Spring has arrived.

Spring has arrived.

I was so happy to finally put the paint and brushes back in the shed. By the time finished I’d had enough of emulsion paint for at least another year. After I finished the hall I went on to paint the new handrails on the stairs, then I decided to paint the skirting boards and door frame in the bathroom and then, I repainted all the walls and skirting boards in the kitchen. Once I started painting the kitchen I realised how discoloured it was and how much it desperately needed painting. Anyhow, now that it’s done, it looks so much better, nice and clean and bright and white. Those are not my paintings on the kitchen wall; the landscape is a print I bought from a shop. I saw it, fell in love with the view and promised myself I would go there one day. It’s a place called Riomaggiore which is a tiny medieval village high up on the cliffs above the coast of North West Italy. I bought the print and have kept it on my kitchen wall ever since to remind myself that one day….. I will go there.   The yellow rose on the kitchen wall is a photograph printed on canvas, it was taken by a friend of mine (who is an excellent photographer), she had it printed up on canvas and gave me for Christmas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riomaggiore

And as soon as the decorating paraphernalia was back in the shed, out came the canvas and acrylic paints. I finished off the portrait of Justin, my grandson. He is only 13 but he’s joined the army cadets and goes off to camp every month. He’s very proud of his uniform and made a special point of asking me to make sure I paint the red feathery thingy on his beret (sorry military people can’t remember what he called it).   

Once he was finished I planned my next couple of paintings. I need to do a snowscape of the hills for my daughter, that’s what the long canvas is for, and I plan on doing four small square and two small round canvases of bright yellow sunflowers. Today, I prepared all the canvases and made a start on the snowscape painting. 

Last week was mostly spent saving photos to my flickr account. I’ve finished saving everything from 2014 and I’m up to date with this years photos. Looking back at the flickr account I realise I actually saved every thing quite regularly until about the end of 2010 and then for some reason, I just stopped, and now I’m playing catch up. If you want to see my growing collection of literally thousands of photos they are here;

https://www.flickr.com/photos/forget-me-not5275/

The one time I did venture down to the harbour this week I spotted the inshaw lifeboat crew doing a training exercise and I saw the old dredger was back. That same dredger spends a couple of months here every year which I guess means our harbour is high maintenance.

And lastly…………Its spring, yep its official, my snowdrops are in full bloom which means its spring in my garden. Even if its not spring anywhere else, once the snowdrops bloom, its spring in my garden. Within a couple of weeks I’ll open up my old gardening blog.

I have already booked my grandson, (the one in the painting), to help me paint the garden fences. He’s coming over for the weekend on Friday 13^th and that’s when it will all kick off in my garden.