Another weekend, another walk

But this time it was a leisurely evening walk.

But mainly this weekend has been about this type of thing. It feels so autumnal, that this feels exactly what we should be doing.

At the moment, I don't feel really inspired to produce any new design work, there's too much else filling up all the space. But nature always revives me and makes me feel refreshed and energised to carry on dealing with all the stuff that life throws at you. It helps to put everything into perspective.
A friend recently told me that according to the Buddhist philosophy, in life we all have 84 problems. But what is important is how you deal with them. Food for thought.

We went a-walking

It was glorious; warm but with a lovely breeze which saved it from being hard work. The skies were enormous, the hay was in and the hedgerows were groaning under the weight of their berries. The sloes were a most beautiful kind of dusty blue. Such wonderful therapy.

A little squirrel at lunchtime

Today I was eating my lunch and looking outside when I spotted a squirrel running along the fence with a nut in his paws. When he ran back in the opposite direction, no more nut. He went backwards and forwards, really busy he was, this little grey furry fellow. And then he stopped and looked right at me. He put his head to one side and watched me, just as I was watching him. He stared for some time before he disappeared into a leylandii hedge. A few seconds later, he popped up at the top of the hedge and looked back at me again. It felt magical, being noticed by a squirrel.

And then I started to think about the nut and how he had obviously squirreled it away somewhere, and the fact that this tiny little critter has a verb named after him. And then I thought of the animals and the verbs to fox, to rabbit and the adjective catty and so on. When you stop and think about it, we have lots of animal inspired words in our vocabulary. Can you think of any?

Tretchikoff

I have developed a bit of an obsession for some of the paintings of Vladimir Tretchikoff. These two are my favourites.

And then of course there is the Tina series of paintings by J H Lynch.

Cecil Collins

One of my favourite artists. I love his line, the whimsical nature of his works and the sense you get of the story behind the pieces.

Even if it is not the story he intended, I quite like to make up my own.

My favourite drawing is Fool with a flower, seen immediately below in black and white and then tinted. When I was at college, I had it stuck to the front of my sketchbook.

In the garden today

I did a bit of deadheading. Put the bits in the brazier we have on the patio. Ready for the next fire. The man of the house calls me Polly Pyro because of my love of making fires.

And then I had another impromptu visitor! The kind I like.

Lots to do

Look at the long list of things I've got to do today. All of them dull sorting out things, no pleasure to be had there.

And all I really want to do is have a day off, just pottering around the house.

Or better still, I could be here

 Or here

Or here

Or best of all....here. I could live in this little cabin for part of the year and wear dirndls and have picnics, and the sun would always shine and I would ride my horse down the mountain to get supplies and I would have no boring paperwork to sort out and life would be easy...sigh...

Right, back to real life, first task, sort out business insurance.