New Year, New Energies

'The Red Deer Guardian'
Watercolour and ink
16 inches by 12 inches

£175 + postage

After a prolonged absence, my muse finally returned this morning! The ideas have been jostling about on the peripheral edges of my mind for a while, but I've not been able to see them clearly. I put it down to the general Christmas and New Year 'brain fug', but I just couldn't quite shake it off. However, this morning I woke up feeling energised and vital. Coincidentally, the stormy weather and deafening wind had also gone, leaving a bright dawn and a strange stillness that feels pregnant with life and energy. I keep half-expecting to find that the garden has burst into song, Disney style, next time I look out of the window!
A dog walk and brisk workout digging and clearing debris from the stream in the Further Fields, which had become blocked by the raging torrent earlier this week, and consequently was flooding down the road, shook the remaining cobwebs from the dusty recesses of my brain this morning, followed by a meditation , and the muse burst back in.(No, I don't meditate often, I rarely pause for long enough, and I had almost forgotten how good it is for sharpening the mind)
Those half glimpsed ideas are pouring out, fully formed and brightly coloured! I just need to get them down on paper now :)

So while I'm working on that, I'll show you what I've been up to while the muse was away! The owl-daughter and I made our first attempt at a plush monster. This was a Christmas gift for my nephew (he named the monster 'Mark') and we had great fun making it.

Then of course there was the traditional Christmas lurgy, which thankfully only I got this year. It entailed lots of sleeping and sitting by the fire, accompanied by the cats. (I don't know why Beetle chooses to sleep in this 'face-plant' position, but it is always his sleep style of choice)

And then there were the Christmas books! I got lots of wonderful books this year, and I'm only just starting to make inroads on them. One of my new Year's resolutions is to attempt to read more academically this year. There is so much I want to know, and I have a list as long as my arm of 'wanted books'. One that has been on my wish list for a while is 'Thursbitch' by Alan Garner, and I was thrilled to be given it this year. Alan Garner was one of my earliest loved writers - I'm sure many of you are fans of 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and (my personal favourite) 'Elidor'. Aside from the fantasy element, the thing I loved most about his writing was how he evoked such a clear, strong sense of place. However, I only recently discovered his adult works, and this, 'Thursbitch' lived up to all expectations. I can see that it might not be every one's cup of tea, and I'll admit it is challenging, but I loved it, and it's the first book in a long time that has made me want to go and research it's references thoroughly, understand more of the history and folklore behind it, and then go back for a second read. There is a great site here, which points you in the right direction for further reading. So that is more books added to my 'wanted' list!

And finally, a wander around the second hand bookstore at proper job yielded yet more paper treasure. The pile is growing far faster than I can read!

Beetlejuice, guardian of the Pumpkin hoard.

I have still been so busy harvesting that I have little time for much else. The cats have been doing their best to help too! We have had a fantastic crop of pumpkins and squashes this year, our best ever, and they taste heavenly. Our favourites have proved to be the Crown Prince - I like to cook squash in savoury dishes rather than sweet, and this has the perfect flavour and texture for roasting ( or currying, or making into soup .......).

The quince tree, too, is weighed down with more fruit than we have ever known it to bear. I LOVE quince, despite the fiddly preparation and am madly trying to make it into marmalade, or stew it for the freezer, as it doesn't keep too well.

Which brings me to the exciting bit! My followers have reached the 500 mark, and I think this deserves a celebration! So I am going to have a little giveaway on the next post, just as soon as I have finished a little original I am working on. I think you will like it, so keep watching for the chance to win it :)

Eostre

'Eostre'

She's finished, my interpretation of the goddess, Eostre. The colour is slightly darker here than in the original, because I can't get the colour quite right with my camera ( it is too large for my scanner). So this is another that will have to wait until I get in to Exeter to the printers studio for some professional scans.
Folklore tells us that Eostre was an Anglo - Saxon goddess, celebrated during the fourth month of the year. She represents new life and fertility, and is symbolised by eggs and hares. It is often assumed that the Christian Festival of Easter took it's name from this, hence the traditions of Easter Eggs and Easter Bunnies in Western Europe, ( which, let's face it, have nothing to do with the crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection of Christ) though it would appear that there is scant written evidence to prove this. The only mention of Eostre in historical texts, is by the Venerable Bede (672 - 735 AD) in his work' De Temporum Ratione' .

Progress continues with 'The Hare Wheel', but very slowly. I am laboriously stitching words in the last hours of my evenings, slowly, slowly filling up the wheel.

A wander round my garden today found that my beautiful, silky rich, deepest crimson hellebore flowers had opened. I love these, grown from seed many years ago, the clumps quietly expand each year, untouched in the shadiest part of my garden, blooming in all their Gothic beauty each Easter.

And this is Daisy, come to stay for a while. I've known her since she was about 10 weeks old (she's only just over a year now) but her people's circumstances have unavoidably changed recently, and so she was in need of a new home. She has come to stay, to see how she likes being here, and she seems to have settled right in. We all love her lots ( we did anyway, before she came) and Magpie seems to like her too, which was my biggest worry, as I didn't want Magpie to feel pushed out. The cats are not best pleased, but they are asserting their rights, and Daisy is wary of them. Especially the ginger thug, Miu, who turned into a hissing, spitting, erratically bouncing hairball when he first met her. Miu even swiped at Magpie in his fury, which hurt her feelings deeply, although he did come over to apologise afterwards. Beetle, on the other hand, is more reticent, slinking alongside Magpie for protection. She mothers him, curling herself around him as a guardian when Daisy barks at him. Aside from that both dogs seem very relaxed and happy, so we are hoping it will work well.

