Weekend

It is frosty this morning.  I ventured out early to refill the bird feeders and settled down with binoculars to count birdy visitors for the UK Birdwatch survey (noting how many birds visit in an hour and passing the count to the RSPB for their survey).  I only saw about 12 birds over the hour - all great tits and quite likely the same three birds coming back and forth!  maybe living in the woods means they aren't that dependent on my bird feeder and have their own resources.... which is good I suppose.

As a closure on my holiday, I finished a little water colour of the enormous serpentine style pool at the hotel I visited in December.  It was so lovely gliding round in the cool water, happy memories. Sorry about the black/grey blobs on camera lens (shall I not mention this again perhaps? they will always be there - I am not getting a new camera any time soon, so may as well get used to them). My grandfather always said 'paint what you see and not what you want to see' he used to get very cross with my imaginings (he was an architect, designing buildings, so had to be realistic) - but I cheated - where I put sand it was actually a concrete walk area - but sand looks so much better!

The library trip was good this week -we found Middle Eastern cookery books - It is smelling wonderful here today as teenage boy cooked Lebanese kebabs and potatoes for his GCSE practice run - the good news is he will be practicing this every weekend so that's one day I don't need to cook and one day the house will smell wonderful - the food tastes amazing and justified a trip to our favourite Hallam supermarket to buy fresh coriander, ginger and garlic etc.  It's a funny old place, we bought ginormous flat breads to freeze and loads of spices, garam masala, corriander, cumin.  They had these huge bunches of what looked like dried sticks - the kind people stick in a vase - I asked what they were for - on closer inspection it became clear - they were broom heads = like witches brooms - delightful! how very suitable for my wood floor!

 Today I did a water colour, narcissus, it satisfied my urgent need for colour.  I long for colour,  splashes of orange and yellow.... do you have that feeling? the conservatory is freezing cold and I would like to spend more time out there amongst  my lemon and orange bushes - they are thriving, they flower when it's cold.

I found bulbs in the market - am hopeful they will bloom - they were forced so need some kindness and a slow place to bring to bloom in their own time - they are tete a tete and snowdrops...  there are some things sprouting in the garden too.  I will venture into the woods next weekend....

How was your weekend?