiar with. I’d never heard of a Thanksgiving Cactus so looked it up. And yes, she’s right. The Thanksgiving Cactus has different leaves, almost claw-shaped, to the other two which are more rounded, and both of these are different from each other:  the Easter Cactus having bristles on the tops of each leaf, the Christmas one has not.

I love learning new things. How about you?

Late is Becoming the New Normal For Me

I’m late again. It seems the 9th has a way of arriving when I’m in the midst of chaos or travel. This time, I was in Orlando for work from Wednesday to Friday and then spent the weekend with my son and daughter-in-law. I got home last night a little after six but it’s an almost 7 hour drive and even though I knew it was my day, I was too lazy to type. Alas.

So, here I am today. I usually take the grand dog, Primm, a toy when I visit. This time I got her a weird yellow creature (picture below). She wasn’t thrilled with it when I got there Wednesday night, but by Friday, she’d warmed up to it. Saturday, she was pulling the stuffing out of it. My son said, “And this is why we don’t buy her soft toys.”

I told him it cost less than lunch at Wendy’s and if she destroyed it, it lasted longer than digesting a meal. I also picked up the fuzz that came out of it. 😁

It seems I’m already a bad influence on the grand dog. And since my daughter-in-law is 17 weeks pregnant, I’m sure I’ll be in trouble some more as the future unfolds. 😁

We’re super excited to have our first grand baby. I was happy to be able to go with my son and his wife to shop for some baby items and some maternity clothes for her. She has just a little bump right now, but she tried on the fake one at the store to see how the dresses would fit later. She was precious as she giggled every time she looked at herself in it.  Lots of fun ahead for them— and us.