NOW WE ARE ONE

One year ago today, I spent the morning setting up my blog template and falteringly working out my first posting. It was a mad spontaneous decision to start a blog. I had lurked around a few blogs to see what was out there after reading an article about them. Then my daughter phoned me full of how she was starting a blog. I just thought, 'What fun!', imagining rambling at some length to the world in general. With trepidation I put out my first posting and then with even greater bravardo left comments on a couple of blogs I really liked the look of. Then I went about the rest of the day wondering if I would get any comments, or would the world in general see fit to ignore me. Late that evening I returned to my blog, and yes, I actually had a comment. Guess who was my first commenter? Why, of course, it was someone who was to become a dear friend of mine in cyber world, Ms Robyn! After that, three more comments arrived, and there was no stopping me, my daughter never found the time to get her blog off the ground properly but here I still am!


What have I learnt in my first year of blogging. So much, just so much. Mostly positive, most people are nice, but you do come across one or two who let you down. I have made friends all around the world, and actually met some of them, become a Glitter Sister, have participated in both successful and unsuccessful swaps, actually ran a couple of swaps and best of all, these two things, I have learnt so much about other people's lives and found a support network of people I can discuss life with. The most important point of my blog has been though, to break through my block of many years in my art work and send my creativity soaring again. I am creating my healing spirit dolls, my other little fripperies, altering anything from cards to books. Blogging made me decide to start my Local History Group, after writing snippets about our village history on my blog. Also with exchanging customs from other cultures, I have immersed myself deeper and deeper in my English myth, folklore, herbs and magic.

Elizabeth Blackadder

Here's to the future of communicating with you all. I am not saying I will blog for evermore, but I am happy to do so at the moment, but I do know I will always find a way to communicate my Daisy ramblings and lore to the world. Raise a glass or two of pinot grigio with me tonight to celebrate this day. [It is only breakfast time for me now!]

Laura Knight

I am looking out of the window at a cloudy sky, but in among the clouds are patches of blue, and the sun is trying to shine. I had an early morning stroll down to my garden, which is looking so verdant after all the rain, some of the plants are taking beds over, but I am rather inclined not to cull them until autumn and let this garden, be of blowsy controlled chaos this summer, just letting it teeter on the edge of wildness, not too far, just a suggestion, so you can imagine secrets hidden in the plants. And there will be secrets hidden in the plants I have been collecting up all sorts of interesting bits and pieces to put between the plants and I hope to have them all in position by the beginning of June, when weather permitting, I should have done all my serious planting. The poppies have numerous heads on them. [Don't they look like green aliens emerging from the leaves?] I will have to stake these up as poppy leaves are notoriously untidy and sprawl everywhere. My beautiful pale blue irises are waiting to open and I keep scooping up and putting in pots the marigolds that have self seeded from last year.


Tara from Silver Apples of the Moon, sent me some herb seeds in the autumn and they have germinated nicely and are pushing up out of the soil in their pots. All the way from her garden in America to my cottage. I have taken delivery of four giant bags of bark chipping to recover the path between the stepping stones, and to seriously cover where the table and chairs reside. I do feel everything is happening a couple of weeks earlier this year, and hope that my garden will be able to maintain its freshness throughout the summer. Even the bedding plants are taking off earlier, I just hope that they are not finished too soon, such as before August is out.


Other items of interest to me at the moment, I am currently reading the new Barbara Erksine book, Daughters of Fire, which goes between present day Edinburgh and Yorkshire and Celtic times in those two places. I have decided as well to make a summer project of re-reading some of Thomas Hardy and reading one or two of his I have never got round to reading. I love Thomas Hardy's more rural books, especially Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a tragic soulful rural tale. This was also made into a brilliant film a good few years ago by Roman Polanski. I have spent a couple of classical evenings listening to Chopin's Nocturnes, balm to the soul, soothing yet stark, conjuring up wonderful images. Also I have been dipping back into old Paul Simon, you sometimes just forget what wonderful lyrics he writes.