The allotment takes shape

After so much navel gazing on Saturday, Sunday was a day of spring sunshine and work outdoors! I have been hard at work in the greenhouse ( watched over by Miu, sitting in his second favourite place - his most favourite place is on top of my parsley plants , but I have threatened to water him if he sleeps there)
I love watching seedlings emerge. When I worked at a nursery my favourite part of the day was checking the propagator in the morning to see what had come up overnight. Even pricking out trays and trays of seedlings is satisfying. I'm not so good at watering them though!
I have lots of vegetables started - tomatoes and chilli peppers, french beans and cucumbers, swiss chard and a couple of early summer squashes, and of course, my favourites - sweet peas. I am determined to stuff my garden full of them this year.

In the afternoon we all worked on the allotment. Steve has been digging every spare moment he has ( which sadly is not often!) but he has done a great job preparing the vegetable beds. The scruffy bed at the front of the picture shows the remains of the Kale (self seeded) and the leaf beet which has kept us going through the winter. I managed to get the first lot of potatoes in the ground, and while digging over the old potato bed, Steve and the girls managed to find enough small stray pink fir apples for supper.

There was even time to clear 'the jumping lane', which had been rendered impassable by drooping and fallen branches. We used the logs to make new small jumps. As the bracken grows up, this path becomes a tunnel, and it is brilliant for trotting small ponies down and gaining confidence in jumping. It is impossible to run out, and almost impossible to turn round, so there is no choice for them but to keep going. Having said that, I thought I had better just pop down it on Red and check it out, and he was convinced the track was covered in monsters. He shied and spooked and thought about trying to climb the bank instead of jumping a 9 inch log. Needless to say, he DID go down the lane and over the logs, but I was glad the children weren't watching me!
I have also been awarded the Passion For Painting Blog award, by Gail Ragsdale and Carol Buck, both extremely skilled painters themselves. Do check out their blogs!
I am supposed to list 7 things I love, but I think you are probably sick of reading about 7 things I love - I have posted several different lists!
I am going to nominate one painter to pass it on to - Ellen Morrow,, whose work is truly exceptional, and whose love of watercolour shows in every piece she paints. You must go and look at her work! ( but don't buy her crow pieces - I am saving up to buy one, one day!)

Happy Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I hope everyone had a wonderful spooky night! We retired quite early, as the kids were pretty exhausted. They spent the day making decorated lanterns ( glass jars with tissue paper glued to the outside) to take trick or treating with them. I have mixed feelings about trick or treating, it's not something I ever did as a child, but the kids really wanted to. So they went ,with friends, accompanied by us, on a pre-arranged route, where householders were expecting them.

Wow! Don't I sound like an old fuddy duddy here! It's just that trick or treating never seemed to be much of 'thing' round here until very recently. We always used to carve a pumpkin for the window, and have a few friends round for apple bobbing and cake, and that was about the extent of it.

Anyway, I have also been busy naking prints of some of my older ACEOs, which are long sold out in their original limited editions. Now I am offering them in Open Editions at a larger size. They come out beautifully printed at about 6 x 4 inches on larger 8 x 6 paper. I will be listing them on Etsy.

'In the Rose Garden'

'The Perfect Squash'

Disaster Strikes!

Froggymeade Stone Circle

Do you ever have times when you feel like there is a cloud of bad luck hanging over you? We seem to have lurched from disaster to disaster this half term. It began on Monday, when we woke up and realised we hadn't seen our little cat Beetle ( short for Beetlejuice) at all the day before. This is unusual, as he is usually such a little homebody. He has a trace of siamese in him, which I hold responsible for the fact that he is quite vocal, and has an insatiable curiosity. If you open a cupboard, Beetle hops in to have a look,if I leave the car door open, Beetle makes himself at home in the car, if he hears a paper bag rustle, he comes running to see what is going on. There are days when I can't take a step without falling over him and swearing at him. Beetle not being there, particularly when the heavens have been throwing icy rain at us for the last few days, is just unheard of.
While reassuring the kids that he was bound to be tucked up in front of somebody else's fire, I secretly feared the worst, and rang all the vets in the area to see if he had been brought in over the weekend, and did a slow drive around the block in case there was a small body on the road. But nothing.

The same morning we found my eldest daughters pony hopping lame in the field, which means a couple of weeks of rest and recuperation for him. We have had one pony after another lame this summer. I go years without having a vet to visit, and then seem to be having to call them on a monthly basis at the moment. Thank goodness they are tolerant about having their bill paid in small dribs and drabs. I never seem to be able to reduce the size of it.
A series of small domestic disasters culminated yesterday in 'The Big One'. Middle daughter had just completed getting ready for a Halloween party. She was dressed as a vampire, and I made up her face to look like one of the undead - pale face, dark hollow eyes, and a dribble of blood running down her chin. Quite effective though I say so myself. In the usual scrum to leave the house, she swung a the carrier bag containing birthday present round her head, and clouted small son on HIS head. This resulted in a nasty cut, and copious amounts of blood, and meant that instead of going to the Halloween party, we had to go off to the surgery and have it cleaned up and stuck together. What a sight we must have looked in the waiting room. Small boy sitting on my lap, blood over him and me, small woebegone creature from the crypt sitting next to me, and my eldest daughter ( my anxious worrier) wringing her hands and looking tearful as she looked at the blood.
Still, it all turned out OK in the end - son cleaned up quite nicely, and got a lollipop from the nurse, the vampire only missed half an hour of her party, and now knows why I spend my time telling her to stop swinging things round her head, and best of all, Beetle turned up! He too, seems none the worse for his time away - he doesn't look as if he has been starving for 4 days,so who knows what he was up to?
I'm hoping for a less eventful end to the week!

On a slightly brighter note, I did manage to take poor Magpie out for a decent walk - there was even a brief break in the rain. I was reminded why Dartmoor is such a magical place - here are a couple of reasons why!