It hasn’t stopped raining …

It hasn’t stopped raining. Four inches were recorded yesterday in North Wales. Nobody would go out walking for fun in weather like this. I’m a nobody and I did. (thanks Kathy!) But more of that in my next.

I’d bought a new bunch of flowers as instructed, despite my protestations to Her Who Must be Obeyed that the old ones were just starting to look interesting. I dutifully dumped them but something prompted me to fish them out again and stick them in another vase for a Still Life, as if I were Vincent (in fact I am, it’s my middle name) on a rainy day when he could not go out with his trusty portable easel. I’m still reading the Yellow House; Vincent (van Gogh) is behaving oddly these days & Paul (Gauguin) wants to get away, back to Paris and soon to the South Seas, where the colours are brighter and the women—he anticipates—more enticing.

If I had the time, I’d learn to paint properly and then spend a feverish, agonising, ultimately triumphant afternoon on an intricate still life in oil pastels, while the rain beats against the window and the sky darkens.

Unable to hold back the clock, I took a photo instead, with some horse-chestnuts, a spotted pheasant feather and a corn cob taken from a field near Ashgrove the other day – see my last post. Small crops of buckwheat, sunflowers and corn are grown in these parts to provide overwintering provender for pheasants. They are not harvested but left to stand, and when you pass them there’s a sudden beat of heavy wings and these awkward birds reluctantly take off, squawking their warning messages to their fellows.

My beloved often compares me to an eight-year-old boy stuffing my pockets with dubious treasures, so today’s post is a joyous act of defiance!