James Whistler

Once again, don't forget to raise a glass with me tonight for Cats in the Kitchen Flora in the Garden is one year old today.

FROM A TINY SPARK A BRAND NEW TOPIC IS WONDERED ABOUT

I often find that one of my blogging friends writes about something on their blog and it sort of takes on a life of his own, other people comment, including me, then I sometimes feel compelled to muse about it and then go off at a tangent and write about where the tangent led me and write about it on my site.

This time it was Gemma that started me musing. She posted Leonard Cohen's Joan of Arc on her site, saying how every so often you get a craving for some of good old Leonard. I posted agreeing that just sometimes no one else will do. I then posted that my all time favourite lines of Leonard's were ...and she brings you tea and oranges that come all the way for china... from Suzanne. When I checked that my posting was on the site I noticed that immediately above me was a posting from Lisa Oceandreamer, mentioning guess what? her favourite song was Suzanne too. This led to a lovely exchange of emails where we both discovered our images of Suzanne and her life were identical. This in turn got me looking out Songs of Leonard Cohen and indulge in repeat track playing of Suzanne. In turn this led to a discussion with husband who said Leonard Cohen had written it about a real woman called Suzanne whom he, [Cohen, not my husband lol!] had known. I said, yes, but that was nothing to do with my Suzanne, who I had imagined, my Suzanne was more of an archetype and inspired me, and that I hadn't taken the real one into consideration at all.

After satisfying my Leonard Cohen need, I then moved onto Google and found out all about the real Suzanne, I thought if you didn't know about her you might be interested in these links that explains all about her. I have also uploaded her photo and show it below. Of course, this does not make me budge one inch on the Suzanne in my head. She was created by me, and Lisa Oceandreamer it seems. http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/verdal.html and http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/verdal.html



We are still having wild winds with galeforce gusts, just the sort of day to stay indoors, so I made the most of it. I actually got into my artroom this afternoon,[Hello artroom,long time no see did you think I have forgotten about you? I'll be back lots when life resumes its even pace once more.] put some bits in pieces in order, sat down at my desk wrote a list of all the swaps etc that I am participating in, hoping I am not forgetting to write things down and pinned it to the wall. Then, oh what bliss. I actually sat on got on with one of my projects and did some hand sewing. I so enjoyed it, sitting in a pool of lamplight, wind gusting at the window, heating hissing and clanking away, incense burning. In fact, I was enjoying it so much I had to put Leonard Cohen's Songs From a Room on all over again.

I have just bought three Charles de Lint books really cheaply on Amazon Used Books, two were ones I read a long time ago but never owned copies of, plus I want to read them again, and the third was one I have not read yet Spirit in the Wires. I was just going to start reading a book called The Red Tent that quite a few people seem to have recommended, although it has been published for a few years now. Now I am thinking, should I leave that and go straight to the Charles de Lint I haven't read or ..., oh decisions, decisions. At the moment I am listening to Madeleine Peyroux, [yes still, I am besotted with it], Jamie Cullen's Twenty Something and as mentioned above Songs From a Room.

This illustration above is called The Two Gossips, isn't it adorable? I am sure it is me, in the mob cap and fingerless lace glove, busy creating while a friend visits me and we catch up in the garden on local gossip. I will admit to being a bit of a gossip, not of the mean kind, I just love to know all the news and while we are telling truths, I won't deny I am a really nosey parker at times, well, I call it interest in humanity, I like to see where people live and know what makes them tick. I have just found a fabulous project on Flikr. com called, wait for it, The Bookshelf Project. The idea is you photograph your bookshelves and upload them onto flickr. The only proviso is that you must be able to read the titles of the books. This site must have been made for me, if I ever see a photo of someone's room and there books on the shelves, I will do my best to zoom in or enlarge or whatever to try to read the book title. Please excuse me this, its just that I love books, and like to know what other people like! I do know one person that reads this blog, admitting to trying to read the titles in my bookcase when I posted photos of my cottage. YOU know who you are, and I don't blame you one bit. Well believe me, you can while away some pleasant time on this project and some people even mention which of the books they are reading now and if any are up for trading. Check it out!



