Creeping takeover

It was a sunny afternoon, and J and I went for a walk/wheel around the village. The tiny front gardens are full of lavender humming with bees and glorious pink roses, but I've shared a lot of flower photos recently and was struck by the profusion of the bindweed encroaching on this narrow, leaded window. It's the side window of the porch on a small former community hall which is now used by the adjacent primary school. I've always rather liked the building, particularly the pretty patterned tiling on the roof, though it's now partly obscured by the moss. Bindweed is everywhere this year with more large, white blooms than ever, in all the hedgerows and around my garden. It's rather beautiful, but horribly invasive and difficult to remove. 

Earlier, I supported J and joined in with her weekly online art talk, which is a discussion of works chosen by the participants. This week's theme was farm animals; J chose an exuberant yellow cow by Franz Marc and a sweet, sunny pre-Raphaelite painting by Holman Hunt of a mother showing her baby the lambs. The art talks began during the 2020 lockdown, and J enjoys both sharing things she loves and searching for unfamiliar works and artists to explore. I had no idea paintings of prize cows were such a significant genre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries!