Another summer day

I'm almost scared to write that - about summer, that is - in case it blights the weather even more than it has been this couple of months. But today was warm and the sky was blue until cloud thickened in the evening, and there was little wind and NO RAIN. There. I've said it. Sorry...

I must admit I found it hard to get up this morning, sun or no sun. But I actually managed to be quite brisk, carting the entire contents of the linen basked downstairs before breakfast and getting it all washed and out on the line before it was time to have some coffee and get out to my art class for the first time in weeks. I varnished my mountain painting - the first one I've ever varnished - fretting over the apparent streaks made by the varnish before I realised they were just bubbles and vanished shortly afterwards. That done, Paddy and I chose a frame and I left her to order it because she knows what she's doing. Then the question: What are you doing next?  


The answer is one of my cloudscapes from yesterday - the one I took as the car headed down into Sandbank on our way to our walk. I''m going back to small-scale watercolours with finicky drawing and the lightbox, so the second hour of class was filled happily with me measuring and drawing hills and a house in a corner and my first ever car. I definitely feel more sure of myself doing these small scale things.

We gardened in the afternoon - mainly restoring some order to parts of the back garden. I climbed onto a garden seat and cut off some of the triffid-tendrils of wisteria; I cut back the philadelphus now that it's finished flowering. Then I sent Himself next door to do the bits I couldn't reach - the barking dog in the next-door garden knows him better than it does me. That done, we tackled the random grass and ivy that grows with abandon along the side of the drive-in, tugging and raking and bagging for transport to the recycling. This is when I think I'd like to have a bonfire ...

I fell asleep outside on the garden seat, doing my Italian before dinner - Himself had to rouse me to make pasta with prawns and spinach. It was rather good, despite a sort of pallid appearance. I think I fell asleep again the moment I sat down afterwards. 

Photo is from the kitchen window as I was washing up after breakfast. Sunshine makes such a difference ...