This is another post, to save the last one from being too long and rambling.
The one thing that saved the faffing-with-the-bike session this morning is that, despite the cool temperature, the sun was out. What a difference that makes! After sending F and G off to whatever fate the bike had in store for them, I wandered into the back yard and admired the garden. The sun made me so delirious I felt like grabbing a folding chair and sitting outside. I believe I would have found it not quite warm enough for that.
What I did, instead, was to take some photos of the emerging signs of spring in glorious sunlight, and then get out some acrylic paint and try sketching a tree. I’ll get back to that part in a minute.
Here’s something promising: daffodils, and some leaves on the buddleia.
What? You don’t see the leaves on the buddleia? They’re right here:
This plant has been heavily pruned, but buddleia do grow back pretty fast. Still, I don’t know whether we’ll get back to the glory of the butterfly summer.
These guys look interesting. I don’t know what they are, but maybe they’ll be blue!
That’s if they survive tonight. It’s supposed to drop to a couple of degrees below zero. We already have this, which I think was a crocus:
Aside: In addition to being cold, it’s clear out. We took G outside just before bed to see the stars. She was pretty excited. As she speeds away from babyhood and her awareness grows, it’s more and more fun to do tiny things as a family. Go out in the cold, say hi to Casseiopeia, Orion, the Big Dipper. Get good and ready to go back in where it’s warm.
I like these arcs of green buds. They’re like strings of patio lanterns, even though I don’t seem to have captured that here. It was still sunny.
Sunny. See?
Now, back to my painting session. I hesitate to show any evidence of the result. It’s like the work of a child. Frustrating, but fair enough, given the years since the last painting I completed. If I am a child, then I can improve.
Here’s something I did in collaboration with another child. We were exploring the properties of coloured pencil on pastel paper, which, in the case of Prismacolor pencils, were more favourable than I expected. Some of this work was me doing as I wished, some was directed by her, and some was done by her. It’s not always perfectly easy to tell which bit is which.