Must go now Saturday evening in my cozy living room complete with glass of wine is awaiting me, oh tell the truth Daisy, well a bottle of wine and one wine glass, the other half is going to have some lager.

THIS SHOW IS WELL AND TRULY ON THE ROAD

I am now well and truly immersed in moving my Mum to her new flat. At last she is showing signs of being a little bit excited at somewhere new to live, though she cannot cope at all with the packing so just sits in her living room and lets me get on with it. This is a boon, to me, she has told me, I am just to do exactly as I want and take any decisions I feel justified in taking. This is making life a lot easier, though I am living in a fog of exhaustion at the moment. She has specified the items she wants with her, such as favourite ornaments, pictures,and photograph. The rest I am packing taking home and there I will sort through them. She will have moved, hopefully before the end of the month, then I will spend a couple of weeks finishing off the packing in her old flat.



The move will be in two stages, my son and I are in charge, and I spent thirty minutes on the phone to him in London last night, planning our strategy. He takes after me in his organising capacities. He is coming up from London next weekend for the first part of the move. I think you would all laugh if you could see the notebook of lists that I am carrying everywhere with me. The other thing connected to the move is pleasant and fun. My mother will need new curtains etc as she has never had windows this shape and size before, so I am to undertake a shopping expedition on her behalf and buy her various new household items. I am picking them and organising them so its a bit like playing interior decorators, that will keep my inner child happy. I love advising people about rooms and decor.



When this move is completed, what I want to do more than anything is to go to my workroom and create, create, after sorting black bin liners. The best thing about this move is that I have come across much fabric and vintage material that I can use. Also, I found a couple of boxes of old greetings cards from the 1950's, put together with the buttons, ribbons, threads and broken beads I have sorted, I am going to have some wonderful treasures for collage and altered art.



The other evening when I returned home from sorting, had my dinner and settled down in a chair with my candles and incense, there was a real treat on television for me. I don't watch a lot of television, and sometimes forget to look at the listings, luckily my husband had spotted this and told me. It was a vintage Joni Mitchell concert from 1970. It was a small studio concert in London made by BBC television [ our public broadcasting station]. It was just so good to hear her play all the very early work, accompanying herself on guitar, piano or dulcimer, especially as she played my favourite early song For Free. I do hope they repeat it again sometime. When I first bought her albums in those far off days I also bought her songbooks as well and used to spend many a happy hour playing her songs on the piano and warbling along with my playing. At some point everyday out would come the music books and plink plonk on the piano I would go. [Big secret, I still have them and my dream is to find a piano again sometime and resume playing them]



The next evening it was a Neil Young concert from the same time, that pleased my husband as well. It was good too, but he was so totally out of it, he forgot the words to one song, couldn't decide which guitar to use and had a pocket full of harmonicas. The few songs he did were fantastic but was guy was sooooo stoned when he did that BBC concert. I think they have been putting these concerts on as they have had a documentary series on about the musicians of that time that hung about LA. You know the Byrds, Crosby Still Nash and Young, Joni etc. - Fantastic!



When I was writing my last posting about long ago holidays in Scarborough, I was wishing I had to some photographs to hand of that time, there was one in particular I liked of me sitting on steps with the Boarding House's Jack Russell Terrier. The strangest thing happened, I was sorting out another bag of my Mum's paperwork last night and there in the middle of old receipts etc was the very photograph I had been thinking, amazing. I have posted it above, I think the dog was called Pickles. I was so pleased to learn on my comments site that another blogger had been on the Hispaniola voyage and had been frightened as well, though she doesn't remember digging for treasure, maybe as the years went by they changed the concept of it. I am sure there must be more people that remember it. Glad to here I was not the only child with a vivid imagination, Tinker, seems to have had a similar experience with a wild west theme.